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I 22 Oriental Cairo
used for marriages and the return of pilgrims from
Mecca.
The villages here arc debauched with foreign-looking villas;
they are almost suburban compared with the villages of the
Upper Nile, which look as if they had been put up by the
Pharaohs.
To make up for this we have on the one side the embattled
front of the Citadel, with the soaring dome and minarets of
the Mchemet Ali Mosque, and on the other the hot desert
with the two great Pyramids behind it purpling above the
acacia avenues. These hardly ever left us till we approached
the Barrage. It was all so like the Upper Nile ; the great pied
kingfisher flew beside us ; the buffalo was wallowing in the
water like a hippopotamus. But the sakiyas and shadjifs all
had shelters of trees and boughs. What a windy place the
Nile always is
!
Arabs are easy people' to cater for on a steamer ; they
require no seats, as they always squat on the ground, and
they don't mind how bad the accommodation is so long as it
is cheap. We sped down past low green banks and pink
deserts with the Citadel Mosque and the Pyramids growing
more fairy-like than ever in the distance which enchants, and
all of a sudden saw the Barrage rising up before us. It is
typically P'rench, rather like the miniature Lourdes put up by
the pious P>ench in the gardens of the Vatican as an apology
for their nation. It is an imposing castellated sort of affair,
with minarets in the centre and a campanile at each end,
and more minarets and more campanili in the woods. But it
was not of the slightest use as a barrage until an English
en-^ineer, Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff, made it practicable at a
cost of four hundred and fifty thousand pounds rather than
allow such a picturesque landmark to be taken down.
I believe that it does its work well now, and accept
common report as to that. I was much more occupied with
the exquisite gardens into which the fort built to guard the
Barrarre has been converted. The bastions lined with
flowers had quite an Alma Tadema effect. The first thing
we saw on landing was the performing dog-faced baboon