orientalcairocit00sladuoft

196 Oriental Cairo
take it for a lava field of Etna or one of Dore's illustrations
to the Inferno. A Japanese would be delighted with it—he
would see in it the Himalayas in miniature ; he would lay it
out into a mountain landscape like his inimitable miniature
Chinese gardens.
Here and there, in a cave scooped out by the treasure-
seeker, a miserable Arab is encamped with his cooking-
pot and his water-pitcher for his sole furniture, to add to
the note of solitude. It looks the very place for foot-pads,
but I never heard of a foreigner being molested.
Some portions of Fustat are quite high and command a
really magnificent view, for this grave of a city, is bounded
on two sides by the Roman-looking aqueduct of the famous
Saladin, and on a third one has the Citadel with its soaring
mosque, and the fantastic domes of the Tombs of the Mame-
lukes, while on the fourth side there is the Nile, with the
most ancient works of man silhouetted on its horizon.
Such is Fustat. At its foot lies one of the most ancient
mosques in the world— the mosque of Amr, though most
of its present buildings, antique as they are, belong to a
later date than his. It has ancient company, the fortress-
like ders of the Copts, and the Babylon which was the
Citadel of the Romans.
The mosque of Amr has no external graces ; its low
plaster walls, washed red and white, hardly emerging from
the sandhills, might enclose a camel-market ; there is but
one short, plain minaret to break two hundred yards of wall.
Inside it is impressive by its size and its simplicity. It
comes so very near nature, with the sand half-burying its
fallen columns, and the wind and the dust wandering through
its long colonnades ; it might almost be a bit of Karnak.
Your first impression is a great dusty whitewashed
quadrangle with poor little trees. You see a plain octagonal
fountain with antique column.^ and a tall single palm in
the centre, but the fountain is empty. The old cippolino
columns of the mosque are peeling, like the onions which
gave them their name. The inihrab is only painted, and
the pulpit is a very plain affair. The fretwork of the