orientalcairocit00sladuoft

238 Oriental Cairo
are carried in a bold sweep like the curve of a scimitar from
the crest of its hill down to the two great mosques which
stand right and left where the chief thoroughfare of the city
debouches on the Citadel square. The whole curve between
the Citadel and the mosques of Sultan Hassan and Al
Rifai'ya is occupied by a climbing chain of smaller mosques
yet more picturesque, with their arabesqued mameluke domes
and their slender rose-tinted forms.
As we stood gazing towards the city waiting for the pro-
cession to appear, I thought that earth had had few things
more fair to show me than this rising sweep of domes and
minarets towering over the trees from the great old dome put
up at the command of Sultan Hassan more than five centuries
ago, to the great new dome put up five centuries later in
honour of Mehemet Ali.
These fantastic shapes of the Orient wore the colour of
pearl in the early morning sunshine. Pageants are early in
Egypt to avoid the fierceness of the noon-day heat ;
the people
hoped against hope that the Khedive was to receive Mahmal
at 9 a.m., and we were recommended to be there an hour or
two earlier. Most of the inhabitants of Cairo were there before
us. Most of the tourists had left Egypt. The soldiers on
parade were all drawn from the Egyptian Army and must
have used up all the Egyptian Army quartered in Cairo.
They made a fine showing ; Egyptian soldiers are big men,
well set up, and admirably drilled ; no European drills better
than the Egyptian. A sort of sky-blue is the Khedive's
favourite colour for uniforms, which, with white spats, yellow
faces, and scarlet tarbdshes, makes a parade look as gay as a
rainbow.
They were drawn up so as to keep a large space clear in
front of the Khedivial pavilion. The police on their white
Arab chargers did the actual clearing ; the soldiers acted as a
sort of fence, and behind them were all the poor natives in
Cairo. On this occasion most of them had brought seats
with them and improvised a sort of auditorium, not so much
to sit on—the ground does for that—as to stand on when the
procession came past. The usual comical hawkers of provisions