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Roda Island and Moses 283
which was the Egyptian name of Heliopolis, really stood
somewhere near the Roman Citadel, which at present bears
the name, though the solitary obelisk which marks the site
of Heliopolis is several miles away. Egyptians did things
on a large scale : the temple enclosure of Karnak is a mile
and a half round. But the Jews are supposed to have lived
on the other side of Heliopolis, and the little ark to which
the mother of Moses entrusted her goodly child, a boy,
could not possibly have floated up-stream several miles
against a current like the Nile's. Plausibility answers this
argument by saying that the Israelites might have been
building pyramids at Ghizeh for the Pharaoh. But it is
hopeless to depend on facts in a case like this. Arabs make
very good legends if you take them as they are, and do not
subject them to unfair tests like these. Ebers for once is
silent ; he has no suggestion to offer as to the site, no legend
to spin. Lane-Poole is no more accommodating. One thing
we have to be thankful for is that no attempt has been made
in print by indiscreet Christians to connect the abandonment
of Moses with the human sacrifice in a crazy boat, which
used to be made to the Nile when it began to rise, at the
point where the canal which flowed through Cairo till the other
day, left the river. It was this sacrifice, it will be remembered,
which formed one of the most striking incidents in Sir
H. Beerbohm Tree's wonderful presentation of False Gods.
And it was opposite this point that Moses is said to have
been found.
There is nothing that I regret more than not having seen
Cairo in the days when the old canal flowed between the
Arab city and the new city, on the line of the tramway
which now crosses the Musky. A few of the old Mameluke
mansions which towered over the rather pestiferous and
mosquitiferous green waters with a riot of creepers and
waving feathery palms still exist, with the entrances in the
Sharia Es-Sureni. M. Bircher's, the best preserved Mameluke
house in the city, is one of them. But they give no idea
of the beauty of the stairways battered to picturesque decay,
and the 7neshrebiya oriels, and pergola'd terraces, which used