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Rod^el^Faragf and Shubra 303
ostrich buries his head in the sand and considers himself
safe, the Egyptian covers his head and considers all the
world his bed. Just before you come to the port you pass
some large sunken sheds full of incubators hatching chickens.
It cannot be because they get their food at wholesale price,
but it is difficult to know for what other reason chickenincubating
should be an industry at Rod-el-Farag, where
there are so many of the chicken-stealing class. Rod-el-
Farag is, in fact, a thoroughly low place, with the usual
low people who hang about a port, and a few low dancing-
booths.
The most picturesque thing about the port is the gay
sacking of which the grain-bags are made. This is ex-
tremely pretty—a sort of matting with a biscuit-coloured
ground and elegant conventional pattens in dark brown
quite ancient Egyptian. All day long you see carts and
trolleys being piled up with these gaily patterned grainbags
; all day long you see porters staggering under huge
burdens from the big grain boats moored against the bank
so closely that their masts make quite a forest.
The booths in which the grain-dealers do their weighing
and buying and selling are also quite picturesque. They
are like the sheds of the Palermo fish-dealers along the
Marina near the Piedigrotta church on that matchless
harbour, or fancy boat-houses on the Thames.
The view up the Nile broadening out for its island is,
however, majestically beautiful, and the tall gyassas coming
up the stream before the stiff north wind, or dropping down
the swift current to their moorings against the shore, complete
the picture. They come laden in bulk and are moored
to the shore by their noses, from which planks are put out
to the high bank. Along these narrow, rickety planks
the marvellous Egyptian porters stagger under prodigious
burdens, but they never miss their footing as they carry
the yellow grain to those quaint, creeper-covered sheds in
which the Levantine grain-dealer is enthroned. In the
middle of it all, the porters who have no burden to carry,
and the children, are playing cards.
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