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344 Oriental Cairo
under the soil, with only the drone of the sakiya to recall
her ten thousand voices between her broken walls.
But perhaps Heliopolis is not dead—it has never been
seriously excavated. Beneath its depths of rich alluvial soil
there may be vast remains, if it was built of stone ; for
Heliopolis was not destroyed, it was only abandoned, to
enhance Alexandria.
We bade a lingering good-bye to the palm- and tamariskcrowned
rampart of Heliopolis, and turned our steps to
Matariya with our eyes on the citadel and its fantastic
mosque. To Roman Catholics Matariya is one of the
most sacred spots in Egypt, for the Virgin's Tree and Spring
are here marked by the little chapel with the eloquent
inscription, " Sanctae Familiae in zEgypto exsul."
The last heir of the often-renewed Virgin's Tree is slowly
dying. It lies prone on the ground, but its top is still green.
It is covered with the names of the pious and the irreverent,
who arrived at the same result for different reasons. It was
once presented, like the Ghizira Palace Hotel, to the Empress
of the French by the Khedive ; but it has drifted somehow
into the possession of a very practical Copt, who has put a
railing round it and invites the Faithful to carve their names
on that, and even provides a knife for the purpose—with
some idea of bakshish, no doubt.
Judging by the appearance of the sakiya, the Virgin's
Spring has long gone out of use. It had a pretty legend,
very ancient, of a threefold miracle. When the fugitives
reached Matariya, the spring, like all the wells on the site
of Heliopolis, had brackish water. The young mother
bathed the hot and weary child in it, and instantly the waters
became sweet and fresh. Then she washed its clothes in it,
as mothers so often take the clothes off a child, and wash
them while it plays about, in the Nile villages of to-day.
When she wrung out the clothes, wherever the drops fell
on the earth balsam trees sprang up. Soon they heard their
pursuers ; but in one of the balsams a hollow revealed itself,
into which they crept, and a spider spun an iridescent web
over the aperture, which made their enemies pass it by. Not