Through Bible lands : notes of travel in Egypt, the desert, and Palestine

Preface

These sketches of Bible Lands for Bible readers have grown out of a series of familiar letters which I wrote from the banks of the Nile, and from the tent in the Wilderness and in Palestine; remembering that those who enjoy the privilege of travelling abroad ought •to give to their friends at home the benefit of their experience. In the process of reconstruction the letters have grown into chapters and lost somewhat the freshness of first impressions, but gained, I trust, in sohdity and instructiveness. Bible Lands, hke the Bible itself, are of such universal and such perennial interest that they will continually demand new books and new comments.

The object of the book is to give the general reader a clear idea of the actual condition and prospects of the East by a simple narrative of what I saw and heard and felt on the spot. I am not an explorer, like my honored predecessor and friend. Dr. Robinson, whose Biblical Researches^ though written forty years ago, are still the highest authority in Biblical geography ; neither am I gifted with that genius for word-painting which imparts to Dean Stanley's Sinai and Palestine the charm of a novel. But without entering into learned discussions, I have given the results of the latest investigations as far as 1 was able to verify them by personal observation. I have also paid much attention to the missionary schools and churches which represent the Orient of the future.

A domestic affliction was the sad occasion for this my first journey to the East. I went with no intention to write a book, but to gain relief, and fresh inspiration for Bible studies. I left New York with my wife and only surviving daughter in December, 1876,

1*

PREFACE.

passed rapidly through England, France, and Italy, and spent the winter and spring in Egypt, the Sinaitic Wilderness, Palestine and Syria. I then visited, during the Russian and Turkish war, Cyprus, Smyrna, Constantinople, and Athens, and returned by way of Trieste, Venice, Switzerland, Germany, England, and Scotland, reaching New York again in August, 1877. While in Africa and Asia I enjoyed almost perpetual sunshine. I was reported imprisoned and even massacred in the Great Desert, but not a hair of my head has been hurt. I met kind Christian friends and brethren everywhere. The shadows of death followed me, but the God of Israel went before me in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.

I shall ever look back to this eastern journey with pleasure and gratitude, and shall feel abundantly repaid if this unpretending record of my experience will help the reader to a better under, standing of the Book of books, and a deeper interest in the revival of true Christianity in the land of its birth.

PHILIP SCHAFF.

New York, October, 1878.

CHAP. XVIL From 'Ayun Musa to Mount Sinai - 163

CHAP. XVHL Mount Sinai - 171

CHAP. XIX. The Convent of St. Catharine -- 184

CHAP. XX. From Mount Sinai to Gaza - 196

Part Third. The Hol Y Land

CHAP. XXI. Hebron - 207

CHAP. XXII. Bethlehem 220

CHAP. XXIII. Jerusalem 232

CHAP. XXIV. Religion in Jerusalem 240

CHAP. XXV. Mount Moriah, and the Dome of the Rock 253

CHAP. XXVI. Calvary, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre 259

CHAP. XXVII. Mount Olivet, and Bethany 271

CHAP. XXVIII. The Convent of Mar Saba - - --- 278

CHAP. XXIX. The Dead Sea ---- 283

CONTENTS. 9

CHAP. XXX. The Jordan - - ^ 296

CHAP. XXXI. Samaria - 308

CHAP. XXXII. Nazareth 320

CHAP. XXXIII. Tabor and Hermon 330

CHAP. XXXIV. The Lake of Galilee 337

CHAP. XXXV. Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin 343

CHAP. XXXVI. Ccesar^a Philippi 355

CHAP. XXXVII. Damascus 361

CHAP. XXXVIII. Beirut 373

CHAP. XXXIX. Farewell to the Holy Land 383

CHAP. XL. The Regeneration of the Orient 391

Meaning of Arabic Words 407

Alphabetical Index - - — 409

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

Park in Cairo = page 31

Ascent OF THE Pyramid —

The Sphinx and a Pyramid - - » - - _ _ _

Luxor: from the Nile -

Obelisk of On - - _

Colossi of Memnon : Thebes- - 81

Temple of Aboo Simbel - - gr

Map of Egypt and the Sinaitic Peninsula - 145

Camel-riding 139

Mount Serbal - -181

Map of Palestine in the Time of Christ -207

Mount Olivet and Gethsemane- -209

Rachel's Tomb - - 218

Jerusalem: from the Mount of Olives 232

Pool of Hezekiah 237

Jaffa - - 23S

Via Dolorosa - 241

Mosque of Omar 255

Bethany • - 273

Plain Er-Rahah, and Convent of St. Catharine 281

Convent of Mar-Saba--- - - 281

Jericho and the Dead Sea 298

Ruined Fountain at Jericho -305

Shechem ---314

Mount Tabor - 330

Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee - - -339

Tyre 375

THROUGH

Bible Lands.

Chapter I

Introductory— Egypt — The Desert— Palestine— Mode of Travel in the East— Novelty of Scenes— Practical Use.

Dear reader, I propose to take you on a flying visit to Bible lands, and to give you in a few leisure hours an outline of what I saw in five months. February is the best season for Egypt, March for the wilderness, April and May for Palestine and Syria, June for Greece and Italy. In Egypt we sail on the Nile and ride on the donkey, in the Desert we use the camel, in Palestine and Syria the horse. But you may do all this on the swift wings of your imagination, while sitting in your easychair at home.

The progress of actual travel in the Orient is slow, but not too slow for enjoyment and instruction. A whole day is required for a distance which can be traversed by railway in an hour. The mode of travelling in the Desert, the Holy Land, and in parts of Egypt, is the same as in the days of the patriarchs, more than three

BIBLE LANDS.

thousand years ago, and that is one of its peculiar charms, which will be broken when modern civilization shall have penetrated the East. We engage a dragoman, who provides the outfit and acts as interpreter between the traveller and the Arab servants. We take with us a caravan of Bedawin, with tents, provision, and cooking apparatus. There are no turnpikes, no carriages, no hotels, except a few in the large cities, kept by Europeans. The Arab inns or khans are forbidding and destitute of all comforts required by civilized people. I spent a night in the convent of Mar Saba, and another in an inn at Jericho, kept by a Greek, but lost my sleep by those unmentionable little creatures with which Beelzebub tries the patience of man.

In the Orient all is primitive and novel to Europeans and Americans. Their first impression is wonderment at the strange sights of men and things which appear to them like a masquerade or fancy-fair gotten up for their special amusement. The Orientals, judged by Western habits, do everything the wrong way : they eat with the fingers ; they sit, not on chairs, but cross-legged on the floor or the earth ; they keep their women veiled and out of public sight; they write on their knees and from right to left ; they take off their shoes in the mosque and keep on their fez or turban. Any scrap of cotton, or linen, or silk of any color, a blanket, a shawl, a sash, a shirt, loosely thrown over the body, serves them as a dress ; but they always look picturesque, and have a native courtesy and dignity which contrast favorably with their otherwise degraded and beggarly condition.

BENEFITS OF TRA VEL.

t3

Modern civilization is monotonous, it has a tendency to level distinctions and to impress a uniform type upon men of all classes of society; it sets up the dumb idol of fashion which rules supreme over crowned monarchs and republican presidents. In the East there is much more independence and variety; there the Arab, the Turk, the Armenian, the Maronite, the Copt, the Jew, the Nubian, the Bedawin, the dervish, the priest, the official, the merchant, the mechanic, the barber, the dragoman, the donkey-boy, the runner, the singer, the serpent-charmer, the fruit-seller, the water-carrier, the slave, the beggar — all appear in their distinct individuality and costume; each consults his own taste or whim, and is never disturbed by the ever-changing fashions of Paris.

What is the use of travelling in the East ? Does it repay for all the time, the money, the fatigue, the vexation and annoyance inseparable from it ? The benefit of travel depends upon the disposition and preparation of the traveller. Such preparation is especially necessary in the East. The more knowledge we carry with us, the more we shall bring back. Multitudes of travellers return as ignorant and empty as they start; while others, from the study of books, may become as familiar with foreign nations and countries as with their own. Fortunately it is not necessary for the majority of readers to visit Bible lands in order to understand the Bible, any more than it is to know Greek and Hebrew. Some of the best Biblical scholars and commentators — Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Matthew Henry, Bengel,

Olshausen, Hengstenberg, Tholuck, Meyer, Ewald — never visited the Holy Land. Dean Howson prepared the geographical sections which gave the work on the Life and Epistles of St. Paul " such a wide popularity, merely from books. Even the founder of the science of comparative geography, Carl Ritter, never saw Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula which he so fully and so accurately described.

But after all it is an inestimable advantage to see with one's own eyes the birthplaces of the authors of the Sacred Writings, and their surroundings, and to be able to speak from personal observation and experience. Manners and customs are so stationary in the East, that you are transferred as by magic to the age of the apostles, the prophets, and the patriarchs. A flood of light is thrown on the meaning of innumerable passages which appear strange at a distance, but quite natural on the spot. A thoughtful traveller fills his memory with a gallery of photographic pictures more valuable than any number of books. Whenever he reads afterwards of the visits of Abraham, Joseph and Jacob to Egypt, the miracles of Moses, the wanderings of the Israelites, of Hebron, Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Dead Sea, the river Jordan, the Lake of Gennesaret, Mount Hermon, the cedars of Lebanon, Jerusalem, Bethany, Gethsemane, and Mount Olivet, the places and scenes rise up before his mental eye with a vividness which they never had before. The ruinous condition of those countries may diminish the poetry, but the impression of the reality is deepened. Palestine has not been inaptly termed ''the fifth Gospel."

BENEFITS OF TRA VEL,

It is the framework in which the canonical Gospels are set. I would advise every theological student who can afford it, to complete his Biblical educati'on by a visit to the Holy Land. It will be of more practical use to him in his pulpit labors than the lectures of the professors in Oxford or Cambridge, in Berlin or Leipzig, valuable as these may be. The best thing, of course, is to combine the most thorough theoretical study and personal experience on the spot. A sound and correct historical understanding of the Bible has gained much from the researches of scholarly travellers, and will gain still more in time to come. For the Holy Scriptures have a human body as well as a divine soul ; they strike their roots deep in the soil from which they sprang, while their ideas soar to heaven ; they are thoroughly oriental, and yet wonderfully adapted for all mankind in all ages of the world.

FIRST PART.

Egypt.

2*

FIRST P^^HT.

EGYPT.

Chapter II. From New York To Alexandria

Egypt— From New York to Brindisi— Corfu— Crete- Alexandria.

Let us begin with Egypt, the country of the Nile, the land of pyramids and sphinxes, of temples and tombs, of hieroglyphics and mummies, of sacred bulls and crocodiles, of despotic power and slavish degradation. There the patriarchal •family found a hospitable home and grew into a nation; there Joseph rose from slavery into which he was sold by his jealous brothers, to the highest position in the kingdom, and preserved the purity of his faith and character amid surrounding idolatry and corruption ; there Moses was born and educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians ; there he wrought his miracles and became the leader of his people from bondage to freedom, himself a pyramid among the great men of antiquity — held in veneration to this day by the followers of three religions, the Christian, the Jewish, and the Mohammedan, The land of Egypt is imbedded in the

Decalogue as the house of bondage out of which the Lord God brought his people. Egypt gave shelter to the infant Jesus and his parents against the wrath of Herod, and the venerable tree is still shown near Heliopolis under which Mary and Joseph are said to have rested from the fatigue of their journey. In a double sense it is true what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, " Out of Egypt have I called my son."

The chief attraction to the traveller are the ruins of the oldest civilization which are scattered over the valley of the Nile and make it the most wonderful valley in the world. Egypt is a green garden between two deserts, watered by the noblest river, and consecrated by the imperishable memorials of a history of five thousand years. I shall enlarge upon what concerns Egypt,'* says Herodotus, the father of history, ''because it contains more wonders than any other country, and because there is no other country where we may see so many works which are admirable and beyond all expression."

After a rough winter passage over the stormy Atlantic and the equally disagreeable English channel, we take the railroad at Calais and rapidly pass through Paris, Geneva, the tunnel of Mount Cenis, Turin, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples, and then, turning eastward, we reach Brindisi on the southeastern shore of Italy, the starting point for our voyage to the land of the Pharaohs. I congratulate you that in this vicarious mode of travelling you are spared the nasty experience of sea-sickness and the monotonous prison life on board a crowded ship with its seventy perfumes, separate, dis-

NEW YORK TO ALEXANDRIA, tinct, and well defined," which I never smelled at Cologne, but on many an ocean steamer. A Frenchman on paying his tribute to Neptune, well remarked, Y or plaisir I cross the ocean ne-v-er f Sea-sickness is nowhere better described than in the good old Bible when speaking of those who reel to and fro," who " stagger like a drunken man, abhor all manner of meat, are at their wit's end and draw near unto .the gates of death." (Psa. 107.) But we soon get over it when we land, and feel all the better for the process of purification. The passage across the European continent is a succession of pleasures even to an old traveller, and is made doubly agreeable by meeting good friends everywhere.

We leave Brindisi in an Austrian steamer on Friday night, January 26, for Corfu, in good company — mostly English, Scotch, and American. Mr. Thomas Cook, from London, the founder and head of the now famous firm, "Thomas Cook & Son," is with us, hoping to get rid of a troublesome cough in the milder climate of Egypt. He is a plain, self-educated, enterprising and energetic Englishman, now about seventy years of age. He is a member of the Baptist church, and takes great interest in the Baptist missions in Rome and Naples. He has earned the gratitude of many travellers who find it a great convenience to use his tickets, especially in the East.

The weather is threatening and reminds us of the stormy passage of Caesar from this port, and his stirring v^ords to the timid captain : Be of good cheer ! Thou carriest Caesar and his fortunes !"

We arrive on Saturday afternoon in Corfu, (Korkyra,) and breathe the air of Greece, that wonderful little country, which in the intellectual and artistic progress of the world occupies as prominent a position as little Palestine does in the history of religion. Corfu is a beautiful island, with a fine climate and southern vegetation. In 1815 it came into the possession of the English, but in 1864 it was ceded to the kingdom of Greece, together with the other Ionian Islands, Cephalonia and Zante. This generous act is mainly due to the exertions of the Hon. W. E. Gladstone, whose liberal statesmanship and Homeric scholarship made him a friend of New Hellas. The inhabitants, however, with all their Greek patriotism, regret the loss of English sovereigns and commercial prosperity since the annexation. Passing through the street, we are pleasantly entertained by the Greek signs on the houses and shops, and the picturesque costumes of the Greeks, Albanians, and Montenegrins. We find comfortable lodgings in the St. George's Hotel, on the Promenade, opposite the royal castle, look in the London "Times" for the latest news, and enjoy the magnificent view over the sea, the islands, and the mountains of Albania.

On Sunday we attend mass in the Greek church of St. Spiridion, the patron-saint of the Ionian islands, once Bishop of Cyprus, and a member of the council of Nicaea, who even after his consecration remained a rustic shepherd. From fear that he might disgrace the first oecumenical assembly of Christendom by his ignorance, his brother bishops cut off the heads of his two donkeys ; but Spiri-

NEW YORK TO ALEXANDRIA. 23 dion, the legend states, performed the amazing feat of raising the donkeys to life, reached Nicaea in time and voted on the orthodox side and for the condemnation of Arius. We see the worshippers crowd around his silver coffin. To kiss this coffin and the pictures of the Saviour and the Virgin seems to be the chief act of devotion in Corfu. After mass the priest distributes pieces of bread to the people who kiss his hand. This half-comm^union is a commemoration of the Agape or Love-feast of the primitive church.

From the early Greek service we proceed at eleven o'clock to the English Episcopal chapel, and listen to an indifferent sermonette on natural religion, in which the name of Christ is barely mentioned ; while the Greek mass made me at least think of the cross and the atonement. I do not know to which party the officiating clergyman belongs ; he may be high and dry, or low and slow ; he may be attitudinarian or platitudinarian ; but he is certainly neither broad nor deep. It would of course be great injustice to take his dull essay for a fair specimen of the sermons of Anglican chaplains on the continent. I greatly honor the Church of England for her active interest in the spiritual benefit of travellers, and I often enjoy her services. If the sermon is poor, the prayers of the Liturgy are always good and edifying, and I never get tired of the Creed, the Te Deum, and the Gloria in Excelsis.

On Monday morning we sail in the Hungaria,'* an Austrian Lloyd steamer, which came from Trieste, for Egypt. We pass the Ionian Islands, Ithaca (not for-

BIBLE LANDS.

getting faithful Penelope and Ulysses' return), and Crete, which brings vividly to mind the voyage and shipwreck of St. Paul. The weather is only tolerable, and some of us fare no better than on the Atlantic. As far as the discomfort of this prison life at sea will permit, w^e read Paul's Epistle to Titus, the last chapters of Acts, sections from Stanley's " Sinai and Palestine," Murray's " Egypt," Wallace's " Desert and the Holy Land," and Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad."

On Thursday, the ist of February, we come in sight of Alexandria, and the vision of the Orient flashes over our bewildered eyes.

ALEXANDRIA.

Chapter III. Alexandria

The Gate of Egypt — A Babel of Nationalities and Tongues— The Donkey Boys— Old Alexandria— The Column of Pompey, and the Needles of Cleopatra—Modern Alexandria — Through the Delta and to Cairo.

Alexandria is the gate of Egypt. As soon as we arrive in the harbor we are surrounded by a mob of swarthy and tumultuous Arabs, with a fleet of boats, most anxious to seize the passengers and their baggage. Cook's agent and boatmen, distinguished by red shirts and Cook's flag, take charge of us, and bring us in a short time through the custom-house to the Hotel de I'Europe on the Place of Mohammed Ali.

The sight of Alexandria is a fit introduction to Oriental lands. The Babel of nationalities and tongues, the shouting and fighting of turbaned, bare-legged and bare-footed boatmen and donkey-boys, the picturesque dresses of all shapes and colors, the poverty and wretchedness, the everlasting cry for backsheesh," which here greets us for the first time — all is novel and exciting. The harbor and street life in Naples present a somewhat similar scene. *

The Arab donkey-boys are a characteristic institution of Egypt, and we may as well make their acquaintance at once. They are a jolly, good-natured, quick-witted and importunate set of vagabonds. They discern the nationality of the traveller in a minute, and pick up the broken fragments of half a dozen tongues, with a decided preference for the English as the most profitable. They recommend their long-eared animals to a German as donkey Bismarck,'' to a Frenchman as Napoleon," or " Thiers," to an Englishman as " Gladstone," or " Tichborne," to an American as " Grant," Minnehaha," or "Yankee Doodle." "My donkey good donkey;" "My donkey speak English." Nine-tenths of the travellers in the East are English and Americans, and this accounts for the rapid spread of the English language even among the donkey-boys and the Bedawin at the Pyramids. It is fast gaining on the Italian and French, which formerly were the only medium of intercourse, besides the native Arabic, which few foreigners acquire. The language of Shakespeare and Milton is destined to be the cosmopolitan tongue. It carries with it Christian civilization and liberty and the richest literature in the world.

The modern city of Alexandria is of considerable commercial importance, and numbers more than 200,000 inhabitants, including 50,000 Europeans. But the Suez Canal and Port Said have injured its trade.

The city was founded by Alexander the Great, who was buried there. Napoleon said that Alexander showed more genius in the selection of this spot than in his victories, and that this city which could harbor all the navies was destined to be the metropolis of the world. It became the capital of Egypt, the residence of the Ptolemies, It contained in the days of its glory over

ALEXANDRIA.

half a million of inhabitants. It was the centre of commerce between the East and the West, and the chief seat of heathen, Jewish, and Christian literature, with immense libraries, one of which numbered 400,000 rolls. There the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into the Greek by seventy interpreters, (hence the name, the Septuagint,") two centuries before the Christian era. There arose the Alexandrian Greek dialect, called the Hellenistic, which, with its Hebrew coloring, became the organ of early Christianity and still lives on the pages of the New Testament. There Philo blended the Mosaic religion with the Platonic philosophy, and dreamed of the Logos who became flesh for our salvation. There St. Mark founded a Christian church, which in the course of time became one of the patriarchal sees, outranking Jerusalem and Antioch, though outranked afterward by Constantinople and Rome. There flourished the first theological seminary, under the name of the Catechetical School, in which Clement and Origen expounded the Scriptures and taught the Christian religion as the last and best system of philosophy, as the true gnosis, in opposition to the falsely so-called gnosis of the Gnostics and New Platonists, who had their headquarters in tne same city. There arose, in the fourth century, the Arian heresy; but there also its chief opponent, Athanasius, the "father of orthodoxy," who alone against the world, {Athanasitts versus mimdtcm) in his episcopal seat and in exile, in the city and in the desert, defended the eternal deity of our Lord as the corner-stone of the Christian faith and hope.

BIBLE LANDS.

The founding of the rival city of Constantinople, the violent theological controversies and schisms, the conquest of Omar, the discovery of the sea-passage to India, the misrule of the Turks, are am.ong the chief causes of the gradual decline of Alexandria from a splendid city of half a million to a miserable village of five thousand, surrounded by swamp and desert. The new era of Alexandria dates from the wise and energetic though despotic Mohammed Ali, and the construction of the canal, in 1819, which connected it once more with the Nile and the rest of Egypt, by the forced labor of 250,000 men and at a cost of seven and a half millions of francs.

Of old Alexandria, heathen and Christian, very little remains. It disappeared like the famous library, which the semi-barbarous Kalif Omar burnt. His plea for this act of vandalism was the absolute sufficiency of the Koran, which made every other book either superfluous or injurious. The only monuments of old times are the Catacombs, the miscalled column of Pompey, and the Needles of Cleopatra. The column of Pompey is named, not from the famous Pompey who, after his defeat at Pharsalus, was murdered on the coast of Egypt; but from a Roman prefect, who erected it to the honor of the Emperor Diocletian. It stands on an elevation and is surrounded by rubbish and filth. Close by is a Mohammedan cemetery with innumerable oven-like white tombs, and a little farther off the Catacombs.

The Needles of Cleopatra on the seashore are two obelisks of red granite dating from the time of the Pharaohs. They have nothing to do with that licentious queen who conquered her Roman conquerors and ended with suicide. They were removed from HeliopoHs under Tiberius. One was long ago presented by Mohammed Ali to the English government, but it was not thought worth the cost of transportation, and lay in the sand and mud until in the summer of 1877, when it was carried to England to adorn the new embankment of the Thames. The other still stands erect. The Needles of Cleopatra, however, are far inferior to the Obelisk of Luxor, which since 1834 adorns the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

Alexandria can easily be seen in a day. The Frank quarter has some fine buildings and is fast improving. The native quarters are full of filth and misery. Ophthalmia prevails to a fearful extent all over Egypt, especially among children, whose eyes are besieged with flies, and the parents make no attempt to drive them away. I had the first illustration of the Scriptures in the water-carriers — men with water-skins on their shoulders and women carrying huge water-jars gracefully on their heads. The most interesting part is the picturesque Oriental life in the streets, and the people sitting, working, eating, smoking, and sleeping on the ground. But this may be studied to better advantage in Cairo.

The journey from Alexandria to Cairo takes about

five hours by railway and is full of surprises. It is the

first railway that was built in the East (1855), ^i^d must

have struck the Arabs with amazement. The tickets are

marked with Arabic letters, which an Irishman compared

to a hen-scratch. The road passes through the rich

plains of the Delta, the old land of Goshen, and on the

3# right bank of the Nile. The country is as flat and as fertile as a prairie of Illinois, and one need not wonder that the children of Israel in the barren desert were sighing for the flesh-pots, the onions and the garlic of Egypt. Strange sights present themselves to the eye as we advance — green fields of cotton, beans, wheat, and barley ; the tamarisk, the stately palm-tree ; flocks of wild ducks, white ibises, pelicans, and storks ; trains of camels, loaded with sacks of grain and chicken-coops ; officers prancing along on horses or donkeys ; fellaheen ploughing with buffaloes or pumping water from the Nile and the canals ; mud villages, mosques, and minarets ; crowds of half-naked men, women, and children at every station ; and in the far distance the yellow hills of the desert and the lofty pyramids, at the sight of which a thrill goes through the soul. In the afternoon we reach the station at Cairo ; and, after escaping the confusion of men, donkeys, camels, and cabs, we are comfortably lodged in Shepheard's Hotel, one of the best in the East, kept by a German, in the new part of the city.

The climate is delightful. We are suddenly transplanted from winter to spring, from clouds and rain to perpetual sunshine. During our whole sojourn in Egypt we saw rain but once, and that hardly sufficient for the sprinkling of a lotus. Egypt is truly the land of the sun.

CAIRO.

Chapter IV

The Capital of Egypt— The Cosmopolis of the East— The Street Life— The Bazaars— The Citadel— The Mosques— The Old University El-Azhar— The New University of the Khedive— The Library— The Museum of Boulak— Old Cairo— Roda— The Palaces.

Cairo (Masr el-Kahira, the Victorious), the capital of Egypt and of the Arab world, is also a capital of Mohammedanism and the East, second in importance only to Constantinople. It is the counterpart of Paris, London, and New York, the cosmopolitan cities of Christendom and the West. It has a thoroughly Oriental character, though not so exclusively as Damascus, but, like Constantinople, with a considerable infusion of European life and civilization which are fast making inroads upon the conservative East. The great mass of the 400,000 inhabitants are Egyptian Arabs, and followers of Islam. The rest are Copts (or Egyptian Christians) ; Turks (who are, of course, all Moslems) ; Bedawin (or Arabs of the desert) ; Jews, Italians, Greeks, French, Germans, English, and a few Americans. The last class occupy ? high positions in the army, or spend the winter there for health and pleasure.