Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/118

100 of Englishmen. It is true you miss that sudden lightening-up—as of a windswept wheatfield—of the European multitude, when their white faces all turn in the same direction; but the loss of this one impressive touch of chiaroscuro is more than compensated by that incessant play of shifting hues which flickers along the forms and faces of any restless Oriental crowd.

And restless is scarcely the word for the throng assembled here, with their native excitability heightened tenfold by their intense eagerness to witness what is to most of them so unusual a scene. Indeed, were it not for the difference between English and Egyptian methods of police this crowd would, no doubt, be an uncontrollable one. As it is, and given that difference, the task of controlling it is as easy as that of keeping even the most good-humoured of English crowds within the prescribed bounds is difficult. Here the swarthy guardian of order guards it in the most elementary of fashions—mainly, that is to say,