Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/191

 Western countries it carries with it associations of squalor and misery which unfairly, though naturally, prepossess him against its Eastern counterpart. You soon perceive, however, that in a land of scorching heat and in an atmosphere of intense dryness mud is a much more eligible building material than you had supposed. There is nothing of the poverty-stricken Irish cabin about this Nubian hut. Its interior, furnished only with a low truckle bed, and otherwise, indeed, entirely empty, save for a barrel of meal and a little heap of fruit and vegetables in a corner, is well swept, well kept, and deliciously cool, and though lacking windows not wanting them, since the narrow streams of brilliant sunshine that filter here and there through its dura thatch serve all the purposes of lighting and ventilation.

In short, it is a typical Egyptian peasant's home, pathetically bare and rude to the eye of a dweller in great cities, but comfortable enough, no doubt, for the inhabitant of a land where nature is so royally bountiful of light