Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/48

30 mass of hues, that kaleidoscope of humanity which the ordinary every-day traffic of the Egyptian capital keeps twirling before the eyes must be bad to beat. Even here, on this hotel terrace, bathed in the morning glory of that peculiarly liquid sunshine which is almost a speciality of Egypt—even here, in front of Shepheard's, where the West is ever busily dashing its sombre blacks and sober greys on the glowing palette of the East, the effect is almost bewildering. But the coat and boots and billycock of the European, with their suggestions of the incongruous and the over-civilised and the unpicturesque, are easily got rid of. That is the charm of Cairo. You step aside from one of the main thoroughfares, crowded with Western vehicles of every description, from the drag to a pony trap, and in an instant you are at once in a maze of alleys, where no draught animal of any kind has ever set foot since the houses were built on either side, and through which you may thread your way, surrounded by the same