Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/49

Rh moving masses of colour for as many hours as you please without emerging again into Western civilisation.

Lost, in every sense of the word, geographically as well as imaginatively—for there is no city, not even Venice, where you can become hopelessly désorienté with so little trouble—you wander on amid the restlessly flowing stream of swarthy turbaned faces and lithe white-and-blue robed figures, your ears filled with the strange cries and your senses intoxicated with the nameless odours of the East. Further and further you ramble, and deeper and deeper plunge into this magic labyrinth of winding ways. The alleys seem to narrow more and more every minute until the rich brown profusely-carven woodwork of the jutting gables on either side of the roadway almost threatens to meet and blot out the strip of burning blue above your head. As the street straitens the crowd appears to thicken, until at the moment when the one is at its narrowest and the other at