Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/52

34 the artist, conscious or unconscious, takes his start, and there is simply no limit to the varied effects that he can produce with this army of browns on the one hand, and, on the other, every shade of yellow, from the deepest orange to the palest primrose, open to him for his turban, and for his body-garment every gradation of colour that divides "forget-me-not" from "navy" blue. White, I suppose, is, take it all round, the prevailing mode both for head-dress and robe; but for the latter blue is also "much worn," as the fashion-books say, and the variety of colour-schemes obtained by combining its varying values with every imaginable shade of brown in the face and of yellow and red in the turbans is inexhaustible and a source of ever-new delight.

But, after all, this whirlpool of colour furnishes only one element in Cairo's complex charm. It is a charm of endless contrast, not chromatic alone—of contrasts of race, features, form, costume, attitude, occupation,