Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/55

Rh haggling with him for the abatement of a piastre were pleading for the life of his only child the passionately suppliant expression of his countenance would more than satisfy the dramatic requirements of the situation. The East and the South, in short, join hands at this longitude and latitude with a singular effect, as of the contact of two extremes; and man, paradoxical as it may sound, is here both a more reserved and a more demonstrative animal than he is in the North and West.

One may ramble, however, through the streets of Cairo for an hour at a time without finding very many opportunities for comparing the Eastern and Western types. Choose well your region and your hour, and you will find few Englishmen at the bazaars, and, indeed, few European costumes at all, save those which here and there incongruously clothe some Levantine trader of race too obvious to need the confession of his scarlet fez. As you slowly make your way back to