Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/56

38 your hotel, conducted, as you will inevitably have to be were you the most inspired of topographers, by an improvised native guide, you will pass unvaryingly, at any rate until you hit off the Muski or the Boulevard Mehemet Ali, through the same burnoused and turbaned crowd that has surrounded you from the first. Yet no! If you are fortunate you may, just at the moment when the tide of Oriental life is at its full, come across one crowning contrast, one final shock of piquant opposites, one topmost culmination and apex of the pyramid of picturesque contrarieties which has been accumulating, layer by layer, during your walk. Has that piece of good fortune befallen you? Yes, it has.

Look down this narrow alley. Let your eye thread its way through the seething, jostling, rainbow-coloured multitude that streams along it; past the water-carrier, with his bellied skin-wallet slung across his shoulders, and his metal cups jingling musically to the cry of his trade; past the camel-rider,