Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/62



Christmas pudding, like our morning drum, rolls round the globe, and the British soldier keeps the great national festival in many a remote and unfamiliar region in every zone. But nowhere, perhaps, is it celebrated among stranger surroundings than environ one on the dusty parade-ground where the troops of our Cairo garrison are assembled for their Christmas sports. Could the great Saracen prince who built the Citadel only leave his green-scarfed houris for a couple of hours to revisit it, what would he think of the scene before his eyes? Saladin, it is true, would find an old acquaintance in the English infidel. He and we gave and took hard knocks in Palestine