Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/77

Rh The world is not built that way, as a rule, and it is not easy to believe that it is so constructed between Cairo and Ghizeh. It turns out, however, that the pleasing assurance of our charioteer is a good deal nearer the literal truth than such assurances usually manage to get. Perhaps the grain of salt is wanted, but it is a very small one. In the town itself we have the protecting walls of the houses with an occasional strip of boulevard-planted avenue where the street is too wide to afford us mural shade; and, once through the Kasr-en-Nil and out of Cairo by the great Nile Bridge, we do in very truth enter what, without material exaggeration, might be called a continuous covered way.

For miles before us the road to Ghizeh lies straight and white between two almost unbroken lines of acacia-like lebbek trees, through whose embowering shade the sunbeams filter diluted when they penetrate at all. A light wind, too, is abroad, enough to refresh without stirring too much of the