Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 1).djvu/151

 with their gayety. At Cairo, where he seems to have made a considerable stay, he saw many strange things, all of which he describes with that conciseness and naïveté for which most of our older travellers are distinguished. Walking one day by the door of a public bath, in the market-place of Bain Elcasraim, he observed a lady of distinction, and remarkable for her beauty, walking out into the streets, which she had no sooner done than she was seized and violated before the whole market by one of those naked saints who are so numerous in Egypt and the other parts of Africa. The magistrates of the city, who felt that their own wives might next be insulted, were desirous of inflicting condign punishment upon the wretch, but were deterred by fear of the populace, who held such audacious impostors in veneration. On her way home after this scene, the woman was followed by an immense multitude, who contended with each other for the honour of touching her clothes, as if some peculiar virtue had been communicated to them by the touch of the saint; and even her husband, when informed of what had happened, expressed the greatest joy, and thanking God as if an extraordinary blessing had been conferred upon his family, made a great entertainment and distributed alms to the poor, who were thus taught to look upon such events as highly fortunate.

Upon another occasion Leo, returning from a celebrated mosque in one of the suburbs, beheld another curious scene no less characteristic of the manners of the times. In the area before a palace erected by a Mameluke sultan, an immense populace was assembled, in the midst of whom a troop of strolling players, with dancing camels, asses, and dogs, were exhibiting their tricks, to the great entertainment of the mob, and even of our traveller himself, who thought it a very pleasant spectacle. Having first exhibited his own skill, the principal actor turned