Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II Mask El Kahira Should any of my readers, arriving in Cairo for the first time, imagine, as I did, that they will at once drop into a city saturated with the spirit of the East, they will feel the same disappointment as myself, and a word of comfort may not be out of place here. The drive from the station to any of the hotels is through a part of Cairo that is no more like the Masr el Kahira painted by Lewis, or described by Lane or Amelia B. Edwards, than Peckham resembles Pekin. Hardly a house that we see here existed forty years ago ; and, from the look of them, they may tumble down before another forty years elapse. The builders of these erections had beautiful models near at hand to inspire them ; but that fatal " L'Egypte fait partie de 1'Europe " of Ismail Pasha turned their attention to Paris, and now we have a shoddy imitation of that capital, with here and there some erection run up " en style Arabe" or " en style EL-FOUYATEAH, CAIRO Egyptian," or, worse still, "1'art nouveau " as understood by the Levantine architect. You will find your hotel " replete with every modern comfort," as the advertisements have it—and your bill proportionately high—but with very little characteristically Eastern about the place, beyond a few bad reproductions of some of the temple wall paintings, and some waiters dressed in a garment which looks like a night-shirt, girt about with a red sash, and the nearest imitation to a flower-pot on their heads; features which may or may not assist you to realise that you have come to one of the most picturesque cities in the world. Take comfort, however, and look forward to a stroll round the old town on the morrow, which, if you are in search of the oriental and the beautiful, will exceed all your expectations. Indeed, the mile or t...