Ꭲ Ꮋ Ꭼ Ꭰ Ꭼ Ꮪ Ꭼ Ꭱ Ꭲ .

1.

Grand Cairo.

"THE camels are ready," said the Commander, our dragoman.

And I turned for a last glimpse of Cairo from the lofty window of the hotel over the Uzbeekeeyah, or public garden. The sun was sinking toward the Pyramids, and my eyes, that perceived their faint outline through the warm air, were fascinated for the last time by their grandeur and mystery.

I held a letter in my hand. It was dated several weeks before in Berlin, and its incredible tales of cold, thin twilight for day, of leafless trees, and of bitter and blasting winds, were like ice in the sherbet of the oriental scene my eyes were draining.

Beneath the balcony was the rounded fulness of acacia groves, and glancing along the lights and shadows of the avenues, I marked the costumes whose picturesqueness is poetry. The glaring white walls of plaster palaces, and the hareems of pachas rose irregularly beyond, cool with dark green blinds, and relieving the slim minarets that played, fountains of grace, in the brilliant air. It was a great metropolis, but silent as Venice. Only the ha-ha of