By A Steep Incline It Ascends Into The Midst Of Rocks And
Sand - And Already, And Almost In A Moment,
We seem to be in the
desert; though we have scarcely left behind the last houses of an Arab
quarter,
Where long-robed folk, who looked half frozen, were muffled
up to the eyes to-day. . . . Was there formerly such weather as this
in this country noted for its unchanging mildness?
This residence of the great sovereign of Egypt, the citadel and the
mosque which he had made for his last repose, are perched like eagles'
nests on a spur of the mountain chain of Arabia, the Mokattam, which
stretches out like a promontory towards the basin of the Nile, and
brings quite close to Cairo, so as almost to overhang it, a little of
the desert solitude. And so the eye can see from far off and from all
sides the mosque of Mehemet Ali, with the flattened domes of its
cupolas, its pointed minarets, the general aspect so entirely Turkish,
perched high up, with a certain unexpectedness, above the Arab town
which it dominates. The prince who sleeps there wished that it should
resemble the mosques of his fatherland, and it looks as if it had been
transported bodily from Stamboul.
A short trot brings us up to the lower gate of the old fortress; and,
by a natural effect, as we ascend, all Cairo which is near there,
seems to rise with us: not yet indeed the endless multitude of its
houses; but at first only the thousands of its minarets, which in a
few seconds point their high towers into the mournful sky, and suggest
at once that an immense town is about to unfold itself under our eyes.
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