Happy, smoking a pipe, or sipping a cup of
coffee, or drinking a glass of sherbet, but above all things deranging
body and mind as little as possible; the trouble of conversations, the
displeasures of memory, and the vanity of thought being the most
unpleasant interruptions to his Kayf. No wonder that "Kayf" is a word
untranslatable in our mother-tongue![FN#12]
"Laudabunt alii claram Rhodon aut Mytelenen."
Let others describe the once famous Capital of
[p.10]Egypt, this City of Misnomers, whose dry docks are ever wet, and
whose marble fountain is eternally dry, whose "Cleopatra's
Needle"[FN13] is neither a needle nor Cleopatra's; whose "Pompey's
Pillar" never had any earthly connection with Pompey; and whose
Cleopatra's Baths are, according to veracious travellers, no baths at
all. Yet it is a wonderful place, this "Libyan suburb" of our day, this
outpost of civilisation planted upon the skirts of barbarism, this
Osiris seated side by side with Typhon, his great old enemy. Still may
be said of it, "it ever beareth something new[FN#14];" and Alexandria,
a threadbare subject in Bruce's time, is even yet, from its perpetual
changes, a fit field for modern description.[FN#15]
[p.11]The better to blind the inquisitive eyes of servants and
visitors, my friend, Larking, lodged me in an out-house, where I could
revel in the utmost freedom of life and manners.
