Mentone, Cairo and Corfu . he seemed hardly to breathe. What is he doing ? I said to the dragoman. He ? Oh, he berry good man ; he pray. In a chamber next to the negro two grave old Arabswere playing chess. They were perched upon one ofthose Cairo settees which look like square chicken-coops. One often sees these seats in the streets, placedfor messengers and porters, and for some time I tookthem for actual chicken-coops, and wondered why theywere always empty. Chickens might well have inhab-ited the one used by the chess-players, for the centralcourt upon which all these chambers opened was c
Mentone, Cairo and Corfu . he seemed hardly to breathe. What is he doing ? I said to the dragoman. He ? Oh, he berry good man ; he pray. In a chamber next to the negro two grave old Arabswere playing chess. They were perched upon one ofthose Cairo settees which look like square chicken-coops. One often sees these seats in the streets, placedfor messengers and porters, and for some time I tookthem for actual chicken-coops, and wondered why theywere always empty. Chickens might well have inhab-ited the one used by the chess-players, for the centralcourt upon which all these chambers opened was cov-ered with a layer of rubbish and dirt several inchesthick, which contained many of their feathers. It wasupon this same day that we made our search for theKhan of Kait Bey. No dragoman knows where it best way, indeed, to see the old quarters is to se-lect from a map the name of a street as remote as pos-sible from the usual thoroughfares beloved by these tas-selled guides, and then demand to be conducted BEFORE THE SACRED NICHE From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo We did this in connection with the Khan of Kait when we had achieved the distinction of findingit, we discovered that it was impossible to see it. Thewinding street is so narrow, and so constantly crowdedwith two opposed streams of traffic, that your donkeycannot pause to give you a chance to inspect the portionwhich is close to your eyes, and there is no spot whereyou can get a view in perspective of the whole. So youpass up the lane, turn, and come down again ; and, ifconscientious, you repeat the process, obtaining for allyour pains only a confused impression of horizontalplaques and panels, with ruined walls tottering abovethem, and squalid shops below. There is a fine archedgateway adorned with pendentives; that, on account ofits size, you can see; it leads into the khan proper,where were once the chambers for the travelling mer-chants and the stalls for their beasts; but all this isnow a
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidmentonecairo, bookyear1896
