A labyrinth of dark and tortuous lanes and alleys is the old city still--places where two donkeys cannot pass abreast, and the toppling stories and outshoots shut out the narrowest streak of sky; while the apparently masquerading crowd below seems unchanged from what it was when Elliot Warburton wrote of it a quarter of a century ago; 'Ladies wrapped closely in white veils; women of the lower classes carrying water on their heads, and only with a long blue garment that reveals too plainly the exquisite symmetry of the young, and the hideous deformity of the old; here are camels perched upon by black slaves, magpied with white napkins round their heads and loins; there are portly merchants, with turbans and long pipes, smoking on their knowing-looking donkeys; here an Arab dashes through the crowd at almost full gallop; or a European, still more haughtily, shoves aside the pompous-looking bearded throng; now a bridal or circumcising procession squeezes along, with music; now the running footmen of some Bey or Pacha endeavour to jostle you to the wall, till they recognise you as an Englishmen--one of that race whom they think the devil can't frighten or teach manners to.'
Now the streets and the Esbekeyeh Square are dotted by redcoats; the trumpets of our Hussars ring out in the Abbassiyeh Barracks; the drums of our infantry are heard at those of Kasr-el-Nil; and the pipes of the Highlanders ever and anon waken the echoes of El Kaleh, or the wondrous citadel of Saladin, with the 'March o' Lochiel,' or the pibroch of 'Donuill Dhu.'
Skene and his brother-officers enjoyed many a cigar on the low terrace in front of Shepheard's now historical hotel, under the shade of the acacia trees, watching the changing crowds in the modern street, which, with all its splendour, cannot compare with the picturesqueness of older Cairo; but the dresses are strangely beautiful, and the whole panorama seems part of a stage, rather than real life; while among the veiled women, the swarthy men in turban and tarboosh, the British orderly dragoon clanks past, or groups of heedless, thoughtless, and happy young officers set forth in open cabs to have a day at the Pyramids--an institution among our troops at Cairo--especially early in the day, when the air has that purity and freshness peculiar to a winter morning in Egypt, and towering skyward are seen those marvels in stone, of which it has been said, that 'Time mocks all things, but the Pyramids mock time!' and where the mighty Sphinx at their base, 'the Father of Terrors,' has its stony eyes for ever fixed on the desert--the gate of that other world, where the work of men's hands ends, and Eternity seems to begin.