The Hotel d'Orient, while not as fashionable as Shepard's or the Grand New, was a most comfortable house and set one of the best tables of the many that we encountered on the trip. It faced a big circular open space from which half a score of thoroughfares diverged like the spokes of a wheel, and was accessible from all parts of the city. In the big public garden opposite one of the Khedive's bands was playing at the time of our arrival, and on every hand were to been the open doors of cafes, bazaars, gambling hells and places of amusement, while the jargon of many tongues that surrounded us made confusion worse confounded. We were too tired the first night of our arrival to attempt much in the sight-seeing line, and contented ourselves, with a quiet stroll about the streets radiating from the circle, and a peep into some of the bazaars and gambling houses, gambling, then, as I presume it is at the present time, being conducted on the wide-open plan, and roulette wheels being operated within full view of the crowded streets. There is nothing that is known to any other city in the world that cannot be found in Cairo, and there are representatives of every nation in the world to be found among its denizens. Seen in the gloom of the evening, its towers and minarets showing in the moonlight, its streets pervaded with the dull red glow of the lights that gleam in the adjacent bazaars and cabarets, and with its white-walled buildings towering in the darkness, Cairo looks like a scene from the Arabian Nights, but viewed by daylight the picture is not so entrancing, for the semi-darkness serves to hide from the eye of the traveler the squalor and filth that the sunlight reveals and that is part and parcel of all oriental cities and towns.