The view from the outer platform is, however, magnificent. We saw it on a hazy day, and could not therefore distinguish the point of the delta, which ought to have been visible on the north; but we could plainly see as far southward as the pyramids of Sakkârah, and trace the windings of the Nile for many miles across the plain. The pyramids of Ghizeh, on their daïs of desert rock about twelve miles off, looked, as they always do look from a distance, small and unimpressive; but the great alluvial valley dotted over with mud villages and intersected by canals and tracts of palm forest; the shining river specked with sails; and the wonderful city, all flat roofs, cupolas, and minarets, spread out like an intricate model at one’s feet, were full of interest and absorbed our whole attention. Looking down upon it from this elevation, it is as easy to believe that Cairo contains four hundred mosques, as it is to stand on the brow of the Pincio and believe in the three hundred and sixty-five churches of modern Rome. As we came away, they showed us the place in which the Memlook nobles, four hundred and seventy[5] in number, were shot down like mad-dogs in a trap, that fatal first of March, A.D. 1811. We saw the upper gate which was shut behind them as they came out from the presence of the pasha, and the lower gate which was shut before them to prevent their egress. The walls of the narrow roadway in which the slaughter was done are said to be pitted with bullet marks; but we would not look for them. I have already said that I do not very distinctly remember the order of our sight-seeing in Cairo, for the reason that we saw some places before we went up the river, some after we came back, and some (as for instance the museum at Boulak) both before and after, and indeed as often as possible. But I am at least quite certain that we witnessed a performance of howling dervishes, and the departure of the caravan for Mecca, before starting.