When shops occupy the lower part of the buildings in a street (as is generally the case in the great thoroughfares of the metropolis, and in some of the bye-streets), the superstructure is usually divided into distinct lodgings, and is termed “raba.” These lodgings are separate from each other, as well as from the shops below, and let to families who cannot afford the rent of a whole house. Each lodging in a raba comprises one or two sitting and sleeping-rooms, and generally a kitchen and latrina. It seldom has a separate entrance from the street, one entrance and one staircase usually admitting to a range of several lodgings. The apartments are similar to those of the private houses first described. They are never let ready-furnished; and it is very seldom that a person who has not a wife or female slave is allowed to reside in them, or in any private house: such a person (unless he have parents or other near relations to dwell with) is usually obliged to take up his abode in a “wekáleh,” which is a building chiefly designed for the reception of merchants and their goods. Franks, however, are now exempted from this restriction. Very few large or handsome houses are to be seen in Egypt, excepting in the metropolis and some other towns. The dwellings of the lower orders, particularly those of the peasants, are of a very mean description: they are mostly built of unbaked bricks, cemented together with mud. Some of them are mere hovels. The greater number, however, comprise two or more apartments; though few are two storeys high. In one of these apartments, in the houses of the peasants in Lower Egypt, there is generally an oven (“furn”), at the end farthest from the entrance, and occupying the whole width of the chamber. It resembles a wide bench or seat, and is about breast-high: it is constructed of brick and mud; the roof arched within, and flat on the top. The inhabitants of the house, who seldom have any night-covering during the winter, sleep upon the top of the oven, having previously lighted a fire within it; or the husband and wife only enjoy this luxury and the children sleep upon the floor. The chambers have small apertures high up in the walls, for the admission of light and air—sometimes furnished with a grating of wood. The roofs are formed of palm-branches and palm-leaves, or of millet-stalks, etc., laid upon rafters of the trunk of the palm, and covered with a plaster of mud and chopped straw. The furniture consists of a mat or two to sleep upon, a few earthen vessels, and a hand-mill to grind the corn. In many villages large pigeon-houses of a square form, but with the walls slightly inclining inwards (like many of the ancient Egyptian buildings), or of the form of a sugar-loaf, are constructed upon the roots of the huts, with crude brick, pottery, and mud.[31] Most of the villages of Egypt are situated upon eminences of rubbish, which rise a few feet above the