Progress is slow towards the Square. Not the interest of the scene alone invites you to linger: the whole atmosphere is one of lounge. Everyone moves at a lounging pace; those not in motion lounge; there are periodical cafés where the men lounge in the fumes of smoke and native spirits by the half-day together. No one hurries. Business seems rather a hobby and an incident than the earnest, insistent thing it is in England. The advantage surely lies with the Arab; he finds time to live and contemplate and get to know something of himself. God help the American! Better, perhaps, to spend the evening of your life with your chin on your knees and your hubble-bubble adjacent, looking out on the life before you, and within upon your own, than boast yourself still keen in the steel trade; that your features are "mobile and alert," though your head is grey, whereas your contemporaries are "failing." ... At the end of a half-day you'll know your proximity to the Centre by the uprising of "respectable" cafés and imposing cigarette-manufactories and of hotels. And you come into the Square overlooked by the noble statue of the noble Mahomet Aly--every ounce a soldier. Wide and well-built streets lead away into the regions of high-class trade and residence. You had best take a gharry here. There are two extreme classes amongst tourists--the thoroughgoing Cook's sight-seer who works exclusively by the vehicle and the book, and the tourist who steadily refuses to "do" the stock places. Each is at fault if he is inflexible: the former in the Arab quarter, the latter when he emerges from it. For in a city such as Alexandria the visitor who declines to see the spots relict of the ancient history of this world is clearly an obdurate fool with a strange topsy-turvey-dom of values. Let him take a gharry and a book in his hand when the time is ripe; let him be free with his piastres when Pompey's Pillar stands over the catacombs of the city. The Forts of Cæsar and of Napoleon watch over the sea. He may stand upon the ground where was the library of Alexandria and where Euclid reasoned over his geometrical figures in the sand. Here Hypatia suffered martyrdom and Cleopatra held her court and died in her palace. On the northern horn of the harbour stood the great Beacon of Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders. So you get your vehicle and a chattering guide.... On the way back to ship the Park and the Nouzha Gardens are a delicious sight after the aridity of the desert.... The gharry is dismissed on re-entering the Arab quarter; it would be a sad waste of opportunity to drive.... We climbed the gangway bearing much fruit and dirt, and very much late for dinner. And after mess the boat-deck and the pipes and our purchases in tobacco and our ventures in cigars--and the day all over again. CHAPTER III ABBASSIEH