The donkeys of Egypt are small, rugged animals. One sees them everywhere with all sorts of odd figures mounted on them. Here is an Egyptian woman sitting astride of one, her legs bent up like a spring and her black feet sticking out in the stirrups. She is dressed in black, in a gown which makes her look like a balloon. There is a long veil over her face with a slit at the eyes, where a brass spool separates it from the head-dress and you see nothing but strips of bare skin an inch wide above and below. Here is a sheik with a great turban and a long gown; his legs, ending in big yellow slippers, reach almost to the ground on each side of his donkey. He has no bridle, but guides the beast with a stick. A donkey-boy in bare feet, whose sole clothing consists of a blue cotton nightgown and a brown skullcap, runs behind poking up the donkey with a stick. Now he gives it a cut, and the donkey jerks its hinder part from one side to the other as it scallops the road in attempting to get out of the way of the rod. Here is a drove of donkeys laden with bags for the market. They are not harnessed, and the bags are balanced upon their backs without ropes or saddles. The ordinary donkey of Egypt is very cheap indeed, but the country has some of the finest asses and mules I have ever seen, and there are royal white jackasses ridden by wealthy Mohammedans which are worth from five hundred to a thousand dollars per beast. The best of these come from Mecca. They are pacers, fourteen hands high, and very swift. The pedigrees of some of them are nearly as long as those of Arabian horses. It is said that the Arabs who raise them will never sell a female of this breed. But to return to the characters of the bazaar. They are of the oddest, and one must have an educated eye to know who they are. Take that man in a green turban, who is looked up to by his fellows. The dragoman tells us that he has a sure passport to Heaven, and that the green turban is a sign that he has made the pilgrimage to Mecca and thus earned the right to the colours of the Prophet. Behind him comes a fine-featured, yellow-faced man in a blue gown wearing a turban of blue. We ask our guide who he may be and are told, with a sneer, that he is a Copt. He is one of the Christians of modern Egypt, descended from the fanatical band described by Charles Kingsley in his novel “Hypatia.” Like all his class he is intelligent, and like most of them well dressed. The Copts are among the shrewdest of the business Egyptians, and with prosperity they have grown in wealth. They are money lenders and land speculators. Many of them have offices under the government, and not a few have amassed fortunes. Some of them are very religious and some can recite the Bible by heart. They differ from their neighbours in that they believe in having only one wife.