And now we come on a street almost entirely given over to the vendors of silks and ostrich feathers. What a wealth of colour! And how harmoniously the myriad tints blend with the flowing robes of the natives, the duller hues of the crumbling walls, rickety, projecting balconies, and sun-blanched lattices! Looking down the narrow thoroughfare packed as it is with a moving sea of quaintly garbed figures, suggests an ever-changing arabesque, kaleidoscopic-like in its effect. It is the East as Mohammed found it, a bit of Old Egypt basking snugly in the warmth of a truly oriental setting.... We thread our way slowly through the noisy crowd of guttural-tongued natives, and emerge with something approaching a shock into the clang and rattle of a modern city street with its electric cars, resplendent automobiles, and plate-glass windows. Yet even here the East holds its own: you see it in the strings of camels and the numerous donkeys that dispute the right of way with the big touring cars and electric runabouts; in the open-air cafés; in the dress of the natives, especially the sherbet and lemonade sellers, and the hawkers of sweetmeats and cigarettes; but it is the meeting of the Occident and Orient, the commingling of the East and West, and the effect is anything but congruous. Reader, I am not out to describe Cairo. For one thing, space forbids; for another, I reckon I amn't a boss hand at descriptive writing; and, lastly, you can get as much of that kind of thing as you want in the guidebooks. But I should like to point out three places you should really pay a visit to the first time you blow into the old City: the Citadel, the Museum, and the Tombs of the Mamelukes; add to these the Zoo, and the Hezekieh Gardens on a Sunday afternoon, and you won't regret it. It is a gay city, is Cairo; a bad old city, but, above all, an intensely interesting one. You will there, it is true, find vice, dirt, and immorality flaunted openly, the trimmings all shorn away. But you needn't stop and look, you know—(you will, all the same). And "to the pure all things are pure." Besides, when away from home things often strike you from a vastly different standpoint. You are out to "do" Egypt; you have paid to "do" it—then "do" it by all means. But take my tip, and exercise a wise discretion when writing to the folks at the old farm. Or don't write—just mail them the guidebooks. CHAPTER V DAY BY DAY