From here they went over to the Midway Plaisance. The "Street in Cairo" was to be opened with a great parade of some kind and they wanted to see it. The natives call it _Mars-al-Kabia_. In fact the Street in Cairo was all the curiosities of Egyptian Cairo's streets crowded into one Chicago Cairo Street. It was a splendid sight with its gardens and squares, its temples, its towers and minaret made in the most Arabesque architecture and ornamented with the most fantastic draperies. The inhabitants had been directly transported from old Cairo across the sea to Midway Plaisance. There were the importunate street venders, the donkey boys begging and pulling at the clothing of the visitors, the pompous drivers of camels beseeching the visitors to try their "ship of the desert;" tom-tom pounders, reed blowers, fakirs, child acrobat beggars, Mohammedans, Copts, Jews, Franks, Greeks, Armenians, Nubians, Soudanese, Arabs, Turks, and men and women from all over the Levant, all in the gorgeous apparel of the East, filling the booths or strolling about the street. They were the happiest lot of Orientals that ever got so far away from home. Drums were beating, camel drivers singing merry songs, and a curious medley of voices which the earth beneath them never heard before. At eleven o'clock somebody blew a strange kind of horn, which made the small boy almost kill himself in his frenzy to get near to see what it meant. Musicians mounted the camels and began grinding out music that was enough to frighten even a North American Indian to death. At the first glimpse of the camels a team of steady old horses, that probably were never frightened before, ran away with the gravel wagon which they had been patiently dragging along. Little Arabs and Soudanese ran ahead of the procession turning somersets and clapping their hands in hilarious glee. There were warriors hopping about and clashing shields and swords together in mimic battle. In front of Hagenbeck's show the lions were aroused from their slumber in the den above the entrance, and they stood before the bars and roared at the procession. Then the dancing girls came skipping along, followed by a bride and her maids, for at last it was seen to be a bridal procession that was celebrating the opening of "Cairo street" in Chicago. Here is the circus of the "Plaisance," where the visitors are the actors and the clowns. Every hour can be seen a bevy of pretty girls escorted by a brother or some dapper young man. The camel drivers hail them. What a chance for a lark! "Let's have a ride on the back of the queer creature," says one maiden. "Oh! you wouldn't dare," replies brother. "Wouldn't I, though? Just watch me," is the modern maiden's response. She approaches the dromedary, which opens one eye by way of recognition. [Illustration: "Hurrah! It humps in front, jumps behind, and paces in the middle."]