"Every few steps we meet women carrying jars of water on their heads. Many of the houses are supplied in this primitive way, and the employment of carrying water supports a great many people in this strange city of the East. Of late years pipes have been introduced, and an aqueduct brings water from the Nile, so that the occupation of the bearer has been somewhat diminished. But the public fountain still exists, and the people gather there as they did in the days of the Bible. Every mosque has a fountain in the centre of its court-yard, not so much for supplying water for those who wish to carry it away as to furnish an opportunity for the faithful to wash their hands before saying their prayers. Some of these fountains are large, and protected from the sun by a marble canopy. But the public fountains at the street corners are generally quite exposed to the weather, and many of them are quite small. [Illustration: THE FOUNTAIN OF A MOSQUE.] "We walked slowly along the street during our first excursion, as there were many sights to attract our attention, and we did not wish to miss anything. Two or three times we narrowly escaped being run over by camels or donkeys. The camels move along in a very stately way, and do not turn out unless ordered to do so by their drivers. They have a wicked expression in their eyes, and seem quite willing to knock over a stranger who gets in their way. Sometimes the crowd of people was so dense that it was not easy to move among them; but everybody was good-natured, and there was no jostling or rudeness of any kind. There were a good many beggars sitting in little nooks where they were not in danger of being run over, and quite often we met blind men who were feeling their way along by means of long sticks. They called out something in Arabic, and the people made way for them, so that none of them were hurt. [Illustration: A BEGGAR AT THE WAY-SIDE.] "The portion of the Mooskee where you enter it from the new part of Cairo contains a good many European shops, so that you do not come at once into the old-fashioned Orient. But as you go along the scene changes; the shops of the merchants are open to the streets, and the shopmen sit there cross-legged, in full view of everybody, so that you do not have to turn out of the way to see what there is to buy.