On the 22nd of the month the Black Watch left Belbeis for Grand Cairo, where the corps arrived in the evening, when the last rays of the setting sun tinted with the hue of blood and saffron the water of the Nile as it wound past the islets near El Ghizeh--flushed and red, as on the evening when, in long ages past, according to Mohammedan legends, Joseph sank Jacob's marble coffin in the stream; and it was with no ordinary emotion of admiration and interest that Allan and his comrades beheld the capital of Egypt basking in the sun ere he went down beyond the hills. 'Skirted by groves and gardens,' says a writer, 'its light airy structures seem to be based upon a mass of verdure; long lines of buildings, white, glittering, and infinitely varied in form, rise beyond each other, and the palace and citadel, cresting a steep projection of the Mokattam ridge, conduct the eye to the vast rocky barrier which protects "the victorious city" from the blasts of the desert.' Streets of lofty and latticed houses abounding in carved balconies and florid arcades; the mosques, with delicate domes and airy minarets, covered with tracery and arabesques; the houses of beys and grandees; the fortified abodes of the stern old Mamelukes, now those of Egyptian nobles, recalling in their architecture the Moorish glories of the Alhambra and the Alcazar of Cordova--a perpetual dream of the Arabian Nights. Even with night the bustle in its streets did not cease; the coffee-houses and hotels were filled with light, and, in the warm atmosphere, teemed with outdoor life, for there all who are afoot have lanterns, and there were the tellers of Arabian tales, the Nubian singer with his mandolin, and the Egyptian magician performing such tricks as one might think the devil alone could do; and now once again, as in the days of General Hutchison, the walls and towers of 'the Queen of Cities'--El Kahira of the fatalistic caliphs--re-echoed to the British drum and the Scottish warpipe, as the Highlanders defiled round it to their camp, where the tents were pitched outside the walls.