ABSTRACT
The Consul-General had given me an invitation to take a trip with him in the country surrounding Cairo. It was not an offer to be declined, for Consuls enjoy privileges and facilities to visit anything and everything at their convenience. On this occasion, too, I had the advantage of being able to make use of a European carriage, which is a very rare thing in the Levant. A carriage at Cairo is a luxury—the more attractive because it is impossible to make use of one to go about the city. Only sovereigns and their representatives would have the right to run over men and dogs in the streets, if the narrowness and winding nature of those streets would allow them to profit by the privilege. The Pasha himself is obliged to have his stables near the gates, and can only drive out in his carriage to his different country houses. Nothing seems stranger than to see a brougham or a barouche of the latest London or Paris style, with a turbaned coachman on the box, a whip in one hand, and a long cherrywood pipe in the other.
