ABSTRACT
PEOPLE and houses, the whole aspect of both changes as we penetrate further into the heart of the cit.y. The streets are neither wider nor straighter, but the buildings are more carefully constructed; they are more regular, and so high that, from below, the sky looks like a simple luminous band between two dark lines. It is evident, from a thousand indications, that the population is rich, or at all events very comfortably off, but it conceals its wealth instead of displaying it. The sides of the houses that face the street are dingy and silent. The outer windows are rare and highly placed, the doors are low and carefully closed; when one of them stands ajar the curious can only see through the opening the end of a dark passage, or the first steps of a staircase lost in shadow. .A. dog barks, a child cries in a distant chamber, a voice issuing from some unknown spot breaks the silence for an instant; two passers·by exchange a salutation, poor little asses, laden with straw, trot nimbly by under the driver's stick. Here, however, one house projects over the street and
joins the house opposite: we must grope the way f01about twenty or thirty steps in a kind of suffocating tube, and then suddenly emerge into the full sunshine of a noisy little square, where a market is being held. Sheep, geese, goats, asses, large-horned oxen, scattered in unequal groups in the centre, are awaiting a purchaser. Peasants, fishermen, small retail dealers, squat several deep in front of the houses, displaying before them, in great rush baskets or on low tables, loaves or pastry, fruit, vegetables, fish, meat raw or cooked, jewels, perfumes, stuffs, all the necessities and all the superfluities of Egyptian life.
