A more extended view revealed "the river of rivers," on each bank of which appeared a green line of foliage; beyond this could be dimly seen cultivated fields with intersecting canals, while tiny villages lent the human touch, and far away, Cairo, with her gleaming domes and minarets, became an appropriate background for the scene.
All the members of our party having previously visited the spot, we were spared the excitement of climbing the walls and entering the chambers, greatly to the disappointment of our guides, to whom the prospect of extra bakshish is always alluring. Our tour of observation consumed so much time that the usual programme of five o'clock tea at the Hôtel Mene was abandoned. On our arrival in the city, the mantle of night had fallen,—a peaceful close to a never-to-be-forgotten day.
Another afternoon's excursion was made by carriage to the old villages of Matariya and Heliopolis. Near the former place is an ancient gnarled sycamore, under which, so tradition says, the Holy Family rested in their flight to Egypt. The present tree was planted in 1672, but the credulous still believe it to be a direct descendant of the original one. A fine spring which flows in the vicinity is also supposed to have lost its natural brackish taste on account of the infant Jesus having been bathed in it. A half-mile farther on is Heliopolis, the old City of the Sun. It is now marked by the solitary obelisk, which alone remains to remind us of a past that stretches untold centuries back of the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640; and of a city that was the exponent of the most ancient civilization of the world.
The obelisk marking the site of Heliopolis
The obelisk is the oldest Egyptian one known; it is of red granite, sixty-six feet in height, although it seems lower on account of the mass of debris at the base, and is inscribed with hieroglyphics. There remain a few granite blocks of the temple, designated the House of Ra, whose priests were so learned as to have attracted Plato when a student, to have drawn Herodotus into discussion, and to have laid the foundation of Moses' wisdom.
Heliopolis has been the scene of many stirring events, the victory of the Turks over the Mamelukes occurring there in 1517, while in 1800 General Kléber successfully led the French forces against the Turks. The memory of the active past serves to emphasize the present solitude of the place.
A favorite resort of the Cairo folk is the island of Gezireh; here a long avenue of lebbek trees furnishes a fashionable promenade, while games of golf, tennis, cricket, and polo, together with the races, are a constant source of attraction. The once famous palace of Gezireh (the scene of great festivities at the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869) is now turned into a popular hotel; its grounds slope down to the Nile, where dahabiyehs are sometimes anchored; an inspection of one of these, the Bedouin, excited our admiration.
The time of our stay was drawing to a close, and Cairo was again to become "memory" with a past stretching back into centuries without number. Egypt has a human history that is almost appalling to the thoughtful mind; this limitless stretch of time may, in part, explain the peculiar, indefinable charm that Cairo has upon the imagination of the beholder, thus winning for herself the appropriate name of the "Mysterious City of the Nile."
