The sound of the war-tramp echoes through Cairo.
The streets are full of officers, transport-waggons, and stores.
The almost historical balcony of "Shepheards" is peopled with a military throng—with officers eager to go to "the front," with others awaiting "further orders." All connected with "the service" have additional importance in their own and every one's eyes just now. Wives and relations are in Cairo, as nearer the seat of war, and within earlier reach of news, though, as a matter of fact, the news of the fall of Khartoum the other day was known a day earlier in London.
Rumours and panics of defeat—repulse—surprise—are rife, and all is excitement and anxious flurry.
Colonel Swaine, C.B., Military Secretary to Lord Wolseley, came here early this morning on his way home on sick leave; he will be the first to arrive from the camp at Korti in London. He gave us some interesting particulars about the battle of Abu Klea.
Cairo strikes me as being so French in tone, with the parquet floors and the French windows, with its French population, with Parisian fashions. But after all one must disillusion oneself from the natural idea that Cairo is now English. Cairo is above all things an international metropolis.
During our week's stay there we saw most of the principal sights, but I have not the smallest intention of boring my readers with attempting any minute description (save of the Pyramids and the Dancing Dervishes) of what has been told in glowing, life-like pictures by other writers of name and fame.
Cairene Woman.
I will not write of the streets, with their motley crowd of Arabs, Copts, Syrians, Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Nubians, Cairenes proper, with their thousands of donkeys and accompanying hâmmars, handsome animals cruelly bitted and curbed, ridden alike by grave official in Turkish bags, embroidered jacket, and fez, or by Arab ladies with balloon of silk, and feet tucked up in front. Nor of the pretty street-cries, "God will make them light O! lemons," "Odours of Paradise O! flowers of Henna." Nor yet even of the bazaar, where are spread out the treasures of gold and silver of Arabia, Persia, and Syria, of Damascus and Bagdad—the Cairo Bazaar unique in the world. It is terrible to see the number of those afflicted with eye-diseases in Cairo, and the many blind men led about the streets, crying, "O! Awakener of Pity, O! Master," or "I am the guest of God and the Prophet;" and then the answer comes, "God will succour, or give thee succour." It makes one's heart ache, too, to see the babies with the flies—the proverbially persistent fly of Egypt—settled black on the child's eye, and with no attempt being made to brush them away, causing the eye to close by a process too frightful to describe. The children are always sucking sugar-cane, and it is the sticky sweetness which causes the flies to settle so thickly on their cheeks.