Perry stared out of the window, thinking. What the professor had said, came back to him—“blaze-marks along the trail to civilization.” That was the trick of Egypt.
The landscape was flat and uninteresting. As the train sped on, there was less desert and less marsh, the cultivated cotton fields grew thicker, there were more mud huts. Here and there a cluster of huts centered around a small mosque, with its graceful minaret. Occasionally small structures—which Antoine told him were saints’ tombs—broke the level, but aside from these, the lands of the Nile delta were level and monotonous. Yet, in spite of all, they were curiously vibrating, and after a while Perry realized that this was due to the sun, which flooded the country with a light so intense that it seemed brighter than sunlight.
The train roared across a sluggish stream, with a gyassa in full sail upon it.
“The Rosetta branch of the Nile,” said Antoine.
Perry had nothing to say. It was not the picture he had formed in his mind of the Nile, but there was something about it, something incalculably old, as though the river were very aged and had fallen asleep. On the other side of the Rosetta branch, all the land was under cultivation. Cotton-cleaning mills, dotted here and there, took away even the quiet romance of the first part of the journey, and Perry was glad when at Bulak they crossed the Nile proper and the train sped swiftly on its way to Cairo.
“Don’t get disappointed in Cairo right away,” said Antoine to him, as they neared the suburbs. “Cairo is one of the most picturesque cities in the world, but not around the railway station, nor near the hotel. We’re going to be in Cairo several days, so you will have a chance to see all you want of it.”
But this time Perry was not disappointed. The railway station could not be other but modern, but in the throngs about it there was so much movement, so much color, so much flavor of the East that the boy breathed a great sigh of relief. It was all true. He was not dreaming. The world of the Orient was not all made new. The City of the Arabian Nights was still full of mystery. He climbed into a two-horse Arabian with Antoine, all a-quiver with excitement, was driven to the hotel, and, after the four-hour journey in the train, was eager to be up and doing.
At lunch his uncle said,
“Perry, I am going to be busy all this afternoon, and if you want to do some sight-seeing, now’s your chance. I’ll leave you in Antoine’s charge, and you’d better stick close to him, for Cairo’s the easiest city to get lost in that I know.”
He turned to Antoine.