A DESERT CITY


III
A DESERT CITY

“He seems as one whose footsteps halt

Toiling in immeasurable sand

And o’er a weary sultry land

Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill

The city sparkles like a grain of salt.”

In the desert not twenty miles from Cairo there has sprung up the mushroom growth of a wonder-working Health Resort. It possesses several hotels, an “Establishment,” a golf links, and everything which a really desirable Health Resort must possess.[1] But at the time when I first knew that tract of sand on which it stands the case was far otherwise. If one must have summarized the attractions of the place they would have run:—