THE PENNIES APPARENTLY CANNOT BE FOUND.
From the parapet of the citadel which crowns the heights above Cairo, we gazed at the extended view of roofs, mosques, minarets, and tombs of caliphs, and listened to the story of the massacre of the Mamelukes and the legend of the one who marvelously escaped by leaping on his horse over the parapet to the ground sixty feet below. To convince us of the truth of this legend, the dragoman showed the impression of the horse's hoofs in the stone coping on the wall. The large Mosque of Mehemet Ali, on the heights, is built of pure alabaster and carpeted with costly rugs. The older Mosque of Sultan Ahmed, at the foot of the citadel hill, is built of sandstone taken from the Pyramids, and, although partly in ruins and with bare stone floors, it is yet beautiful.
"This mosque make Ahmed glad. He not want another built like it, so he chop hand off architect," explained our good-natured dragoman, whose control of English was limited, but he endeavored to relate the legends and give information.
While returning from the citadel we came by an open-air market, where Egyptians of many types were gathered in groups around piles of merchandise and vegetables. Here our camera man, taking advantage of an opportune moment, caught a dense mass of faces before the natives became aware of his presence.
On Friday afternoon we visited the Monastery El Akbar to see the religious exercises of the Twirling Dervishes, which take place there every Friday afternoon. The shrill music, the fanatic faces, the obeisance to the leader, the whirling men, the naked feet, and the never-touching skirts, just as we beheld them, are pictured vividly by Canon Rawnsley, in his "Idylls and Lyrics of the Nile."
THE DANCING DERVISHES.
The shrillest pipe man ever played
Was making music overhead,
And in a circle, down below,
Sat men whose faces seemed to show
Another world was all their trade.
Then up they rose, and one by one,
Shook skirts down, following him who led
To where the elder brother sat—
All gaberdine and conic hat,
Then bowed, and off for Heaven they spun.
Their hands were crossed upon their breast,
Their eyes were closed as if for sleep,
The naked foot that beat the floor,
To keep them spinning more and more,
Was careless of all need for rest.
Soon every flowing skirt began
Its milk-white spinning plane to keep,
Each brother of the holy band
Spun in and out with lifted hand,
A Teetotem no longer man.