IN THE COURT OF THE ALABASTER MOSQUE IS A FOUNTAIN.
The Muski and the crooked little passage-ways that intersected it were lined with small shops where many of the dealers sat cross-legged on platforms within arm's reach of their stock of goods. The stores for the sale of each kind of goods had a special quarter of their own. At one place we saw the shops of the coppersmiths with stocks of bright kettles, pitchers, basins, trays, and pans; at another, the stores of the shoemakers, where hundreds of bright red slippers dangled on lines overhead. In one crooked alley, but four feet in width, we watched the goldsmiths, squatted in narrow quarters, busily at work with brazier and blowpipes and curious little tools, hammering, twisting, and welding chains of gold, and making ornaments of silver filagree.
We bought souvenirs at the stalls of the fez dealers, where but one style of headgear was sold, always red in color, and with prices varying according to the quality of the cloth and lining. We stopped at the warerooms of the brass-smiths, which were larger in size than the ordinary shops, and found these filled with an array of hammered trays, censers, bowls, tankards, curiously wrought lamps, and ornamented candlesticks, that attracted many buyers. We looked into the little factories of the saddlers, which were gay with red and yellow trappings for donkeys and horses, and where the saddlers were stitching with bright colored-threads.
The light open-front workshops of the makers of hempen camel harness were hung with the twisted rope and tassel adornments of variegated colors with which the Bedouin delights to array his ship of the desert. The stores of the grocers were adorned with long decorated candles suspended by the wicks. We saw hundreds of tiny bazaars for the sale of perfumes, placed side by side in a narrow lane where the air was scented with musk and attar of roses; and we walked through narrow streets where, each kind in its own section, earthen water jars, lanterns, books, ornamented leather work, gems, and precious stones were displayed for sale.
The guide insisted that we should spend a little time in the carpet stores in a side street. We yielded to his entreaties, and were surprised by the immense stacks of exquisite silk rugs; but to the courteous salesman's offer to show us everything in his place, we were compelled by lack of time to reply, "Another day." When we arrived at the more prominent silk bazaars, the ladies wished to buy some light shawls interwoven with gold thread and table covers embroidered with silk. They soon found out, however, that, as in the other Oriental cities, much time would be required for bargaining, and so the shopping was put off until the sight-seeing was over.
CHAPTER XIV.
LUXOR AND KARNAK.
The Nile party No. 2, consisting of forty-two persons, left Cairo on Friday morning, March thirteenth, in sleeping cars. The cars were painted white outside, finished in cherry inside, and divided into rooms, each room having two comfortable berths and a washstand, and a passageway along the side of the car. We ate our dinner that evening and breakfast the following morning in a modern dining car attached to the train.
At nine o'clock on Saturday morning the train arrived at our destination, the town of Luxor, about four hundred miles south of Cairo. The Hotel de Luxor, at which we stayed, was situated in the midst of a large irrigated garden where palms cast a grateful shade and roses and lilies bloomed among tropical plants. Within this hotel, built with thick stone walls and floored with flagstones, the tourists found a pleasant refuge from the heat when they returned from excursions into the desert. In its cool dining room, decorated in the old Egyptian style with figures of gods and goddesses, with lotus blossoms and papyrus flowers, with hieroglyphics and symbols, painted on frieze, walls, and window sash, the tourists were waited on by white-robed, white-turbaned, red-sashed, red-slippered natives.