From the station our friends drove through the new part of Cairo, where the broad streets and rows of fine buildings were a disappointment to the youths, who had expected to see quite the reverse.
"Don't be impatient," said the Doctor, "we shall come to the narrow streets by-and-by. This part of Cairo is quite modern, and was constructed principally under Ismail Pacha a few years ago. He had a fancy for making a city on the plan of Paris or Vienna, and giving it the appearance of the Occident instead of the Orient. In place of the narrow and sometimes crooked streets of the East he caused broad avenues to be laid out and tall buildings to be erected. The new city was to stand side by side with the old one, and for a time it seemed as though the Eastern characteristics of Cairo would be blotted out. But the money to carry on the improvements could not be had, and the new part of Cairo has an unhappy and half desolate appearance. The natives preferred the old ways, and there was not a sufficient influx of foreigners to populate the new city. It had grown rapidly for a few years, but suddenly its growth was suspended, and here it has been ever since."
A STREET IN CAIRO.
They passed several public and private buildings that would have done honor to any European city, and if it had not been for the natives walking in the streets, riding on donkeys, or now and then conducting a stately camel, they might easily have believed themselves far away from Egypt. Suddenly the scene changed; they passed the new theatre, where Ismail Pacha delighted to listen to European operas performed by European companies; they crossed the triangle known as the Square of Ibrahim Pacha, and containing a bronze statue of that fiery ruler; and by a transition like that of the change in a fairy spectacle, they were in one of the crowded and shaded streets of the City of the Caliphs. They had entered the "Mooskee," one of the widest and most frequented streets of the part of Cairo that has not succumbed to Western innovations, and retains enough of its Eastern character to remain unpaved.
The speed of their carriage was reduced, and a boy who had been riding at the side of the driver jumped down, and ran ahead shouting to clear the way. The boys thought they were travelling in fine style to have a footman to precede them, but the Doctor told them it was the custom of the country to have a runner, called a "syce," to go before every carriage, and clear the way for it. The syce carried a stick as the badge of his office, and when he was in the employ of an official he had no hesitation in striking right and left among those who were in the way. High officials and other dignitaries employed two of these runners, who kept step side by side, and were generally noticeable by the neatness of their dress. No matter how fast the horses go the syce will keep ahead of them, and he does not seem at all fatigued after a run that would take the breath out of an American.
