This wind is called here the “Khamseen,” but is better known to the outer world as the simoon or sirocco. It begins generally by blowing a single day, and then you have several days of pleasant weather; then you will have two, three, or four days of wind in succession, and then an interval of about the same length before another blast sets in. The natives say there are usually about fifty days of it altogether, and hence its name, Khamsecn being the Arabic word for fifty. Some years it is very mild—not more than thirty days of it—and the next year it may be mild or it may be worse. I didn’t propose to stay there to find out. I had one day of the Khamseen, and that satisfied my curiosity.
In addition to the heat, the air is full of the finest sand so that the sun looks like a ball of burning copper, and the sky becomes yellow. The sand finds its way everywhere; the furniture of the room will be covered with it; you find it in your soup and in nearly every dish that you eat; and I was told that it will get inside your watch-cases, even though you wrap your timepiece in buckskin, and lay it away in the bottom of your trunk till the sirocco is over. If you have a hollow tooth you can take enough sand out of it at the end of the Khamseen to fill an hour-glass.
Dost thou like the picture? Methinks I hear your emphatic negation.
Strangers generally leave when this desert wind comes, and those of the residents who can afford it make a trip to Europe, or if not there, to Alexandria. On the sea-coast there is less wind, and the air is several degrees cooler than at Cairo.
Alexandria is quite a pleasure resort in the summer; the court generally goes there to put in the warm weather, and sniff the breezes of the Mediterranean, and the foreign representatives do likewise. The season at Cairo ends when the court takes its departure; the city of the Caliphs becomes dull and uncomfortable. What a contrast to the most delightful winter on the face of the globe!
A great deal has been written about the sufferings of the lowest classes in Egypt, and we have had some wonderful pictures of native distress painted by travellers. The house of the fellah is a mud hovel, his clothes are scanty and his food is coarse. He is not liberally paid for his labor, and he eternally begs for “backsheesh,” not that he expects always to get it, but from
