Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1883 — The Streets of Cairo. [ARTICLE]

The Streets of Cairo.

The most populous streets of Cairo are more populous and more crowded than any street in Paris, but their life is of a different kind. There is no regularity in it; in one place the street is blocked up by a group of musicians, around whom a group of idlers gather; in another a peddler attracts the crowd, showing the stuffs which he carries on his shoulders; another man, his fingers covered with rings for sale, displays them in the eyes of customers. Often we are stopped on our way by flocks of sheep and goats, or camels laden with great stones or beams'of timber, that we encounter as we pass. The greater part of the passengers in the streets are mounted on donkeys. How often in Cairo have I seen the well-known picture of the “Flight, into Egypt” reproduced! Upon a donkey is a veiled woman, with a child in her arms; by her side a man with a white beard, wearing a long robe, holding in one hand a stick and resting the other upon the neck of the beast, to guide and urge him. But there is one point in which the tableaux vivant of which I am speaking differs from that of the pictures; that is, that in the East the women do pot sit on the animals they

ride, as ours do, but bestride them like men. When they go on foot they generally carry their children astride upon their shoulders, the little creatures leaning with both hands upon the heac of its mother. It is a picture less familiar to us than the other, but not less attractive. — Bevel’s Egrpt.