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| TYPICAL SCENE IN CAIRO STREET - The pictures
on this page give the two grand features of the
Street in Cairo. On the left we see the "music" of the
Wedding Procession. In front of
these gaily caparisoned camels, lead by
donkey boys, was another camel on which was the half-stripped Egyptian
who danced with his shoulders, after the Asiatic, African and Muscovite
manner; behind the tom-tom beaters came the camels with great howdahs,
holding the bride; after them the hollow squares of celebrants, the Bull
Apis, and the oots, drums and priests of Luxor. It was interesting to
watch this procession from the heights of the Ferris Wheel, which
rose and fell over the scene. Here, while the public might be
awestruck with the rites of Ammon-Ra, Mout, and Chons, the man in the
cars of the wheel could also behold, in the rear of these latticed
palaces, a lively fight between two Egyptians over the possession of
a goat. Between the Wedding Processions, when the ships of the
desert could be spared, the guileless public rode the camel in the
exact manner here seen. Why this should have been such an attraction
is not known; but because there were always a swain and lass
together, and because the lass always repented when it was too late
and the altitudinous camel was rising in sixteen parts, the dense
crowd at the square would go into convulsions of merriment. |
