barouches, mingled with equestrians upon spirited Arab horses; also
people mounted upon nice donkeys,--for some of these animals are highly
bred. Again, richly caparisoned camels from the Khedive's stables
occasionally heighten the Eastern aspect of the scene, which recalled
the Maidan of Calcutta most vividly. The roadway is not devoid of
pedestrians, who come to see and to be seen. In short, the Shoobra Road
is the Rotten Row of Cairo. Even here fashion steps in after her
arbitrary manner, and establishes Friday and Sunday afternoons as the
"swell" days for riding or driving on the avenue. But we started for the
Khedive's Palace, and have stopped to gossip by the way.

The Summer Palace at Shoobra is surrounded by beautiful gardens, to
visit which a permit is required from city officials; but not being thus
prepared, a little silver was found to be equally effective with the
obliging custodian. The apartments of the palace are numerous and
elegantly furnished, in a mixed Turkish and European style, with divans,
lounges, chairs, tables of inlaid marble, and massive curtains mingled
with silk and satin hangings. The grand drawing-room was furnished in
gold and white satin; the ladies' parlor in green satin and silver; each
anteroom in different colors; all gorgeous, and a little fantastic. The
great number of mirrors was almost confusing; and French clocks, two in
some rooms, stared at one from all directions. The mirrors produced a
serious danger by their reflected perspective, and one was liable to
walk boldly into them. In the centre of the palace was an area open to
the sky, upon which doors and windows faced, after the Moorish style, as
at Cordova and Toledo, in the centre of which was an artificial lake
formed by a huge marble basin, the whole surrounded by corridors of
white marble. Here were placed divans, lounges, and luxurious chairs,
besides many choice plants in richly ornamented porcelain vases,
evidently forming the domestic lounging place of the family. We observed
an American piano in a cozy little room opening upon this corridor, and
a billiard-table in another. In the extensive grounds surrounding the
palace, landscape-gardening and modern floral effects have been finely
carried out by a skilled foreigner, who had been imported for this
special purpose from Versailles. The variety of fruit was really
remarkable, embracing orange, lemon, banana, fig, peach, and pear-trees,
and a great variety of choice f