lent air. The voices of the criers thus raised above the city
always struck me as having a holy and beautiful effect. First one or two
are heard faintly in the distance, then one close to you, then the cry
is taken up from the minarets of other mosques, and at last, from one
end of the town to the other, the measured chant falls pleasingly on the
ear, inviting the faithful to prayer. For a time it seems as if there
was a chorus of voices in the air, like spirits, calling upon each other
to worship the Creator of all things. Soon the sound dies away, there is
a silence for a while, and then commence the hum and bustle of the
awakening city. This cry of man, to call his brother man to prayer,
seems to me more appropriate and more accordant to religious feeling
than the clang and jingle of our European bells.

The fourth and most important time of prayer is at noon, and it is at
this hour that the Sultan attends in state the mosque at Constantinople.
The fifth and last prayer is at about three o'clock. The Bedouins of the
desert, who, however, are not much given to praying, consider this hour
to have arrived when a stick, a spear, or a camel throws a shadow of its
own height upon the ground. This time of the day is called "Al Assr."
When wandering about in the deserts, I used always to eat my dinner or
luncheon at that time, and it is wonderful to what exactness I arrived
at last in my calculations respecting the time of the Assr. I knew to a
minute when my dromedary's shadow was of the right length.

The minarets of Cairo are the most beautiful of any in the Levant;
indeed no others are to be compared to them. Some are of a prodigious
height, built of alternate layers of red and white stone. A curious
anecdote is told of the most ancient of all the minarets, that attached
to the great mosque of Sultan Tayloon, an immense cloister or arcade
surrounding a great square. The arches are all pointed, and are the
earliest extant in that form, the mosque having been built in imitation
of that at Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 265, Anno Domini 879. The
minaret belonging to this magnificent building has a stone staircase
winding round it outside: the reason of its having been built in this
curious form is said to be, that the vizier of Sultan Tayloon found the
king one day lolling on his divan and twisting a piece of paper in a
spiral form; the vizier remarking upon the trivial nature of the
employment of so great a monarch, he r