avenues are wide, well paved and lined with
spacious sidewalks, but here the European touch ends. After passing some
fine shops, their windows filled with costly goods from all parts of
Egypt and the Soudan, one comes upon one of the great cafes that form a
distinctive feature of Cairo street life. Here the sidewalk is half
filled with small tables, about which are grouped Egyptians and
foreigners drinking the sweet Turkish coffee that is served here at all
hours of the day.

Many of these Egyptians are in European dress, their swarthy faces and
the red fez alone showing their nationality. The young men are
remarkably handsome, with fine, regular features, large, brilliant black
eyes and straight, heavy eyebrows that frequently meet over the nose.
Their faces beam with good nature and they evidently regard the frequent
enjoyment of coffee and cigarettes as among the real pleasures of life.
But the older men all show traces of this life of ease and
self-indulgence. It is seldom that one sees a man beyond fifty with a
strong face. The Egyptian over forty loses his fine figure, he lays on
abundant flesh, his jowl is heavy and his whole face suggests satiety
and the loss of that pleasure in mere existence that makes the youth so
attractive.

Walking down this main artery of Cairo life one sees on the left a large
park surrounded by a high iron fence. This is the Esbekiyeh Gardens,
which cover twenty acres, and are planted to many choice trees and
shrubs. They contain cafes, a restaurant and a theater, and on several
evenings in the week military and Egyptian bands alternate in playing
foreign music. Beyond the gardens is an imposing opera house, with a
small square in front, ornamented with an impressive equestrian statue
of old Ibrahim Pasha, one of the few good fighters that Egypt has
produced. From the opera house radiate many streets, some leading to the
new Europeanized quarters, with noble residences and great apartment
houses; others taking one directly to the bazars and narrow streets that
give a good idea of Cairo as it existed before the foreigner came to
change its life.

Although the modern tram car clangs its way through these native
streets, it is about the only foreign touch that can be seen. Everything
else is distinctively Oriental. It is difficult to give any adequate
idea of the narrowness of these streets or of the amount of life that is
crowded into them. As in many cities of India, all the work of t