As I rode to and fro in the town, my guide suddenly stopped, bought
a quantity of bread, and motioned me to follow him. I thought he
was going to take me to a menagerie, and that this bread was
intended for the wild animals. We entered a courtyard with windows
all round reaching to the ground, and strengthened with iron bars.
Stopping before the first window, my servant threw in a piece of
bread; what was my horror when I saw, instead of a lion or tiger, a
naked emaciated old man rush forth, seize the bread, and devour it
ravenously. I was in the mad-house. In the midst of each dark and
filthy dungeon is fixed a stone, with two iron chains, to which one
or two of these wretched creatures are attached by an iron ring
fastened round the neck. There they sit staring with fearfully
distorted faces, their hair and beard unkempt, their bodies
emaciated, and the marrow of life drying up within them. In these
foul and loathsome dens they must pine until the Almighty in his
mercy loosens the chains which bind them to their miserable
existence by a welcome death. There is not _one_ instance of a
cure, and truly the treatment to which they are subjected is
calculated to drive a half-witted person quite mad. And yet the
Europeans can praise Mehemet Ali! Ye wretched madmen, ye poor
fellahs, are ye too ready to join in this praise?

Quitting this abode of misery, my dragoman led me to "Joseph's
well," which is deeply hewn out of the rock. I descended more than
two hundred and seventy steps, and had got half-way to the bottom of
the gigantic structure. On looking downward into its depths a
feeling of giddiness came over me.

The new palace of Mehemet Ali is rather a handsome building,
arranged chiefly in the European style. The rooms, or rather the