Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 by Various
page 85 of 313 (27%)
page 85 of 313 (27%)
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limits of possibility in the multitude of its population, and exalting
itself on account of its beauty and splendor. It is the rendezvous of travelers, the station of the weak and the powerful. Thou wilt there find all that thou desirest--the wise and the ignorant, the industrious and the trifling, the mild or the angry, men of low extraction or of lofty birth, the illustrious and the obscure. The number of its inhabitants is so considerable that their currents resemble those of an agitated sea, and the city lacks very little of being too small to contain them, notwithstanding its extent and capacity. Although founded long since, it enjoys a youth forever renewed; the star of its horoscope does not cease to inhabit a fortunate house. It is in speaking of Cairo that Wasr ed-deen has written: "It is a paradise in truth; its gardens ever smile, Adorned and fed so plenteously by all the waves of Kile, Which, fretted by the blowing wind, from shore across to shore, Mimic the armor's azure scales the prophet David wore; Within its fluid element the naked fear to glide, And ships, like winged heavenly spheres, go up and down the tide.'" Ibn Batuta's description of the pyramids is very curious, and we can account for it on no other supposition than that he merely saw them in the distance (probably from the citadel of Cairo), relying on hearsay for further particulars. After stating that they were built by the ancient _Hermes_, whom he supposes to be identical with Enoch, as a repository for the antediluvian arts and sciences, he says: 'The pyramids are built of hard, well-cut stone. They are of a very considerable elevation, and of a circular form, capacious at the base and narrow at the summit, _in the fashion of cones_. They have no doors, and one is ignorant of the manner in which they have been constructed.' |
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