whose marble fountain is eternally dry, whose "Cleopatra's
Needle"[FN13] is neither a needle nor Cleopatra's; whose "Pompey's
Pillar" never had any earthly connection with Pompey; and whose
Cleopatra's Baths are, according to veracious travellers, no baths at
all. Yet it is a wonderful place, this "Libyan suburb" of our day, this
outpost of civilisation planted upon the skirts of barbarism, this
Osiris seated side by side with Typhon, his great old enemy. Still may
be said of it, "it ever beareth something new[FN#14];" and Alexandria,
a threadbare subject in Bruce's time, is even yet, from its perpetual
changes, a fit field for modern description.[FN#15]

[p.11]The better to blind the inquisitive eyes of servants and
visitors, my friend, Larking, lodged me in an out-house, where I could
revel in the utmost freedom of life and manners. And although some
Armenian Dragoman, a restless spy like all his race, occasionally
remarked voila un Persan diablement degage, none, except those who were
entrusted with the secret, had any idea of the part I was playing. The
domestics, devout Moslems, pronounced me an 'Ajami,[FN#16] a kind of
Mohammedan, not a good one like themselves, but, still better than
nothing. I lost no time in securing the assistance of a Shaykh,[FN#17]
and plunged once more into the intricacies of the Faith; revived my
recollections of religious ablutions, read the Koran, and again became
an adept in the art of prostration. My leisure hours were employed in
visiting the baths and coffee-houses, in attending the bazars, and in
shopping,-an operation which hereabouts consists of sitting upon a
chapman's counter, smoking, sipping coffee, and telling your beads the
while, to show that you are not of the slaves for whom time is made; in
fact, in pitting your patience against that of your adversary, the
vendor. I found time for a short excursion to a country village on the
banks of the canal; nor was an opportunity of seeing "Al-nahl," the