height of the Citadel, which commands all Cairo, the platform of the
Pyramids (not only the Ghizeh Pyramids but the sixty odd others, which
newcomers don't talk about): the tawny Mokattam Hills, and the silver-blue
serpent of the Nile. From this vantage place I pointed out the
things we had to see in the city spread out below us, so that on the
vaguest minds the picture might be painted in its entirety, before they
began to absorb details on that mosaic map which was Cairo. The tombs
of the Mamelukes, strangely shaped monuments, vague and white as
squatting ghosts; the graves of the Caliphs; the historic gates of
el-Kahira; and the many ancient mosques, whose minarets soared against the
blue like tall-stemmed flowers in a palace garden.

Mentally fortified by this bird's-eye view from the Citadel (of course,
I had to trot them up again for the sunset), my charges let themselves
be led from mosque to mosque, from tomb to tomb. Some, possessed with a
demoniac desire to get their money's worth of Egypt, were unable to
enjoy any sight, in their nervous dread of missing some other
spectacle, which people at home might ask them about. These strained
their wearied intelligences to see more than they possibly could at any
one moment, unless they had eyes all round their heads; and others, of
an even more irritating type, never lifted the few eyes they had from
the pages of guide-books. I liked better those who, like Monny, frankly
said that they didn't wish to have their minds tidied up, and be told a
string of things about Egypt. They just wanted to _feel_ the things,
and let them slowly soak in. And the nice, lazy, Southern Americans,
who said they were "tomb shy," and loitered about, betting from one to
six scarabs on the speed of fleas, or donkeys, while I whipped forth
for their tired companions a dull drove of facts fattened for their
benefit.