There are about two thousand Arabians who reside principally in the capital, where they exercise every kind of trade, and are much concerned in money transactions with the government. The Greek Christians of Syria may be estimated at three thousand in Cairo, and one thousand in the other cities of Egypt. They were formerly the wholesale merchants who supplied the land proprietors and others with various kinds of articles, and were in general wealthy; but the monopoly of the viceroy has very considerably lessened their business, and diminished their funds.

The spirit of improvement which distinguishes the reign of Mohammed has produced less change on the external appearance of Cairo than on the temper and views of its inhabitants. We have elsewhere stated that this celebrated city was founded in the tenth century by the first caliph of the Fatimite dynasty, and that the famous Saladin, about two hundred years afterwards, built the ramparts with which it is surrounded, extending more than eighteen thousand yards in length. In ascending the Nile the traveller arrives first at Boulak, the port of the capital, where the vessels are moored that come from the coast. Farther south is Old Cairo, at which there is a harbour for the reception of the traders that descend from Upper Egypt. Between these two ancient towns is Cairo, properly so called, removed from the river about a mile and a half, and stretching towards the mountains of Mokattam on the east,-a distance of not less than three miles. It is encircled with a stone wall, surmounted by fine battlements, and fortified with lofty towers at every hundred paces. There are three or

four beautiful gates built by the Mamlouks, and uniting a simple style of architecture with an air of grandeur and magnificence.

But in this vast metropolis we find only one street, narrow and unpaved. The houses, like all others in Egypt, are badly built of earth or indifferent bricks, and are only distinguished by being two or three storeys high. Lighted by windows looking into back-courts or quadrangles, they appear from the streets like so many prisons, though the general aspect is a little relieved by a number of large squares and many fine mosques. That of Sultan Hassan, built at the bottom of the mountain on which the citadel is placed, is in the form of a parallelogram, and of great extent; a deep frieze goes all the way round the top of the wall, adorned with sculptures which we call Gothic, but which were introduced into Europe by the Arabians who invaded Spain.

Cairo is traversed by a canal which issues from the Nile a little below the old town, and having passed through immense and innumerable heaps of rubbish enters the modern capital on the south side, goes out at the north, and winding round the wall makes a second entrance on the west, and terminates in the Birket-el-Esbequier. The outline of the city is nearly that of a quadrant, being square towards the north and east and circular towards the south and west. This artificial river is of the greatest consequence to the inhabitants; for, besides furnishing them while the inundation continues with an abundant supply of water for all the purposes of domestic life, it affords the means of replenishing a variety of small lakes, both inside