beggars and every thing else that offered to the donkeys a reasonable

chance for a collision. When we turned into the broad avenue that leads

out of the city toward Old Cairo, there was plenty of room. The walls

of stately date-palms that fenced the gardens and bordered the way,

threw their shadows down and made the air cool and bracing. We rose to

the spirit of the time and the race became a wild rout, a stampede, a

terrific panic. I wish to live to enjoy it again.

Somewhere along this route we had a few startling exhibitions of Oriental

simplicity. A girl apparently thirteen years of age came along the great

thoroughfare dressed like Eve before the fall. We would have called her

thirteen at home; but here girls who look thirteen are often not more

than nine, in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of superb

build, bathing, and making no attempt at concealment. However, an hour's

acquaintance with this cheerful custom reconciled the pilgrims to it, and

then it ceased to occasion remark. Thus easily do even the most

startling novelties grow tame and spiritless to these sight-surfeited

wanderers.

Arrived at Old Cairo, the camp-followers took up the donkeys and tumbled

them bodily aboard a small boat with a lateen sail, and we followed and

got under way. The deck was closely packed with donkeys and men; the two

sailors had to climb over and under and through the wedged mass to work

the sails, and the steersman had to crowd four or five donkeys out of the

way when he wished to swing his tiller and put his helm hard-down. But

what were their troubles to us? We had nothing to do; nothing to do but

707

The Innocents Abroad