CAIRO. 19 always occupies two small scantily furnished rooms over the stables. The day after we arrived at Cairo was one of the Shubra gala-days, and everybody drove or rode along it. Let us suppose ourselves on the balcony watching them. To begin with, here are the mounted gendarmes coming to station themselves along the road. They are dressed in blue uniform with yellow facings, long boots, tarbooshes, and mounted on grey horses. Their arms are swords and a sort of long-barrelled pistol in their hands, to which a kind of steel triangle is attached, so as to enable them, in case of necessity, to use the triangle as a butt and fire from the shoulder. These gendarmes appear about 3 p.m. Soon after, a few carriages begin to drive up, containing generally strangers or others who do not quite know the customs of the place. About 4 p.m. the real business begins. Here come, for instance, half a dozen carriages driving wildly up, two of them containing ladies of some harem, the transparency of whose veils invariably is in proportion to the beauty or otherwise of the face underneath. The veil (yashmak) is so thin with some of them that it really does not hide the face at all, but merely slurs over any little defect in the complexion; and undoubtedly adds very much to the piquancy of the eyes, for which these Circassians are so much famed. The yashmak is a sort of double veil. The first brought round the forehead and gathered neatly up behind and on the head; the second,
