In the evening we were invited to a reception at Dr. Grant’s, who is a Scotchman. His wife was from Pennsylvania, U.S.A., and had been a schoolmate of one of our Oriental party. The doctor has been here twenty-nine years. He has a mania for collecting Egyptian relics, and his residence is a perfect museum. He read us a paper that he had prepared on Egyptian music, which was considered fine. Certainly, it showed study. Coffee, tea, lemonade, cake, etc., were a part of the programme. We reached our hotel at 11.30 P.M., and called it a full day.

We have enjoyed our ten days’ touring here in Cairo. Most of them have been busy ones. We have been pretty thoroughly through the museum, which is very extensive, but almost wholly Egyptian.

But I have had you jostling against the natives, so much on donkeys and camels, in temples and tombs, etc., so I will not detain you long in that building, but will call your attention to a few things that interest me most. First was the statue of a man, his face having a splendid expression, well formed, fine muscle and joints, well dressed for this climate, seemingly perfect in all his parts, but, when you come to inquire for his name and what material he is made from, you will discover, by close examination, that he is nothing but wood. Quite a marvel! I think Cab Ellis must have dreamed about him before he invented his jointed doll.

The 16th of February, the day we left New York, the natives found in a tomb at Doshua, up the Nile, two gold crowns of an empress, gold chains, bracelets, and all the paraphernalia for a beautiful queen. This we saw in the museum. The workmanship was exquisite, and they looked as bright as though they had just come out of a jewelry shop. The museum building was formerly a palace, built by the khedive; and parts of it are fine of themselves, and the rooms number one hundred. It also has a garden connected with it, and a part has been made zoölogical. So, when you come to Cairo, be sure and take it in. It is about three miles out of the city.

We visited while here in Cairo, the howling dervishes. Their performance is what they call worship. They howl and bend, sway in every direction; and some of them will whirl around like a top. There were about twenty of them on a platform; and some fifty people went in to see them, with admission fee. The question with me was which was the bigger fools, the audience or the performers.

Saturday we leave here for Port Saïd by rail, there take the boat for Jaffa, and then to Jerusalem, which place we shall probably reach about the middle of next week; and I will write you from that place.

While stopping here in Cairo, we have seen some American reminders. You will occasionally see a bicycle, have seen one steam-roller for making roads. A part of the streets have on them the water-cart sprinklers. In other parts of the city what is done in that line is done with the leather water-bottle that we read of in ancient Bible history. It is the skin of the goat, many of them with the hair on, and being sewed up, from appearance, will hold two or three pailfuls. They are filled and emptied at the neck, which has a small opening. You will see thousands of the natives at the Nile filling these bottles. I should say they would weigh, when filled, one hundred pounds. They are carried on the side with a strap over the shoulder. They will go on the street, partly close the outlet with one hand, giving a swaying motion, and will thus sprinkle the streets quite rapidly and very acceptably to the dusty traveller; yet, when you have summed up the whole country, you will be obliged to write the word passé. They are ploughing with the same plough that Elisha used, treading out the grain with oxen. The camels are the burden-bearers. Everything about as it was four thousand years ago. Whether Jonah’s experience, as related by Dudley Warner, had any effect upon them, I am not prepared to say. When the whale landed Jonah on shore, his skin tender as a parboiled chicken, he saw a blind man eating dates. Jonah with his tender heart restored the man’s eyesight. As soon as this was done, he began to snap the seed at Jonah, and, he being in a tender condition, it hurt him prodigiously, and he complained to the Lord; but word soon came back to let things be as he had fixed them or take the consequences.

The Egyptians have let things be about as they were, and when they are going to have courage to change them no one can tell. A new civilization will have to be introduced, woman elevated, Mohammedanism exchanged for a pure religion.