well spoken of and the rooms are furnished in good taste. It is well appointed and is furnished with a large swimming bath, English billiard table, library, etc. Golf links are also duly advertised among its numerous attractions for visitors, though considering the general lay of the desert surrounding the Pyramids "sporting bunkers" must be too plentiful even for the most determined devotee of the "royal and ancient game," and the laying out of anything approaching to a putting-green must have presented almost insuperable difficulties. There is a resident chaplain and physician.

This hotel is popular with visitors of sporting tastes, as very tolerable quail shooting can be had in the spring (see chapter on "Sport") within a few minutes of the hotel.

The second category includes medium-priced hotels with a charge of twelve or fourteen shillings a day— viz. Angleterre, Royal, Nil, Bristol, and Eden Palace.

The Hôtel d'Angleterre is a favourite resort of English and Americans, while Royal and Nil have a large proportion of French and Germans among their guests. It is a particularly comfortable and well-managed house, and is under the same proprietorship as the Continental. It has recently been rebuilt, and is furnished with all modern conveniences-lift, electric light, etc.-in fact, it is a second

Continental on a more modest scale, and may almost be regarded as a succursale or dependance of the parent establishment.

The Hotel Royal may be said to have some claims on the gratitude of Englishmen. During Arabi's rebellion, all the hotel-keepers, save the landlord of the "Royal," decamped. Thus, after the victorious campaign, the English officers would have fared badly had not the doors of the "Royal" been open to them. This hotel has a good reputation for its cuisine and moderate charges. There remains the well-known old-established Hotel du Nil, handicapped a little, however, by its situation close to the malodorous street known as the Mooski. This hotel, well known to scholars, literary men, and Egyptologists, boasts of a famous garden, one of the most beautiful and striking in Cairo. In the opinion of many of its guests, this lovely pleasure - ground, which shuts off all noises from the crowded streets, quite compensates for its proximity to the native quarter.

The third group of hotels, charging about ten shillings, consists of the Villa Victoria, Métropole, and Khedivial, and of these the first two are most

frequented by English travellers. But these are more of the class of hotel pensions than those I have described above.

The Bristol, Eden Palace, and Métropole are some recent additions to the Cairo hotels. They are fairly up to the requirements of modern tourists, have electric light, etc. The Bristol was built in 1894, and is provided with a lift. It faces the Esbekiyeh Gardens, while the Métropole is near the Place de l'Opéra. The Eden Palace was opened in 1897, and has 200 rooms.

There are several boarding-houses or private pensions, such as Villa Fink, Villa Konig, Villa Couteret, and Pension Suisse. The prices are very moderate for Cairo (eight to ten shillings a day), but they cannot be unreservedly recommended to English visitors, as they are under German proprietorship, and frequented chiefly by visitors of that nationality.

The hotels Shepheard, Royal, Du Nil, and many of the cheaper houses, are kept open all through the year. The above, with the Continental, Ghezireh Palace, Mena House, Angleterre, Bristol, Métropole, and Villa Victoria, accept Cook's hotel coupons. Speaking generally, the average of accommodation, service, attendance, and cuisine at the best hotels is high. The service, in especial, is better and more plentiful than at hotels of similar standing in Europe, owing mainly to labour being cheap. The best hotels are decidedly

expensive, but then it must be remembered that they cater for a richer class of visitors, taken as a whole, than would be found at most of the winter resorts of the South of Europe. Those who wish to spend the winter in the South with the strictest economy rarely visit Egypt. Not only is the daily pension charge high, but the incidental items in the hotel bills are very expensive. For instance, the charge for washing a dozen collars or handkerchiefs would be 3s. Tips, also, rule higher than in European hotels. But the most objectionable feature in Egyptian hotel life is the universal baksheesh system, which seems to find particularly congenial soil in the Cairo hotels. It is certainly advisable, however, for hotel visitors to conform to this custom of the country, if they care for their personal comfort.

Apartments can be obtained by the month in the Esbekiyeh quarter and elsewhere. The rents are very high. The charges for a bed and sitting-room vary from 120 fr. to 175 fr. a month.

Villas.-Furnished villas can be rented for the season, but the terms are high and the supply limited. The usual rent for a furnished villa with ten rooms in the Ismailia quarter is £30 or £40 per month. These villas are mostly of European architecture, not Moorish as in Algiers.

VI. THE MOSQUES

THOUGH, next to the bazaars, the mosques are in the opinion of the Cairo guides the chief lions of Cairo, yet it must be allowed that the ordinary visitor will find a whole day devoted solely to these Moslem temples somewhat tedious. It is certainly advisable to combine the excursion to the mosques with some other kind of sight-seeing. Those who are pressed for time could easily combine an inspection of many of the mosques with a visit to the bazaars, for half a dozen of the most interesting are within a short distance of the junction of the Rue Neuve (the continuation of the Mooski), and Suk-en-Nahassin, the centre of the bazaar quarter, viz. Ghuri, Hassanen, En Nasr Mohammed (not to be confounded with the mosque of the same name in the Citadel), Kalaun, Barkukiyeh, and El-Azhar.

The Mameluke sovereigns were great mosque builders, and it will be noticed that the most interesting mosques date from the end of the thirteenth