An English gentleman, long resident in Cairo, had done me the honour to call upon me on the day after my arrival, and had invited me to come to his house, to see some mummies and other curiosities he had collected.  Accompanied by two of my female friends, and escorted by a gentleman who was well acquainted with the topography of the city, we set out on foot, traversing blind alleys and dark lanes, and thus obtaining a better idea of the intricacies of the place than we could possibly have gained by any other means.  Sometimes we passed under covered ways perfectly dark, which I trod, not without fear of arousing some noxious animal; then we came to narrow avenues, between the backs of high stone houses, occasionally emerging into small quadrangles, having a single tree in one corner.  We passed a house inhabited by one of the superior description of Frank residents, and we knew that it must be tenanted by a European by the handsome curtains and other furniture displayed through its open windows.  Turning into a street, for the very narrow lanes led chiefly along the backs of houses, we looked into the lower apartments, the doors of which were usually unclosed, and here we saw the men at their ordinary occupations, and were made acquainted with their domestic arrangements.  At length we arrived at a court, which displayed a door and a flight of steps at the corner.  Upon knocking, we were admitted by an Egyptian servant, who showed us up stairs into a room, where we found the master of the house seated upon one of the low stools which serve as the support of the dinner-trays in Egypt, the only other furniture that the room contained being a table, and the customary divan, which extended all round.  Coffee was brought in, served in small China cups; but all the coffee made in Egypt was too like the Nile mud for me to taste, and warm and fatigued with a walk through places from which the fresh air was excluded, I felt myself unequal to make the trial now.

Our friend’s collection of antiquities appeared to be very valuable; but I had been at the opening of a mummy-case before, and though interested by the different articles which his researches had brought to light, was more so in the examination of his house.  It was very oddly arranged, according to the ideas formed in Europe, many of the rooms looking like lanthorns, in consequence of their having windows on the stairs and passages, as well as to the street.  This was probably caused by a desire to secure a free circulation of air, but it at the same time destroyed every idea of privacy, and therefore looked exceedingly uncomfortable.  There were glass-windows to several of the apartments, but the house exhibited considerable quantities of that wooden trellice-work, represented in Mr. Lane’s book.  Nothing, indeed, can be more accurate than his descriptions; the English inhabitants of Cairo say that, reading it upon the spot, they cannot detect a single error; the designs are equally faithful, and those who study the work carefully may acquire the most correct notion of the city and its inhabitants.