Shubra.

One afternoon I paid a visit to the beautiful garden and country-house of the Viceroy of Egypt.  A broad handsome street leads between alleys of sycamores, and the journey occupies about an hour and a half.  Immediately upon my arrival I was conducted to an out-building, in the yard belonging to which a fine large elephant was to be shewn.  I had already seen several of these creatures, but never such a fine specimen as this.  Its bulk was truly marvellous; its body clean and smooth, and of a dark-brown colour.

The park is most lovely; and the rarest plants are here seen flourishing in the open air, in the fulness of bloom and beauty, beside those we are accustomed to see every day.  On the whole, however, I was better pleased with the garden at Rodda.  The palace, too, is very fine.  The ceilings of the rooms are lofty, and richly ornamented with gilding, paintings, and marble.  The rooms appropriated to the viceroy’s consort are no less magnificent; the ascent to them is by a broad staircase on each side.  On the ground-floor is situate the favourite apartment of the autocrat of Cairo, furnished in the style of the reception-halls at Damascus.  A fountain of excellent water diffuses a delicious coolness around.  In the palace itself we find several large cages for parrots and other beautiful birds.  What pleased me most of all was, however, the incomparable kiosk, lying in the garden at some distance from the palace.  It is 130 paces long and 100 broad, surrounded by arcades of glorious pillars.  This kiosk contains in its interior a large and beautiful fountain; and at the four corners of the building are terraces, from which the water falls in the form of little cataracts, afterwards uniting with the fountain, and shooting upwards in the shape of a mighty pillar.  All things around us, the pavilion and the pillars, the walls and the fountain, are alike covered with beautiful marble of a white or light-brown colour; the pavilion is even arranged so that it can be lighted with gas.

From this paradise of the living I rode to the abode of the dead, the celebrated “world of graves,” which is to be seen in the desert.  Here are to be found a number of ancient sepulchres, but most of them resemble ruins, and to find out their boasted beauty is a thing left to the imagination of every traveller.  I only admired the sepulchre of Mehemet Ali’s two sons, in which the bones of his wife also rest:  this is a beautiful building of stone; five cupolas rise above the magnificent chambers where the sarcophagi are deposited.

The petrified date-wood lies about eight miles distant from Cairo; I rode out there, but did not find much to see, excepting here and there some fragments of stems and a few petrifactions lying about.  It is said that the finest part of this “petrified wood” begins some miles away; but I did not penetrate so far.