I first went out to the Mokattam Heights, lying back of the city, at an elevation of six hundred and fifty feet.  From the summit an extensive view can be obtained, embracing not only the city of Cairo, with its many mosques and minarets, but the river beyond, and still farther beyond the Gizeh (Gezer) group of the pyramids.  The side of the Heights toward the city is a vast quarry, from which large quantities of rock have been taken.  An old fort and a mosque stand in solitude on the top.  I went out by the citadel and passed the mosque tombs of the Mamelukes, who were originally brought into the country from the Caucasus as slaves, but they became sufficiently powerful to make one of their number Sultan in 1254.  The tombs of the Caliphs, successors of Mohammed in temporal and spiritual power, are not far from the Heights.

As I was returning to the city, a laborer followed me a little distance, and indicated that he wanted my name written on a piece of paper he was carrying.  I accommodated him, but do not know for what purpose he wanted it.  I stopped at the Alabaster Mosque, built after the fashion of one of the mosques of Constantinople, and decorated with alabaster.  The outside is full of little depressions, and has no special beauty, but the inside is more attractive.  The entrance is through a large court, paved with squares of white marble.  The floor of the mosque was nicely covered with carpet, and the walls are coated for a few feet with alabaster, and above that they are painted in imitation of the same material.  The numerous lamps do much towards making the place attractive.  The attendant said the central chandelier, fitted for three hundred and sixty-six candles, was a present from Louis Philippe, of France.  A clock is also shown that came from the same source.  The pulpit is a platform at the head of a stairway, and the place for reading the Koran is a small platform three or four feet high, also ascended by steps.  Within an inclosure in one corner of the building is the tomb of Mohammed Ali, which, I was told, was visited by the Khedive the day before I was there.

The most interesting part of the day was the afternoon trip to the nine pyramids of the Gizeh group.  They may be reached by a drive over the excellent carriage road that leads out to them, or by taking one of the electric cars that run along by this road.  Three of the pyramids are large and the others are small, but one, the pyramid of Cheops, is built on such magnificent proportions that it is called “the great pyramid.”  According to Baedeker, “the length of each side is now seven hundred and fifty feet, but was formerly about seven hundred and sixty-eight feet; the present perpendicular height is four hundred and fifty-one feet, while originally, including the nucleus of the rock at the bottom and the apex, which has now disappeared, it is said to have been four hundred and eighty-two feet. * * * In round numbers, the stupendous structure covers an area of nearly thirteen acres.”