[Gutenberg 4657] • Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. LIFE IN THE WAKALAH. The " Wakalah," as the Caravanserai or Khan is called in Egypt, combines the offices of hotel, lodginghouse, and store. It is at Cairo, as at Constantinople, a massive pile of buildings surrounding a quadrangular " Hosh " or court-yard. On the ground-floor are rooms like caverns for merchandise, and shops of different kinds --tailors, cobblers, bakers, tobacconists, fruiterers, and others. A roofless gallery or a covered verandah, into which all the apartments open, runs round the first and sometimes the second story: the latter, however, is usually exposed to the sun and wind. The accommodations consist of sets of two or three rooms, generally an inner one and an outer; the latter contains a hearth for cooking, a bathing-place, and similar necessaries. The staircases are high, narrow, and exceedingly dirty; dark at night, and often in bad repair; a goat or donkey is tethered upon the different landings; here and there a fresh skin is stretched in process of tanning, and the smell reminds the veteran traveller of those closets in the old French vapourers (bombastic Babus, and other such political ranters), should learn that the sacred spark of patriotism is exotic here, and can never fall on a mine that can explode; for history will show them that certain peculiarities of physical, as well as moral organisation, neither to be strengthened by diet nor improved by education, have hitherto prevented their ever attempting a national independence; which will continue to exist to them but as a name, and as an offscouring of college declamations." inns where cat used to be prepared for playing the part of jugged hare. The interior is unfurnished; even the pegs upon which clothes are hung have been pulled down...