Читать книгу By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal онлайн

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One has not seen Cairo unless he has wandered both by day and by night. So, he knows at least two different worlds. To analyse the contrast would take long. It is hard to know which part of a day charms you the most. The afternoon is not as the morning; the night is far removed from either. Go deeper, and you may get more subtle divisions of twelve hours' wandering than these; with accuracy of discrimination you may even raise seven Dantean circles in your day's progress. The safe course, then, is to "make a day of it." Tramp it, after an early breakfast, over the desert to the car, and plod back past the guard after midnight. You'll turn in exhausted, but the richer in your experience (at the expense of a few piastres) by far more than any gold can buy.

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THE MOOSKI

The camp at Tel-el-Kebir is a good camp, as camp sites go. None the less exhilarating for that is the prospect of leave in Cairo. After retiring, you spend most of the night before you go in planning the most judicious economy of the few hours you will have in the great city. And so you wake up short of sleep—for the train leaves soon after sunrise—and curse yourself for an incontinent fool, no better than some mercurial youngster who cannot sleep for thinking of the party on the next day.