AMERICAN TOURISTS in Cairo are scarcer than Eskimos in Florida these days and the people who miss them most are the army of Egyptian guides who work the famed Pyramids and Sphinx.

For upwards of 30 years the Egyptian dragomen have lined their pockets with gratuities from the free-spending Americans, and took such a shine to Yanks that they even tailored their spiel along American lines.

"You don't have to. walk a mile for a camel, I'm right here," one camel driver chants, as he spots an American.

Another spurs his dromedary and gallops on the scene singing "California Here I Come."

Then, too, the camels all bear names with a familiar American ring. There's Gingerale, and Pepsi-Cola and even Sweet Sue.

Some 100 camel drivers have set up shop near the Pyramids alone, offering their mounts to tourists either for photogenic purposes or for taking what Ahoy call "the traditional ride" around the area.

In addition, there's an entire cavalry of horse guides who take parties to Giza on horseback from the nearby hotels.

However, 1957 was the lean year for everybody in the tourist business in Egypt, and camels, horses and guides are thinner. The latter will be the first to admit they miss the Americans

Business in Cairo, one of the world's truly great touristic centers, has been in the doldrums for roughly a year and a half now, travel agents point out — specifically since the Suez crisis of November 1956.

Shiploads of Chinese Communists and Iron Curtain tourists are starting to arrive in Egypt, in line with increasing Soviet interest in the area. But few of the Reds are buying the plush "red carpet" tours originally designed for well-heeled Yanks.

French and British tourists are still conspicuously absent barred from Egypt because Cairo has not resumed diplomatic ties with either nation since Egypt's Suez Canal seizure.

The city's hoteliers are crying the blues, and only in recent months have they been getting a scattering of German tourists take up a small part of the slack left by Americana who have shunned the troubled Mideast.

Construction is lagging on the half-completed Cairo Hilton, overlooking the Nile, and the three top floors of the new Shepheard's Hotel, which opened last August, are still unfinished. .

Tourist agency officials in Cairo estimate that business is still off at least 50 per cent from the 1955 level, when a record 400,000 travelers passed through the Egyptian capital.

Shopkeepers in the famed Cairo bazaars bemoan the absence of tourists, and with furtive glance to right and left decry "the politics" that has brought about this sad state of affairs.

On the city's outskirts, the great monuments of Egypt — the massive Pyramids and the Sphinx — remain impassive to the recent events, having witnessed with impunity 5,000 years of change and upheaval.

And, this is comforting — while many things may alter, Cairo's matchless antiquities lose none of their splendor, nor does the storied Nile fall to cast her spell over today's tourists just as she has captivated visitors through the ages.

Long before the rise of modern Europe, the Nile saw empires rise and fall and watched civilizations wax and wane, all the while nurturing the most fabulous civilization known to man — ancient Egypt.

It is this Egypt of antiquity that never ceases to attract tourists and it is in Cairo, the modern Egyptian capital on the right bank of the Nile, where the greatest treasures are housed.

The city's Egyptian Museum alone is worth a trip to Cairo, containing as it does the world's most magnificent collection of pharaonic treasures, including the indescribable riches found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen in 1924.

The name Cairo, of Arab origin, is a corruption of the word El Kahira, the victorious — the name it was given when founded by the Arabs In 969 A.D. The Arabic name for the city today, however, is Misr.

The ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, or Hat-Ka-Ptah, after the god Ptah, was located eight miles south of Cairo. This name in translation wound up as Algyptos, from which the modern name of the country evolved

The largest city in the Arab world with a population of 1,600,000, Cairo boasts ten luxury and first-class hotels and scores of fine European shops and restaurants.

The beautiful tree-lined Corniche, skirting the Nile for a distance of 28 miles, is flanked by swank apartment houses and such famous hostelries as the Semiramis and new Shepheard's.

To the east of the city, along a route lined by rows of barracks which formerly housed British troops, lies the modern suburb of Heliopolis, a planned city of 90,000 inhabitants, which was built up within the past 30 years.

Cairo is the cultural and intellectual center of the Arab world, harboring the El-Azhsr mosque and university founded in 970 A.D., the oldest university in existence, and Radio Cairo, the Voice of the Arabs, the most influential station in the Middle East.

Cairo's famed Citadel, a fortress built in the 13th Century, lies on the slopes of Al Mokattam Mount. A spectacular panorama of the city may be had from here, with the Sphinx and the Pyramids visible across the Nile in the distance.

From here can be seen the sharp cleavage between old and new Cairo and the recent buildup of the modern Garden City area along the Corniche of the Nile.

Houseboats and pleasure craft ply the tributaries of the river where it winds around Guezirah Island, Cairo's Ile de la Cite, with its myriad sports clubs and restaurants.

The old downtown area, which centered on the old Shepheard's Hotel, destroyed in the Nationalist riots of January 1953, is fast losing its lustre. An empty lot now marks the site of the hotel, established in 1869 on the spot where Napoleon set up his headquarters in 1798.

A giant palm tree, 40 feet high, which graced the front of the hotel's main entrance, is all that remains today. It stands rather like a ghost out of a rich, dead past.

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