ruined state of
the Monasteries--Legends of the Desert--Capture of a Lizard--Its
_alarming_ escape--The Convent of Baramous--Night attacks--Invasion
of Sanctuary--Ancient Glass Lamps--Monastery of Souriani--Its
Library and Coptic MSS.--The Blind Abbot and his Oil-cellar--The
persuasive powers of Rosoglio--Discovery of Syriac MSS.--The
Abbot's supposed treasure.

In the month of March, 1837, I left Cairo for the purpose of visiting
the Coptic monasteries in the neighbourhood of the Natron lakes, which
are situated in the desert to the north-west of Cairo, on the western
side of the Nile. I had some difficulty in procuring a boat to take me
down the river--indeed there was not one to be obtained; but two English
gentlemen, on their way from China to England, were kind enough to give
me a passage in their boat to the village of Terrane, the nearest spot
upon the banks of the Nile to the monasteries which I proposed to visit.

The Desert of Nitria is famous in the annals of monastic history as the
first place to which the Anchorites, in the early ages of Christianity,
retired from the world in order to pass their lives in prayer and
contemplation, and in mortification of the flesh. It was in Egypt where
monasticism first took its rise, and the Coptic monasteries of St.
Anthony and St. Paul claim to be founded on the spots where the first
hermits established their cells on the shores of the Red Sea. Next in
point of antiquity are the monasteries of Nitria, of which we have
authentic accounts dated as far back as the middle of the second
century; for about the year 150 A.D. Fronto retired to the valleys of
the Natron lakes with seventy brethren in his company. The Abba Ammon
(whose life is detailed in the 'Vitae Patrum' of Rosweyd, Antwerp, 1628,
a volume of great rarity and dulness, which I only obtained after a long
search among the mustiest of the London book-stalls) flourished, or
rather withered, in this desert in the beginning of the fourth century.
At this time also the Abba Bischoi founded the monastery still called
after his name, which, it seems, was Isaiah or Esa: the Coptic article
Pe or Be makes it Besa, under which name he wrote an ascetic work, a
manuscript of which, probably almost if not quite as old as his time, I
procured in Egypt. It is one of the most ancient manuscripts now extant.

But the chief and pattern of all the recluses of Nitria was the great
St. Macarius of Al