he devil, touching divers matters. Several of
his miracles are also put into modern English, in Lord Lindsay's book of
Christian Art. I have a MS. of the Gospels in Coptic, written by the
hand of one Zapita Leporos, under the rule of the great Macarius, in the
monastery of Laura, about the year 390, and which may have been used by
the Saint himself.

After the time of Macarius the number of ascetic monks increased to a
surprising amount. Rufinus, who visited them in the year 372, mentions
fifty of their convents; Palladius, who was there in the year 387,
reckons the devotees at five thousand. St Jerome also visited them, and
their number seems to have been kept up without much diminution for
several centuries.[4] After the conquest of Egypt by the Arabians, and
about the year 967, a Mahomedan author, Aboul Faraj of Hispahan, wrote a
book of poems, called the 'Book of Convents,' which is in praise of the
habits and religious devotion of the Christian monks. The dilapidated
monastery of St. Macarius was repaired and fortified by Sanutius,
Patriarch of Alexandria, at which good work he laboured with his own
bands: this must have been about the year 880, as he died in 881. In
more recent times the multitude of ascetics gradually decreased, and but
few travellers have extended their researches to their arid haunts. At
present only four monasteries remain entire, although the ruins of many
others may still be traced in the desert tracts on the west side of the
line of the Natron lakes, and the valley of the waterless river, which,
at some very remote period, is supposed to have formed the bed of one of
the branches of the Nile.

At the village of Terrane I was most hospitably received by an Italian
gentleman, who was superintending the export of the natron. Here I
procured camels; I had brought a tent with me; and the next day we set
off across the plain, with the Arabs to whom the camels belonged, and
who, having been employed in the transport of the natron, were able to
show us the way, which it would have been very difficult to trace
without their help. The memory of the devils and evil spirits who,
according to numerous legends, used formerly to haunt this desert,
seemed still to awaken the fears of these Arab guides. During the first
day's journey I talked to them on the subject, and found that their
minds were full of superstitious fancies.

It is said that tailors sometimes stand up to rest themselves, and on
that p