intelligible argument that all such practices savour of the Ebu er Rukkeh (equivalent to black art), and are haram to the greatest extent; besides, I add, being ‘all lies’ into the bargain.  The applicants for child-making and charm-reading are Copts or Muslims, quite in equal numbers, and appear alike indifferent as to what ‘Book’:  but all but one have been women; the men are generally perfectly rational about medicine and diet.

I find there is a good deal of discontent among the Copts with regard to their priests and many of their old customs.  Several young men have let out to me at a great rate about the folly of their fasts, and the badness and ignorance of their priests.  I believe many turn Muslim from a real conviction that it is a better religion than their own, and not as I at first thought merely from interest; indeed, they seldom gain much by it, and often suffer tremendous persecution from their families; even they do not escape the rationalizing tendencies now abroad in Christendom.  Then their early and indissoluble marriages are felt to be a hardship:  a boy is married at eight years old, perhaps to his cousin aged seventeen (I know one here in that case), and when he grows up he wishes it had been let alone.  A clever lad of seventeen propounded to me his dissatisfaction, and seemed to lean to Islam.  I gave him an Arabic New Testament, and told him to read that first, and judge for himself whether he could not still conform to the Church of his own people, and inwardly believe and try to follow the Gospels.  I told him it was what most Christians had to do, as every man could not make a sect for himself, while few could believe everything in any Church.  I suppose I ought to have offered him the Thirty-nine Articles, and thus have made a Muslim of him out of hand.  He pushed me a little hard about several matters, which he says he does not find in ‘the Book’:  but on the whole he is well satisfied with my advice.

Coptic Palm Sunday, April 1.

We hear that Fadil Pasha received orders at Assouan to go up to Khartoum in Giaffar Pasha’s place:  it is a civil way of killing a fat old Turk, if it is true.  He was here a week or two ago.  My informant is one of my old crew who was in Fadil Pasha’s boat.

I shall wait to get a woman-servant till I go to Cairo, the women here cannot iron or sew; so, meanwhile, the wife of Abd el-Kader, does my washing, and Omar irons; and we get on capitally.  Little Achmet waits, etc., and I think I am more comfortable so than if I had a maid,—­it would be no use to buy a slave, as the trouble of teaching her would be greater than the work she would do for me.