AND LOWER EGYPT. I7 



served to themselves that which passes In the eyes 

 of the religious for the most precious spot ; this is a 

 grotto or low chapel, in which, as a pious tradi- 

 tion informs us, the Virgin lived some time with 

 the infant Jesus when they were obliged to flee 

 into Egypt. Such traditions as these are never 

 without their use to the monks. When the La- 

 tins wish to visit this chapel, they pay for their ad- 

 mission to the Cophts ; and if devotion carries 

 them so far as to celebrate mass there, the Cophtish 

 monks are paid for this complaisance by those of 

 the Catholic persuasion ; and these take care in 

 their turn to receive a recompense from those who 

 employ them. 



You see at ancient Cairo the granaries of Jo- 

 seph, if the name of granaries can with propriety 

 be given to a vast space of ground surrounded 

 with walls twenty feet in height, and divided into 

 a sort of courts which have no roof, or any other 

 covering whatever, in which are deposited the 

 grains brought out of Upper Egypt for the reve- 

 nue, where they are the iood of a multitude of 

 birds, and the receptacle of their ordure. The 

 walls of this enclosure are of a bad construction, 

 they have nothing in their appearance which an- 

 nounces an ancient building, and the love of the 

 marvellous alone could have attributed its eleva- 

 tion to the Patriarch Joseph. 



VOL. in. c Another 



