AND LOWER EGYPT. 47 



of a holy Mussulman who is interred there, and in 

 honour of whom a Uttle chapel has been erected. 

 By the side of this monument of the piety, or 

 rather of the silly superstition, of the Mahometans, 

 men of the same religion, great devotees to Saint 

 Aboufedd, but abandoned robbers, occupy caves 

 hewn in the rock, formerly peopled, it is said, by 

 anchorites, if, however, these excavations are not, 

 like those of Scheick Abade, and of the two chains 

 of mountains between which the Nile flows, in the 

 upper part of Egypt, ancient funeral apartments 

 and antique tombs ; for with whatever pious belief 

 one may be inspired, it is hardly possible to believe 

 that those myriads of grottoes there hollowed out, 

 could have been the work and the habitations of 

 so many solitary drones^ whose favourite passion 

 was not, as is well known, the love of labour ; 

 with so much the more reason, that in several of 

 them may be still found incontestable proofs which 

 evince their high antiquity. Whatever may be the 

 fact, the robbers who inhabit them at present, are 

 the most formidable of pirates for the navigation 

 of Egypt, and the most difficult to exterminate, 

 because thev conceal themselves within the inac- 

 cessiblc cavities of those mountains. 



Besides the danger which you are in of being 

 plundered, whilst sailing by the mountain oiAbou- 

 feda, you arc there likewise exposed to the risk of 



shipwreck. 



