120 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



carry their rudeness to such a length as to accept 

 of it, and they ordered it to be returned to mc, 



If we compare the reception I met with from 

 these pretended missionaries, with that which I 

 daily experienced from the Arabs, the Mamelucs, 

 and other inhabitants of Egypt, we shall very 

 soon have the estimate of the hospitality of the 

 one and of the others. The stranger was admit- 

 ted with frankness, with cordiality, and, atthe 

 same time, without any interested view, into the 

 house, or beneath the tent of the half-policed man 

 of this country ; and he was exposed to the hu- 

 miliation of being repulsed by Europeans, among 

 whom he might naturally expect to meet with 

 that courtesy which creates friends, the compa- 

 triots of those who meet with them in distant 

 lands, whatever might be the part of Europe from 

 whence they at first originated. The day before, 

 an austere Mussulman, whose superstitious pride 

 regards an European as a being almost unworthy 

 to approach him, obliged me to take a place at 

 his table, and in his house ; and, the next -day, 

 the only Francs who existed in a great city, where 

 they were, like myself, strangers, and tolerated, 

 treated me vv'ith the most mortifying incivility. 



But these Italian monks, of one of the orders 

 which slothfulness and ignorance charactejize, and 



of 



