AND LOWER EGYPT. ZL^ 



ture intercepted communications already so embar- 

 rassed, and shut up the passage against Europeans 

 who were not missionaries, and who might reason- 

 ably have pretended to be more useful than Recol- 

 lects, who converted nobody, and rendered the 

 name of Franks contemptible, by a life supercili- 

 ously mendicant, and burdensome to the small 

 number of Egyptian Catholics ; for all their science 

 consisted in making dupes ; and as the people were 

 not endowed with sufficient discernment to distin- 

 guish missionaries from any other Europeans, they 

 supposed we only went to Egypt in order to in- 

 sult the Cophts, and to exhibit them under the 

 most unfavourable colours. Numerous, because 

 they are, indeed, the true Egyptian race, and 

 powerful because they possess the confidence of 

 the great, whose affairs they superintend, these 

 aborigines, so different from their ancestors, ex- 

 erted their influence, on the other hand, to re- 

 present the Franks as dangerous and despicable 

 men. From thence arose principally those ob- 

 stacles which the traveller into Egypt had perpe- 

 tually to overcome, so that these missionary esta- 

 blishments, formed for the purpose of advancing 

 the interests of Heaven, were useful to nobody upon 

 earth, and became prejudicial to the progress of 

 science, by obstructing the way of resolute men, 

 who devoted themselves, in the midst of dangers, to 

 the advancement of human knowledge, and to 



p 4 which, 



