3|S TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



This particular appearance, or unnecefTary app'endagfe, at 

 firft made me believe chat I had found the real caufe of cir- 

 cumcifion from analogy, but, upon information, this did not 

 hold. It is however otherwiie in the excifion of women. 

 From climate, or fome other caufe, a certain difproportion 

 is found generally to prevail among them. And, as the po- 

 pulation of a country has in every age been confidered as an 

 object worthy of attention, men have endeavoured to re- 

 medy this deformity by the amputation of that redundancy. 

 All the Egyptians, therefore, the Arabians, and nations to 

 the fouth of Africa, the Ab)ffinians, Gallas, Agows, Ga- 

 fats, and Gongas, make their children undergo this opera- 

 tion, at no fixed time indeed, but always before they are 

 marriageable. 



When the Roman Catholic priefls firft fettled in Egypt, 

 they did not neglect fupporting their miflion by temporal 

 advantages, and fmall prefents given to needy people their 

 p ofelytes ; but miftaking this excifion of the Coptifh wo- 

 men for a ceremony performed upon Judaical principles, 

 they forbade, upon pain of excommunication, that excifion 

 mould be performed upon the children of parents who 

 had become Catholics. The converts obeyed, the children 

 grew up, and arrived at puberty ; but the confequences of 

 having obeyed the interdict were, that the man found, 

 by chufing a wife among Catholic Cophts, he fubjected 

 himfelf to a very difagreeable inconveniency, to which he 

 had conceived an unconquerable averfion, and therefore 

 he married a heretical wife, free from this objection, and 

 with her he relapfed into herefy. 



7 The 



