242 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



insult. Europeans, in the usual dress of their 

 own country, were likewise exposed, at Rossetta, 

 to be hooted at, in the more populous quarters of 

 the town, and to be pursued with repeated shouts 

 of Nouzranu Nazarene. The Jews likewise under- 

 went there those petty persecutions, and, though 

 stationary inhabitants of the country, were much 

 worse treated in it than the Christians of Europe. 

 But that nation is composed of degraded indivi- 

 duals, and deserves to be despised, inasmuch, as, 

 insensible to contempt, to the disgrace accumula- 

 ted on them by wave upon wave, they suffered 

 themselves, if I may use the expression, to be de- 

 luged with it, provided you left them the facility of 

 glutting their vile and insatiable thirst of gold. 

 Habited in the oriental stvle, they were obliged, 

 in Egypt, to wear a head-dress, and to be shod, in 

 a peculiar and appropriate manner ; but what prin- 

 cipally distinguished them, was the tufts of hair, 

 or of beard, which they were forced to let grow, and 

 to keep up, close by the ear, on both sides of the 

 face. Most of the merchants were Turks or Sy- 

 rians ; there were some likewise from Barbary. 

 The Cophts, that degenerate race, descended from 

 the ancient Egyptians, resided there in consider- 

 able numbers. Some Arabs too were domesticated 

 in that city, and the plains adjacent were inhabit- 

 ed and cultivated by the fellahs ; a term which, 

 in Egypt, conveys an idea of contempt, as in an- 

 cient 



