348 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 
THis particular appearance, or unneceflary appendage, at 
firft made me believe that had found the real caufe of cir- 
cumcifion from analogy, but, upon information, this did not 
hold. It is however otherwife 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 Abyflinians, Gallas, Agows, Ga- 
fats, and Gongas, make their children undergo this opera- 
tion, at no fixed time indeed, but ve before they are 
marriageable. 
Wuen the Roman Catholic priefts firft fettled in Egypt, 
they did not neglect fupporting their miffion by temporal 
advantages, and {mall prefents given to needy people their 
profelytes; but miftaking this excifion of the Coptifh wo. 
men for a ceremony performed upon Judaical principles, 
_ they forbade, upon pain of excommunication, that excifion 
fhould 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. 
Bor, : THE 
