APPENDIX, No. V. 491 
Eaft tliey extend along the road to Bilbeis and Salehlch. The 
villages indeed are ill built ; yet a houfe is here of little ufe but 
as a flielter from the fun. One of our neat, fnug, brick houfes, 
covered with red tiles, would be abfolutely intolerable in Egypt. 
They are poor becaufe the government is oppreffive, not be- 
caufe they are uninclined to labour. The muddy appearance 
of the Nile water is no motive for any Egyptian to abftain from 
drinking it ; nor is any other circumftance attending it, except 
ks being polluted. Water, according to their law, is not pol- 
luted by a camel, a horfe, or an ox drinking of it ; but it is by 
a dog's drinking, or a man wafhing his hands in it. 
481. Boyer feems to have been too hafty in numbering the 
inhabitants — 400,000 feems to me about one-fourth too much. 
- r 
Ibid. The ftreets of Kahira are narrow, but inconveniences 
would attend their being wider. The houfes are by no means 
without order : two long ftreets, as is feen in Niebuhr's 
plan, bifedt the city longitudinally and parallel with the river. 
The ftreets are often rectilinear, though they are by no means 
redangular. 
The ecclefiaftics all read, and many of them write. Ail 
merchants of any confequence read, and many write. Often 
their female offspring are taught to read. The Copts moft of 
them read and write. Who then regards the art« of reading 
and writing with admiration ? The foldiers, the peafants, and 
the laborious part of the populace are ignorant enough of read- 
3R 2 ing 
