134 DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 
within which a small fort is constructed, surround- 
ed by a trench, which is passed by means of a draw- 
bridge. Within this fort is a cistern, a deposit of 
provisions, and a church, which the superstitious 
monks reckon no less necessary than a magazine 
for sustaining the blockade of the Arabs, by which 
they are occasionally menaced. On account of the 
roving hordes which frequent the desert, the ex- 
terior wall of the monastery is constructed with a 
little wicket, instead of a gate, which is never open- 
ed without extreme precaution. In the upper part 
of the exterior wall, a platform is constructed, with 
loop-holes and small masked bastions. Within the 
exterior enclosure is a small garden, in which the 
monks cultivate some esculent plants, with a few 
dates and olives. The libraries of these monas- 
teries contain few valuable manuscripts ; consist- 
ing chiefly of ascetic treatises in the Arabic, Syriac, 
and Coptic languages. The frightful solitudes of 
Nitria have in every age been the chosen retreats 
of monastic seclusion. The dreary aspect of the 
desert, and its silent solitude, fostered a misan- 
thropic, turn of mind. The sweetest attributes of 
humanity, and the play of the kind affections, were 
resigned for a morose austerity, which soon dege- 
nerated into a sullen and ferocious gloom. In 
dreary excavated cells, of so small a size that they 
were scarcely capable of containing the human 
body, they lived immured from society, and sub- 
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