DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 
135 
jected themselves to the most dreadful penances. 
Having acquired a slight tincture of Christianity, 
in the first centuries after its promulgation, they 
did not renounce their ascetic practices, but ex- 
hibited the first examples of the spirit of mo- 
nachism. In the fourth century, the desert of 
Nitria swarmed with recluse penitents, and re- 
ceived a new appellation from St Macarius, who 
fixed his residence amid its solitudes. Acquiring 
in these dreary wastes the temper of ferocious ani- 
mals, when they emerged from their deserts at the 
call of religious contention, their excesses filled 
Egypt with consternation and dismay. Since that 
period their religious tenets have varied, but their 
habits have still continued coarse and barbarous, 
and their dispositions have received little amelio- 
ration. 
From the savage deserts of Nitria, we turn with 
pleasure to contemplate the fertile and beautiful 
province of Garbie, the maritime part of which ex- 
tends from Rosetta to Damietta. The soil of this 
district is not only more fertile than any other 
quarter of the Delta, but the ground is more level, 
and more frequently intersected by canals. The 
vestiges of cultivation are more numerous and di- 
versified in their appearance, and the orange and 
lemon trees grow in irregular groves by the side of 
the pomegranate and anana. Through vistoes of 
palms, which raise their heads above other trees, the 
