STATE OF AFRICA. 
483 
spirituous liquors ; but avarice is the predominant 
disease of the race, and among the lower orders, to 
use the expression of Vansleb, " there are many 
" who for a meidin would kill their own father." * 
The Coptic females are generally elegant in 
form, and interesting in feature % but their chief 
beauty, according to Vansleb, consists in their large, 
black, and expressive eyes. Since an early period 
of history, the Coptic race have been more nume- 
rous in the Said or Upper Egypt, than in the 
Delta, which has always been more accessible to the 
irruptions of strangers. Several families still reside 
in the Delta, but the mass of their numbers inha- 
bit the country above Cairo. At the period of the 
Arabic invasion under Amrou, their numbers were 
estimated at six hundred thousand \ but since that 
time their numbers have greatly decreased, and 
melted away amid the influx of strangers. 
The great empire of Abyssinia appears, from the 
features of its inhabitants, to have been peopled 
from Arabia, but at so early a period, that the po- 
pulation has become almost native. Bruce seems 
to have traced very clearly many points of resem- 
blance between their manners and those of the 
Jews, during the existence of the latter as an in- 
dependent people. The Arabs represent the age 
of the patriarchs \ the Abyssinians appear to re- 
* Vansleb's Travels in Egypt, London, l6l8 ; p. 26, 
