496 MORAL AND POLITICAL ST'aTE. 
than in those which demand exertion and activity. 
Minute and laborious in their habits, they often 
amass large fortunes by indefatigable patience, 
and they generally use them without ostentation. 
With such a temperament and with such habits, 
they are addicted to gross sensuality, and fond of 
the exhilaration of spirituous liquors 5 but avarice 
is the predominant disease of the race, and among 
the lower orders, to use the expression of Van- 
sleb, " 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 
numerous 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 
inhabit the country above Cairo. At the period 
of the Arabic invasion^ under Amrou, their num- 
bers 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 
* Vansleb's Travels in Egypt, London, 1678, p. 26. 
