About midnight I step out of the cabin to look at the night. I stumble over a sleeping Arab. Two sailors, set to hold the sail-rope and let it go in case of a squall of wind, are nodding over it. The night is not at all gloomy or mysterious, but in all the broad sweep of it lovely and full of invitation. We are just passing the English dahabeëh, whose great sail is dark as we approach, and then takes the moon full upon it as we file abreast. She is hugging the bank and as we go by there is a snap. In the morning Abd-el-Atti says that she broke the tip of her yard against the bank. At any rate she lags behind like a crippled bird.
In the morning we are in sight of four dahabeëhs, but we overhaul and pass them all. We have contracted a habit of doing it. One of them gets her stern-sprit knocked off as she sheers before us, whereupon the sailors exchange compliments, and our steersman smiles just as he would have done if he had sent the Prussian boat to the bottom. The morning is delicious, not a cloud in the sky, and the thermometer indicating a temperature of 56°; this moderates speedily under the sun, but if you expected an enervating climate in the winter on the Nile you will be disappointed; it is on the contrary inspiring.
We pass the considerable town of Golosaneh, not caring very much about it; we have been passing towns and mounds and vestiges of ancient and many times dug-up civilizations, day and night. We cannot bother with every ash-heap described in the guide-book. Benisooef, which has been for thousands of years an enterprising city, we should like to have seen, but we went by in the night. And at night most of these towns are as black as the moon will let them be, lights being very rare. We usually receive from them only the salute of a barking dog. Inland from Golosaneh rises the tall and beautiful minaret of Semaloot, a very pretty sight above the palm-groves; so a church spire might rise out of a Connecticut meadow. At 10 o'clock we draw near the cliffs of Gebel e' Tayr, upon the long flat summit of which stands the famous Coptic convent of Sitteh Miriam el Adra, “Our Lady Mary the Virgin,”—called also Dayr el Adra.
We are very much interested in the Copts, and are glad of the opportunity to see something of the practice of their religion. For the religion is as peculiar as the race. In fact, the more one considers the Copt, the more difficult it is to define him. He is a descendant of the ancient Egyptians, it is admitted, and he retains the cunning of the ancients in working gold and silver; but his blood is crossed with Abyssinian, Nubian, Greek and Arab, until the original is lost, and to-day the representatives of the pure old Egyptian type of the sculptures are found among the Abyssinians and the Noobeh (genuine Nubians) more frequently than among the Copts. The Copt usually wears a black or brown turban or cap; but if he wore a white one it would be difficult to tell him from a Moslem. The Copts universally use Arabic; their ancient language is practically dead, although their liturgy and some of their religious books are written in it. This old language is supposed to be the spoken tongue of the old Egyptians.