CAIRO TO KISUMU and in that for the girls more than two hundred. These schools are taught by native Protestants, and not one cent of American money is spent upon them.

I am much interested in the Copts. There are about eight hundred and fifty thousand of them in the country. They look very much like the Egyptians and dress in about the same fashion. The women veil their faces, both in public and private, and until about a generation ago the unmarried women wore white veils.

These people believe in the ancient form of Christianity. They are indeed the same Christians that Egypt had in Roman times. They claim St. Mark as their first patri¬ arch and say that he preached the Gospel at Alexandria and started the sect there. They have a patriarch to-day, with twelve bishops and a large number of priests and deacons under him. They have their monks and nuns, who lead rigorous lives; they fast and pray, wear shirts of rough wool, and live upon vegetables.

The Copts believe in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ as his Son. They believe in prayer, and like the Mohammedans, pray five or six times a day. They begin their devotions at daybreak and are supposed to make five separate petitions before dark and to close with a final prayer at midnight. As they pray they recite a Psalm or chapter from the Gospel, and some have rosaries of beads on which they count forty-one times, saying the words: “Oh! my Lord, have mercy.” After this they end with a short petition. They wash before praying, and worship with their faces turned toward the east. They believe in baptism and think that an un¬ baptized child will be blind in the next life. They have 114