106 African wanderings.

and stench ; as these even among the highest of them are seldom set in order, cleaned, or aired. They seldom wash themselves or bathe, and wear the same under garments, day and night, till they are worn out. To visit sick Copts, to be forced to view the dirt of themselves and their houses, and how all live on the most unhealthy viands, — half rotten fish and flesh, decayed vegetables and cheese,— is no pleasant matter.

Nor does the Copt afford a much more pleasant sight when one hieets him creeping through the streets in his long black dirty abbai, with his miserable, humiliated, pale face, made yet paler by his black beard. The dress of all is alike, consisting of a black, white, or red oemme or turban (for one of these colours they must use); coloured jackets, with sleeves, generally of silk (anteri), of which they often wear three or four, one above and each dirtier than the other ; and a caftan of silk or cotton (harir), girdled with a scarf. Over this is the so-called top; when not of cloth, this is made of black-coloured cotton stuff or chibbe, wide, open before, and falling doAvn to the feet ; and, finally, in cold weather, they wear over all this, a wide, long, open black coat, with short, loose sleeves, made of goat's hair ; it is impervious to rain, and comes from the Hedjas. The poorer substitute in the place of this an open blue linen smockfrock. From this garb, which they have voluntarily worn from olden times, they never have departed, and now they dare not. Military garbs can only be worn by the renegades among them ; but these long robes are common to all oriental races, Arabs, Turks, Persians, Indians, as well as Copts.

An esteemed ornament among the Copts is the long brass ink and pen case (among the wealthier classes it is made of silver), which, like a dagger, is stuck in his gii'dle, and cuts a groat figure there. The long, square, hollow case holds his reeds for writing (kallam), and his scissors (magass), and at the end is the well closed squarC ink-holder of the same metal as the case. He carries his whole utensils about his person, as he bears his papers under his caftan, in a pocket on his breast.

All Copts, like the Turks, hold the sheet of paper loose in one hand on their knee as they write, and this art, as well as their ever having their ink-bottles about them, enables them to carry