CHAPTER II.

Osiout, 27th November. Taking a hasty breakfast, Faris and I secured donkeys, and started up to the town, which, unlike most other large towns, is not on the river's bank, but about a mile and a half inland. The road to it is over a raised cause-way or dyke, called in Arabic a jisr, (bridge,) which keeps the communication with the river open, even in the time of the inundation. These "jisrs" are very common all through the valley of the Nile; they are from six to ten feet high, and serve for roads between the villages, as well as to detain for irrigation the waters which by the inundation and the canals are distributed over the land. The building and keeping of these in repair, as well as the digging of the canals, is a great slavery for the poor fellaheen.* The ride up to the town is delightful, amidst green fields, and luxuriant fruit gardens. The gate of the town presents one of the best specimens I have seen of the oriental institution of "the gate.". Within it is a fine open space, shaded by a few large lebbekh trees, and on either side are the Government offices and *The common people.

court rooms, occupied by gaudily dressed, portly Turks, and lean, Coptic scribes in black. These are the "Elders sitting in the gate." Oh, when in all the cities of this land, shall the walls be salvation, and the gates praise? Then, when that Church shall be established against which the gates of hell shall not prevail?

We found our way up to the house of Wasef, who is the American Consular Agent. and a Copt, and, after making our call of ceremony, went to the school, where we found Ibrahim, the teacher who had been left by Mr. McCague. There were but five boys in the school, but we were pleased to find him at his post, and busy, especially as it was Saturday, when neither his contract nor the example of our school in Cairo, which he had attended, obliged him to teach, and he had no previous notice of our coming.

I must here go back a little, and bring up the history of this movement. When Brother McCague came with a teacher, a number of the leading Copts, and also the Bishop, manifested a good deal of joy in the prospect of having a school; and the Bishop furnished a school room. But he had scarcely left when the "Areefs," (the blind schoolmasters,) whose influence with the people is in many places even greater than that of the priesthood, took the alarm lest their trade of teaching, (not the young ideas how to shoot, but the young throats how to shout-viz., the

THE BLIND SCHOOLMASTERS.

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psalms and dead Coptic prayers,) together with their small, resultant gains, should be cut off, and, accordingly, they set themselves to crush the school in the bud. The Bishop is an old man, more noted for his monkish austerities than his powers of government, and the Areefs easily persuaded him to take their view of the subject, and call a meeting of the sect, at, which the Areefs, with all the vociferous clamor for which they are noted, insisted on expelling Ibrahim, with his new-fangled school books and apparatus from the town. This would have been done, except that the Consul and a few of the "pillars" of the people, the parents of the five children, interposed their veto, and so it was decided to write to the patriarch on the subject, asking his opinion, and requesting of him a teacher of a class superior to the Areefs. This request they had made some time before, and he had declined acceding to it, and they now agreed that if he did not send one, they would support our school. His answer had not yet come, though ample time had elapsed; but it was easy to foretell what it would be, as to the general question of supporting our school, whatever he might do in sending another teacher. The Patriarch, elevated to his seat by the influence of the English Consul at Cairo, and in spite of the strong opposition of Abbas Pasha, who was then on the throne, had forgotten the Protestantism which he pro

fessed while yet a monk, and violating the pledges of reforming the Church which he had then taken, had recently been guilty of various acts of opposition to our cause, and petty persecutions of Protestants; and it was, therefore, easy to divine what his decision would be. I saw that a heavy cloud was gathering, nay, had already descended upon our infant movement there, and as Ibrahim was young and inexperienced, I determined to leave Faris to take the helm and endeavor to outride the storm. I had hoped to be able to take him with me to assist in the work of book distribution, and to pursue with him my Syriac, but I saw that it was more necessary that he should remain.

In the mean time, I did all I could to prepare the minds of those whom I met for the Patriarch's answer, and I found the occasion a very opportune one, for the Patriarch had just sent his agents to levy on the sect a heavy tax to assist in building the new church, which he had recently commenced in Cairo. This "scheme" was already a very unpopular one with the people, and it did not help it any when I told them that I had been credibly informed before leaving Cairo, that he had sent to Europe an order for 25,000 piasters* worth of images for the new church, (the Coptic, like the Greek Church, does not use images, but only pictures.) The Copts,

* A coin about 3 cents in value in Egypt, and 4 in Syria.