We had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a good many saints in the course of our eastern travels; but I do not know that we ever found they had done anything to merit the position. One very horrible old man named Sheik Saleem has, it is true, been sitting on a dirt heap near Farshût, unclothed, unwashed, unshaven, for the last half-century or more, never even lifting his hand to his mouth to feed himself; but Sheik Cotton had gone to no such pious lengths, and was not even dirty. We are by this time drawing toward a range of yellow cliffs that have long been visible on the horizon, and which figure in the maps as Gebel et Tâyr. The Arabian desert has been closing up on the eastern bank for some time past and now rolls on in undulating drifts to the water’s edge. Yellow bowlders crop out here and there above the mounded sand, which looks as if it might cover many a forgotten temple. Presently the clay bank is gone and a low barrier of limestone rock, black and shiny next the water-line, has taken its place. And now, a long way ahead, where the river bends and the level cliffs lead on into the far distance, a little brown speck is pointed out as the Convent of the Pulley. Perched on the brink of the precipice it looks no bigger than an ant-heap. We had heard much of the fine view to be seen from the platform on which this convent is built, and it had originally entered into our programme as a place to be visited on the way. But Minieh has to be gained now at all costs; so this project has to be abandoned with a sigh. And now the rocky barrier rises higher, quarried here and there in dazzling gaps of snow-white cuttings. And now the convent shows clearer; and the cliffs become loftier; and the bend in the river is reached; and a long perspective of flat-topped precipice stretches away into the dim distance. It is a day of saints and swimmers. As the dahabeeyah approaches, a brown poll is seen bobbing up and down in the water a few hundred yards ahead. Then one, two, three bronze figures dash down a steep ravine below the convent walls, and plunge into the river--a shrill chorus of voices, growing momentarily more audible, is borne upon the wind--and in a few minutes the boat is beset by a shoal of mendicant monks, vociferating with all their might “_Ana Christian ya Hawadji!--Ana Christian ya Hawadji!_” (“I am a Christian, oh, traveler!”) As these are only Coptic monks and not Moslem santons, the sailors, half in rough play, half in earnest, drive them off with punting poles; and only one shivering, streaming object, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, is allowed to come on board. He is a fine, shapely man, aged about forty, with splendid eyes and teeth, a well-formed head, a skin the color of a copper beech-leaf, and a face expressive of such ignorance, timidity, and half-savage watchfulness as makes one’s heart ache.