The Egyptians, though they live so near the Arabians, have the same religion, and are governed by the same laws, yet they are very different in their manners and customs. In all the towns and villages along the Nile, for example, we meet with girls set apart for the embraces of travellers, without any obligation to pay for such indulgence. For this purpose they have houses always full of these girls; and when a rich man finds himself dying, as an act of pious charity he disburses a sum of money to provide damsels and an edifice of this kind. When any of these girls have a male child, the mother is obliged to rear him till the age of three or four, after which she carries him to the patron of the house, or his heir, who employs him as one of his slaves. The girls, however, remain with the mother, and when of a proper age they supply her place. The Egyptian women are very brown, their eyes ate lively, their stature rather low, their mode of dress by no means agreeable, and their conversation very tiresome. They are remarkable for bearing a number of children; and some travellers pretend, that the fertility occasioned by the inundation of the Nile is not confined to the earth, but to the human and animal creation. They add, that by drinking of the Nile, or by bathing in it, the first two months after its overflow, which are those of July and August, the women generally conceive; that in April and May they are as generally delivered, and that cows almost always bring forth two calves, a ewe two lambs, &c. To reconcile this benign influence of the Nile with the troublesome disorders occasioned by it would be difficult. Granger says, that in Egypt the air is unwholesome; that the eyes are peculiarly subject to diseases so inveterate, that many lose their sight; that in this country there are more blind people than in any other; and that during the increase of the Nile the generality of the inhabitants are afflicted with obstinate dysenteries, occasioned by the water being then strongly impregnated with saline particles. Though the women of Egypt are commonly small, yet the men are of a good height. Both, generally speaking, are of an olive colour, and the more we remove from Cairo the more tawny we find the natives, till we come to the confines of Nubia, where they are nearly as black as the Nubians themselves.