Another rich Copt established two large primary schools at Asyut, one for boys and the other for girls. In the boys’ school there are five hundred and fifty pupils, 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 patriarch 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 unbaptized child will be blind in the next life. They have fixed times for baptism, a boy baby being baptized at forty days and a girl baby at eighty days after birth. There are Coptic churches all over Egypt, and I find several here at Asyut. The church usually consists of four or five buildings surrounding a court, and includes a chapel, a hall of worship, the residence of the bishop, and other rooms. The sanctuary proper contains an altar separated from the rest of the rooms by a screen, covered by a curtain with a cross worked upon it. Before this curtain stand the priest, the choir, and the more influential members of the congregation. Beyond them is a lattice work, on the other side of which are the less important men, with the women in the rear. Everyone is expected to take off his shoes when he comes in, and in many of the halls of worship, as there are no seats, the people lean upon sticks while the sermon is preached. The service begins at daybreak and often lasts four or five hours, so that it is no wonder that some of the members of the congregation fall to chatting during the preaching, and discuss business and social matters.