But let me not harbour thoughts of irony! Surely not. If, in our Western lands, certain ceremonies seem to me anti-Christian--as, for example, one of those spectacular high masses in the over-pompous Cathedral of Cologne, where halberdiers overawe the crowd--here, on the contrary, the simplicity of this primitive cult is touching and respectable in the extreme. These Copts who install themselves in their church, as round their firesides, who make their home there and encumber the place with their fretful little ones, have, in their own way, well understood the word of Him who said: “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God.” CHAPTER IX THE RACE OF BRONZE A monotonous chant on three notes, which must date from the first Pharaohs, may still be heard in our days on the banks of the Nile, from the Delta as far as Nubia. At different places along the river, half-made men, with torsos of bronze and voices all alike, intone it in the morning when they commence their endless labours and continue it throughout the day, until the evening brings repose. Whoever has journeyed in a dahabiya up the old river will remember this song of the water-drawers, with its accompaniment, in slow cadence, of creakings of wet wood. It is the song of the “shaduf,” and the “shaduf” is a primitive rigging, which has remained unchanged since times beyond all reckoning. It is composed of a long antenna, like the yard of a tartan, which is supported in see-saw fashion on an upright beam, and carries at its extremity a wooden bucket. A man, with movements of singular beauty, works it while he sings, lowers the antenna, draws the water from the river, and raises the filled bucket, which another man catches in its ascent and empties into a basin made out of the mud of the river bank. When the river is low there are three such basins, placed one above the other, as if they were stages by which the precious water mounts to the fields of corn and lucerne. And then three “shadufs,” one above the other, creak together, lowering and raising their great scarabaeus' horns to the rhythm of the same song.