The next day we went on donkeys to see the “whirling dervishes,” an extraordinary and rather terrific sight. We entered a mosque consisting of a square hall, with sheep-skins laid down in the middle, on which a score of dervishes, in long white skirts, were ranged in a wide half-circle. Their Sheikh, an old man with a long white beard, stood between them holding the Prophet’s banner. The dervishes, their long hair falling to their shoulders, swayed their bodies from side to side, uttering ominous sounds like that of angry lions. I glanced around with an involuntary shiver, and went and sat at the back of the hall, near a group of officers of the Egyptian army, feeling a sense of security in their proximity. Suddenly the Sheikh gave vent to an odd sort of growl which I didn’t like at all, it made me think of wolves. The dervishes tried to imitate him and so horribly that I turned cold and measured the distance to the door, wanting frantically to get away. At each howl the dervishes’ heads went backward and forward and then from right to left, to the sound of cymbals and blow-pipes, their long hair covering their faces, falling gradually into frantic convulsions, their eyes out of their sockets. One of them entered into such a frenzy that he continued for more than five minutes wagging his head, not being able to stop it by inert force. The long human chain holding each other by the hand, began bending to the ground to the increasing shouts of “Allah, Allah!” At last they fell on the floor inanimate, with foam on their lips. Having gone through all this programme, the dervishes, quietening down, came up to their Sheikh and kissed him. When we went out of the mosque we had to pass before a sacred goat, a very wicked one, who tried to butt all the passers-by with his horns. We remounted our donkeys and our little cavalcade started off on the long white road. My frisky, little ass trotted swiftly, moving gaily his long ears, and Sergy had great difficulty to keep up to me, being obliged to struggle with his stubborn donkey which was vicious and kicked frantically all the time. We came up to a little desolate village inhabited by Copts, native Christians belonging to the Orthodox faith, and visited in the first place the Coptic church, built on the place where the Virgin Mary, Joseph and the Holy Child are said to have stayed when they fled to Egypt. We stood on the very spot where the Holy Family had rested. The water stood inches deep upon the floor from the overflowing of the Nile. When we went out of the church we saw on the perch a crowd of Coptic beggars who whined in English, “A penny for the love of Christ!”