His assumption is, that “the founders of those Towers were primitive Cœnobites and Bishops, _munificently_ supported in the undertaking by the newly-converted kings and toparchs; the builders and architects being those monks and pilgrims who, from Greece and Rome, either preceded or accompanied our early missionaries in the fifth and sixth centuries”; which he pretends to substantiate in the following manner. Having discovered, by a most miraculous effort of penetration, that one hundred and fifty Greek and Roman religionists had accompanied St. Abhan on his return from imperial Rome,--whither he had gone to complete his theological studies, towards the end of the fifth century,--and not knowing how to occupy those strangers in this _then pagan_ land, the Colonel, with his industrious habits, well aware that “idleness is the mother of mischief,” sets them, at once, about building the Towers. But as it would be too lavish a display of knight-errantry to waste their time and strength without some ostensible purpose, he must, of course, find out for them a pretext, at least, for such; and so, in the eagerness of his milito-monastic zeal, he flies off, at a tangent, to the top of Mount Colzoum, near the desert of Gebel,--“a short day’s journey from the Red Sea,”--where he thinks he has got, in the monasteries of the Egyptian monks, a direct, immediate, and indubitable prototype. Reader, you shall be the judge. Here is his own translation of Bonnani’s description of the place, viz.: “There are three churches, of which St. Anthony’s, which is small and very old, is the most distinguished; the second is dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul; and the third church is raised in honour of St. Macaire, who has been a lay brother in this convent. All the cells stand separately from each other; they are _ill built_, the walls being composed of clay, covered in with flat roofs and diminutive windows only one foot square. Close to the refectory, which is dark and dirty, the monks have added a rather decent apartment, in their wonted hospitality, destined to the reception of visitors.