DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11637#0157
142 TRAVELS IN UPPER
This natron is procured chiefly in the month of
August. It is found also, though in less quantity,
during all the rest of the year. It is separated
from the ground with iron instruments, and carried
on the backs of camels to Ten-ana, where it is
shipped on the Nile, to be conveyed to Cairo, or to
the warehouses at Rossetta. Here twelve hundred
and fifty tons are collected annually, and much
more might be obtained. Its common price,
delivered either at Cairo or Rossetta, is fifteen or
eighteen medins a hundred weight
Before you reach the lakes, there is a small
house on the declivity of the hill, in which the
Cophts say a saint was born, to whom they pay
particular honour. They call him Maxhnous;
probably the Saint Maximus, or Saint Maximums,
of the Catholic legends.
I staid some time near the lakes, the borders of
which I traversed: at length we resumed our
journey, continuing our course to the south-west.
The sand, over which we travelled, was completely
covered with hardened natron, which rendered our
progress toilsome and fatiguing both to us and our
beasts. We arrived within a short distance of a
large square edifice, in which a few Cophtic monks
live shut up from the world. I do not think, that
there is upon earth a more horrible or repulsive
situation
This natron is procured chiefly in the month of
August. It is found also, though in less quantity,
during all the rest of the year. It is separated
from the ground with iron instruments, and carried
on the backs of camels to Ten-ana, where it is
shipped on the Nile, to be conveyed to Cairo, or to
the warehouses at Rossetta. Here twelve hundred
and fifty tons are collected annually, and much
more might be obtained. Its common price,
delivered either at Cairo or Rossetta, is fifteen or
eighteen medins a hundred weight
Before you reach the lakes, there is a small
house on the declivity of the hill, in which the
Cophts say a saint was born, to whom they pay
particular honour. They call him Maxhnous;
probably the Saint Maximus, or Saint Maximums,
of the Catholic legends.
I staid some time near the lakes, the borders of
which I traversed: at length we resumed our
journey, continuing our course to the south-west.
The sand, over which we travelled, was completely
covered with hardened natron, which rendered our
progress toilsome and fatiguing both to us and our
beasts. We arrived within a short distance of a
large square edifice, in which a few Cophtic monks
live shut up from the world. I do not think, that
there is upon earth a more horrible or repulsive
situation