DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11638#0237
and lower egypt. 215
ture intercepted communications already so embar-
rassed, and shut up the passage against Europeans
who were not missionaries, and who might reason-
ably have pretended to be more useful thanRecol-
lects, who converted nobody, and rendered the
name of Franks contemptible, by a life supercili-
ously mendicant, and burdensome to the small
number of Egyptian Catholics; for all their science
consisted in making dupes ; and as the people were
not endowed with sufficient discernment to distin-
guish missionaries from any other Europeans, they
supposed we only went to Egypt in order to in-
sult the Cophts, and to exhibit them under the
most unfavourable colours. Numerous, because
they are, indeed, the true Egyptian race, and
powerful because they possess the confidence of
the great, whose affairs they superintend, these
aborigines, so different from their ancestors, ex-
erted their influence, on the other hand, to re-
present the Franks as dangerous and despicable
men. From thence arose principally those ob-
stacles which the traveller into Egypt had perpe-
tually to overcome, so that these missionary esta-
blishments, formed for the purpose of advancing
the interests of Heaven, were useful to nobody upon
earth, and became prejudicial to the progress of
science, by obstructing the way of resolute men,
who devoted themselves, in the midst of dangers, to
the advancement of human knowledge, and to
p 4 which,
ture intercepted communications already so embar-
rassed, and shut up the passage against Europeans
who were not missionaries, and who might reason-
ably have pretended to be more useful thanRecol-
lects, who converted nobody, and rendered the
name of Franks contemptible, by a life supercili-
ously mendicant, and burdensome to the small
number of Egyptian Catholics; for all their science
consisted in making dupes ; and as the people were
not endowed with sufficient discernment to distin-
guish missionaries from any other Europeans, they
supposed we only went to Egypt in order to in-
sult the Cophts, and to exhibit them under the
most unfavourable colours. Numerous, because
they are, indeed, the true Egyptian race, and
powerful because they possess the confidence of
the great, whose affairs they superintend, these
aborigines, so different from their ancestors, ex-
erted their influence, on the other hand, to re-
present the Franks as dangerous and despicable
men. From thence arose principally those ob-
stacles which the traveller into Egypt had perpe-
tually to overcome, so that these missionary esta-
blishments, formed for the purpose of advancing
the interests of Heaven, were useful to nobody upon
earth, and became prejudicial to the progress of
science, by obstructing the way of resolute men,
who devoted themselves, in the midst of dangers, to
the advancement of human knowledge, and to
p 4 which,