Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/174

156 contributions to the support of their brotherhood. Formerly it was the practice of these "religious" to dive from the rock on which their monastery is situated, and swim out to the passing steamer or dahabiyeh to solicit bakshîsh. It seems a pity that so picturesque and adventurous a custom should have been put an end to by the Patriarch of the Coptic Church; but, after all, one can hardly wonder at his disapproval of it. If the minor clergy of the riparian parishes of the Upper Thames took to diving, scantily clad, into the river, and importuning the occupants of house-boats for aid to the Curates' Augmentation Fund, it is eminently probable that their diocesan would interfere. Anyhow the monks of Gebel-el-Tayr take their headers no longer, and an aquatic industry of an absolutely unique character has in consequence disappeared from the Nile. Nor is it till we reach the First Cataract that we meet with another, of somewhat the same description, and almost if not quite as extraordinary—an