Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/372

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3|S TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

This particular appearance, or unnecefTary app'endagfe, at firft made me believe chat I had found the real caufe of cir- cumcifion from analogy, but, upon information, this did not hold. It is however otherwiie in the excifion of women. From climate, or fome other caufe, a certain difproportion is found generally to prevail among them. And, as the po- pulation of a country has in every age been confidered as an object worthy of attention, men have endeavoured to re- medy this deformity by the amputation of that redundancy. All the Egyptians, therefore, the Arabians, and nations to the fouth of Africa, the Ab)ffinians, Gallas, Agows, Ga- fats, and Gongas, make their children undergo this opera- tion, at no fixed time indeed, but always before they are marriageable.

When the Roman Catholic priefls firft fettled in Egypt, they did not neglect fupporting their miflion by temporal advantages, and fmall prefents given to needy people their p ofelytes ; but miftaking this excifion of the Coptifh wo- men for a ceremony performed upon Judaical principles, they forbade, upon pain of excommunication, that excifion mould be performed upon the children of parents who had become Catholics. The converts obeyed, the children grew up, and arrived at puberty ; but the confequences of having obeyed the interdict were, that the man found, by chufing a wife among Catholic Cophts, he fubjected himfelf to a very difagreeable inconveniency, to which he had conceived an unconquerable averfion, and therefore he married a heretical wife, free from this objection, and with her he relapfed into herefy.

7 The