They Also Bring Hither Their Female Camels, For They Believe That By Making The Animal Couch Down Before The Rock, While They Recite Some Prayers, And By Putting Fresh Grass Into The Fissures Of The Stone, The Camels Will Become Fertile, And Yield An Abundance Of Milk.

The superstition is encouraged by the monks, who rejoice to see the infidel Bedouins venerating the same object with themselves.

Those who should attempt to weaken the faith of the monks and their visitors respecting this rock, would be now almost as blameable as the original authors of the imposture; for, such is the ignorance of the oriental Christians, and the impossibility of their obtaining any salutary instruction under the Turkish government, that were their faith in such miracles completely shaken, their religion would soon be entirely overthrown, and they would be left to wander in all the darkness of Atheism. It is curious to observe the blindness with which Christians as well as Turks believe in the pretended miracles of those who are interested in deceiving them. There is hardly a town in Syria or Egypt, where the Moslems have not a living saint, who works wonders, which the whole population is ready to attest as eye-witnesses. When I was at Damascus in 1812, some Christians returned thither from Jerusalem, where they had been to celebrate Easter. Some striking miracles said to have been performed by the Pope during his imprisonment at Savona, and which had been industriously propagated by the

[p.581] Latin priests in Syria, seem to have suggested to them the design of imitating his Holiness:

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