This by no means catalogues the ruins of St. Menas. There is a Southern Cemetery, private houses, wine presses, a kiln where the terra cotta flasks were made. All the desert around shows remains of the curious cult, which in some ways anticipated the methods of Lourdes.
Half a day over the desert southward brings a rider to the Wady Natrun.
THE WADY NATRUN.
The Wady is best visited by arrangement with the Egyptian Salt and Soda Company, who have the concession for developing that section of it where the Lakes and the Monasteries lie. The Company’s private railway starts at Khatatbeh, on the branch line between Cairo and Tel-el-Baroud (see Map. p. [174]). The train curves up the desert to Bir Victoria, where it waters beneath a solitary tree. Then it leaves civilisation, and for three hours nothing is seen except an occasional gazelle. At the end of that time the ground falls away to the left, and the monastery of St. Macarius appears far off. Then is seen the chain of the lakes, and across them, often in mirage, the monasteries of St. Pschoi and The Syrians. The train descends to the terminus of Bir Hooker, close to the Company’s factory and rest house.
The Wady Natrun (i.e. Natron, Soda) is a curious valley that begins near Cairo, and slopes north-westward into the heart of the Lybian Desert. It may have once been an outlet of the Nile, though it is barred now from the sea by coastal hills. Its upper and lower reaches are both barren, but in the central section—that which the railway taps—water survives in the form of a chain of mineral lakes.
The deposits were worked from antiquity, but with the rise of monasticism the Wady took a new importance, owing to its discomfort. As early as A.D 150 St. Fronto retreated here from Alexandria. St. Ammon followed in 270; St. Macarius or Mercury a hundred years later. The more moderate ascetics extracted soda with the assistance of laymen; the extremists sought a waterless stretch called Scetis—probably the southern portion of the valley where the monastery to St. Macarius still stands. There were soon 5,000 monks. It is natural that so remote a community should lose touch with the theological niceties of the capital, and in 399 the Patriarch Theophilus was obliged to rebuke the monks for minimising the divine element in the Second Person. Their reply was startling. They crossed the desert, stormed Alexandria, and made the Patriarch apologise. A few years later he led an army into the Wady to punish them, but by now, oddly enough, they had veered to the opposite error; they minimised the human element. The truth is they represented native Egypt, the Patriarch the Hellenising coast. (see p. [51]). The quarrel was racial rather than theological, and when in the 6th century it came to a head, the Wady became the natural stronghold of the national or Monophysite party who, under the name of Copts, worship there to this day.
With the 19th century came a new colony—the industrial. It is the factory chimney of the Salt and Soda Company that now dominates the scene. The lakes are dredged for their deposits. The chief product is caustic soda which is poured red hot into metal drums, and exported all over the east. Ordinary soda (natron) is also produced. The factory is interesting. It, and the surrounding settlement, are due in their present form to Mr. A. H. Hooker, after whom the settlement is named.
More than eighty different species of birds have been identified in the marshes surrounding Bir Hooker.