not of necessity, then surely of love. Palladius, for instance,
found it impossible to visit the Upper Thebaid, and Syene, and that
"infinite multitude of monks, whose fashions of life no one would
believe, for they surpass human life; who to this day raise the
dead, and walk upon the waters, like Peter; and whatsoever the
Saviour did by the holy Apostles, He does now by them. But because
it would be very dangerous if we went beyond Lyco" (Lycopolis?), on
account of the inroad of robbers, he "could not see those saints."

The holy men and women of whom he wrote, he says, he did not see
without extreme toil; and seven times he and his companions were
nearly lost. Once they walked through the desert five days and
nights, and were almost worn out by hunger and thirst. Again, they
fell on rough marshes, where the sedge pierced their feet, and
caused intolerable pain, while they were almost killed with the
cold. Another time, they stuck in the mud up to their waists, and
cried with David, "I am come into deep mire, where no ground is."
Another time, they waded for four days through the flood of the Nile
by paths almost swept away. Another time they met robbers on the
seashore, coming to Diolcos, and were chased by them for ten miles.
Another time they were all but upset and drowned in crossing the
Nile. Another time, in the marshes of Mareotis, "where paper
grows," they were cast on a little desert island, and remained three
days and nights in the open air, amid great cold and showers, for it
was the season of Epiphany. The eighth peril, he says, is hardly
worth mentioning--but once, when they went to Nitria, they came on a
great hollow, in which many crocodiles had remained, when the waters
retired from the fields. Three of them lay along the bank; and the
monks went up to them, thinking them dead, whereon the crocodiles
rushed at them. But when they called loudly on the Lord, "the