are always presented to visitors in every house. This custom of being
waited upon by the ladies is rather distressing to our European notions
of devotion to the fair sex: and I remember being horrified shortly
after my arrival in Egypt at the manners of a rich old jeweller to whom
I was introduced. His wife, a beautiful woman, superbly dressed in
brocade, with gold and diamond ornaments, waited upon us during the
whole time that I remained in the house. She was the first Eastern lady
I had seen, and I remember being much edified at the way she pattered
about on a pair of lofty cobcobs, and the artful way in which she got
her feet out of them whenever she came up towards where we sat on the
divan, at the upper end of the apartment. She stood at the lower end of
the room; and whenever the old brute of a jeweller wanted to return
anything, some coins which he was showing me, or anything else, he threw
them on the floor; and his beautiful wife jumping out of her cobcobs
picked them up; and when she had handed them to some of the maids who
stood at the door, resumed her station below the step at the further end
of the room. She had magnificent eyes and luxuriant black hair, as they
all have, and would have been considered a beauty in any country; but
she was not to be compared to the bright little damsel in pink, who,
besides her beauty, was as cheerful and merry as a bird, and whose
lovely features were radiant with archness and intelligence. Many of the
Abyssinian slaves are exceedingly handsome: they have very expressive
countenances, and the finest eyes in the world, and, withal, so soft and
humble a look, that I do not wonder at their being great favourites in
Egyptian harems. Many of them, however, have a temper of their own,
which comes out occasionally, and in this respect the Arab women are not
much behind them. But the fiery passions of this burning climate pass
away like a thunderstorm, and leave the sky as clear and serene as it
was before.

The Arab girls of the lower orders are often very pretty from the age of
about twelve to twenty, but they soon go off; and the astounding
ugliness of some of the old women is too terrible to describe. In Europe
we have nothing half so hideous as these brown old women, and this is
the more remarkable, because the old men are peculiarly handsome and
venerable in their appearance, and often display a dignity of bearing
which is seldom to be met with in Europe. The stately gravi