e the most unhappy creature existing, unless surrounded
by a multitude of attendants suitable to her rank in life. They have often
expressed surprise and astonishment at my want of taste in keeping only
two women servants in my employ, and having neither a companion nor a
slave in my whole establishment; they cannot imagine anything so stupid as
my preference to a quiet study, rather than the constant bustle of a
well-filled zeenahnah.

Many of the Mussulmaun ladies entertain women companions, whose chief
business is to tell stories and fables to their employer, while she is
composing herself to sleep; many of their tales partake of the romantic
cast which characterizes the well-remembered 'Arabian Nights'
Entertainments', one story begetting another to the end of the collection.
When the lady is fairly asleep the story is stayed, and the companion
resumes her employment when the next nap is sought by her mistress.

Amongst the higher classes the males also indulge in the same practice of
being talked to sleep by their men slaves; and it is a certain
introduction with either sex to the favour of their employer, when one of
these dependants has acquired the happy art of 'telling the khaunie'[5]
(fable) with an agreeable voice and manner. The more they embellish a tale
by flights of their versatile imaginations, so much greater the merit of
the rehearser in the opinion of the listeners.

The inmates of zeenahnahs occasionally indulge in games of chance: their
dice are called chowsah (four sides), or chuhsah[6] (six sides); these
dice are about four inches long and half an inch thick on every side,
numbered much in the same way as the European dice. They are thrown by the
hand, not from boxes, and fall lengthways.

They have many different games which I never learned, disliking such modes
of trifling away valuable time; I am not, therefore, prepared to describe
them accurately. One of their games has a resemblance to draughts, and is
played on a chequered cloth carpet, with red and white ivory cones.[7]
They have also circular cards, six suits to a pack, very neatly painted,
with which they play many (to me) indescribable games; but oftener, to
their credit be it said, for amusement than for gain. The gentlemen,
however, are not always equally disinterested; they frequently play for
large sums of money. I do not, however, find the habit so general with the
Natives as it is with Europeans. The religious community deem all