CUSTOM IN THE MOGUL EMPIRE.
In a variety of parts of the Mogul empire, when the women are carried abroad, they are put into a kind of machine like a chariot, and placed on the backs of camels, or in covered sedan chairs, and surrounded by a guard of eunuchs and armed men, in such a manner, that a stranger would rather suppose the cavalcade to be carrying some desperate villain to execution, than employed to prevent the intrigues or escape of a defenceless woman. At home, the sex are covered with gauze veils, which they dare not take off in the presence of any man, except their husband, or some near relation. Over the greatest part of Asia, and some parts of Africa, women are guarded by eunuchs, made incapable of violating their chastity. In Spain, where the natives are the descendants of the Africans, and whose jealousy is not less strong than that of their ancestors, they, for many centuries, made use of padlocks to secure the chastity of their women; but finding these ineffectual, they frequently had recourse to old women, called Gouvernantes. It had been discovered, that men deprived of their virility, did not guard female virtue so strictly, as to be incapable of being bribed to allow another a taste of those pleasures they themselves were incapable of enjoying. The Spaniards, sensible of this, imagined, that vindictive old women were more likely to be incorruptible; as envy would stimulate them to [p148] prevent the young from enjoying those pleasures, which they themselves had no longer any chance for; but all powerful gold soon overcame even this obstacle; and the Spaniards, at present, seem to give up all restrictive methods, and to trust the virtue of their women to good principles, instead of rigor and hard usage.