I was here received in a cool arched apartment by a remarkably handsome young creature. She was the most beautiful of all the women I had ever yet seen in harems. Her figure, of middling proportions, was most exquisitely symmetrical; her features were noble and truly classical; and her large eyes had a melancholy expression: the poor thing was alone here, and had no society but an old female servant and a young gazelle. Her complexion, probably not quite natural, was of dazzling whiteness, and a delicate red tinted her cheeks. The eyebrows only, in my opinion, were very much deformed by art. They were in the form of a dark-blue streak, an inch wide, which extended in two connected curves from one temple to the other, and gave the face a somewhat dark and very uncommon appearance. The principal hairs were not dyed; her hands and arms, however, were slightly tattooed. She explained to me that this shocking operation was performed upon her when she was only a child, a custom which is also practised by the Mahomedan women in Baghdad.
The dress of this beauty was like that of the women in the pasha’s harem, but instead of the small turban, she wore a white muslin cloth lightly twisted round the head, which she could also draw over her face as a veil.
Our conversation was not very lively, as the interpreter was not allowed to follow me into this sanctum. We were therefore obliged to content ourselves with making signs and looking at one another.
When I returned to the prince, I expressed to him my wonder at the rare beauty of his young wife, and asked him what country was the cradle of this true angel. He told me the north of Persia, and assured me, at the same time, that his other wives, of whom he had four in Baghdad and four in Teheran with his mother, very much excelled this one in beauty.
When I would have taken my leave of the prince to return home, he proposed to me that I should remain a little while longer and hear some Persian music. Two minstrels presently appeared, one of whom had a kind of mandolin with five strings; the other was a singer. The musician preluded very well, played European as well as Persian melodies, and handled his instrument with great facility; the singer executed roulades, and, unfortunately, his voice was neither cultivated nor pure; but he seldom gave false notes, and they both kept good time. The Persian music and songs had considerable range of notes and variations in the melody; I had not heard anything like them for a long time.
I reached home safely before sunset, and did not feel very much fatigued, either by the ride of thirty-six miles, the terrible heat, or the wandering about on foot. Only two days afterwards, I set out on my road to the ruins of the city of Babylon. The district in which these ruins lie is called Isak-Arabia, and is the seat of the ancient Babylonia and Chaldea.
I rode, the same evening, twenty miles, as far as the Chan Assad. The palms and fruit-trees gradually decreased in number, the cultivated ground grew less and less, and the desert spread itself before me, deadening all pleasure and animation. Here and there grew some low herbage scarcely sufficient for the frugal camel; even this ceases a few miles before coming to Assad, and from thence to Hilla the desert appeared uninterruptedly in its sad and uniform nakedness.
We passed the place where the town of Borossippa formerly stood, and where it is said that a pillar of Nourhwan’s palace is yet to be seen; but I could not discover it anywhere, although the whole desert lay open before me and a bright sunset afforded abundance of light. I therefore contented myself with the place, and did not, on that account, remember with less enthusiasm the great Alexander, here at the last scene of his actions, when he was warned not to enter Babylon again. Instead of the pillar, I saw the ruins of one large and several smaller canals. The large one formerly united the Euphrates with the Tigris, and the whole served for irrigating the land.
31st May. I had never seen such numerous herds of camels as I did today; there might possibly have been more than 7,000 or 8,000. As most of them were unloaded and carried only a few tents, or women and children, it was probably the wandering of a tribe in search of a more fruitful dwelling-place. Among this enormous number, I saw only a few camels that were completely white. These are very highly prized by the Arabians; indeed, almost honoured as superior beings. When I first saw the immense herd of these long-legged animals appearing in the distant horizon, they looked like groups of small trees; and I felt agreeably surprised to meet with vegetation in this endless wilderness. But the wood, like that in Shakspere’s Macbeth, shortly advanced towards us, and the stems changed into legs and the crowns into bodies.
I also observed a species of bird today to which I was a complete stranger. It resembled, in colour and size, the small green papagien, called paroquets, except that its beak was rather less crooked and thick. It lives, like the earth-mouse, in small holes in the ground. I saw flocks of them at two of the most barren places in the desert, where there was no trace of a blade of grass to be discovered, far and wide.