H. L. S.
Captain Hope came to the coast to see after me, and gave me your kind message. He is a very worthy young man, and has been more kind to me than I could have thought it possible for a man, who was a stranger to me at Rhodes, could have been. A thousand thanks for the medicine-chest.
I have just heard that all the women belonging to the sultan have died of the plague, also his two children, and that 400 persons die a day at Constantinople. All the foreign ministers are shut up in palaces near the mouth of the Black Sea.
To his Excellency, Lieut-General Oakes, &c., &c., &c. Malta.
From the time of our arrival, the applications to me for medical advice had been beyond measure numerous. Some were no more than excuses to get into the courtyard, in the expectation of seeing Lady Hester; many were from persons labouring under chronic and incurable maladies; and some, which afforded me extensive opportunities of seeing the interior of the houses in the city, were from those who were lying ill with acute diseases, which required my visits to their bedsides. However, the janissary, who officiated as porter, had much ado to keep the mob from the doors, and preserve good-humour among them; and the pertinacity of the women to gain admittance was truly laughable. This janissary was, from a long residence in his youth at Damascus, acquainted with the names of all the principal families of the place. When, therefore, the harým of any great man (the term harým being used in the East to express collectively all the women, whether wives or concubines, and their female servants, which belong to any one grandee)—when such a harým applied, Mohammed would signify it to me, and ask if they could not be admitted, to obtain a sight of her ladyship. On one occasion, thirteen in a body thus gained an entrance, and overwhelmed me with a volubility of questions truly comic.
The dress of the Damascus women, when out of doors, consists of a long white sheet, and over the face a muslin handkerchief, through which they can see very well without a possibility of having their features distinguished by others. If men are not present, this handkerchief is often thrown up over the top of the head; and some, fairer than others, if desirous of practising a little coquetry, and of letting their features be seen, will suffer the gentlemen to come upon them as if unawares, and then in haste throw down the handkerchief.
When I became better acquainted with the language and usages of the country, I was surprised to see how ineffectual all the devices of veils, cloaks, separate apartments, keepers, duennas, &c., are for guarding those who are resolved to be under no restraint: and a gentleman of the country assured me that there were few women who had not their gallants. I half believed him; for his own gallantries were notorious, and some circumstances that had happened to myself since our arrival at Damascus had given me a partial insight into the subject.
When it is considered how very fanatic the inhabitants of Damascus were,[5] and in what great abhorrence they held infidels; that native Christians could only inhabit a particular quarter of the town; and that no one of these, at the peril of having his bones broken by the first angry Turk he met, could ride on horseback within the walls, or wear as part of his dress any coloured cloth or turban that was showy, it will be matter of surprise how completely these prejudices wore laid aside in favour of Lady Hester, and of those persons who were with her. She rode out every day; and, according to the custom of the country, coffee was poured on the road before her horse by several of the inhabitants, in order to do her honour. It was said that, in going through a bazar, all the people in it rose up as she passed—an honour never paid but to a pasha, or to the mufti; but, as I was not present, I do not assert the thing positively. On no occasion was she insulted; and, although a crowd constantly assembled at her door at the time she was expected to appear, and awaited her return home, she was always received by an applauding buzz of the populace; and the women, more especially, would call out, “Long life to her! may she live to return to her country!” with many other exclamations in use among them.
I took an early opportunity of visiting the lepers, who have an hospital in Damascus, to which they are sent from fifty miles round. They are never subjected to medical treatment, and are only housed here to rot. They live on the alms of the charitable, and send out, every summer, to a great distance, some of their body to beg. For this purpose they plant themselves near the entrances of towns and villages, and, suspending a platter or half a cocoa-nut shell to a forked stick, retire a few paces off, that they may not deter the humane from approaching by the sight of their sores or the apprehension of contagion. The idea of the contagious nature of the disease is very general throughout the East, and I was treated as a madman for having once locked my hand in that of a leper’s, to convince the bystanders that I was not of this opinion.