[50] The Faydân were said to have 2,000 tents.
[51] Charlotte, wife of George III.
[52] Abulfeda, p. 105.
[53] Our sufferings on the journey were, after all, not very severe. Oxley, in his Researches in the interior of Australasia, underwent more; for, as he relates, about June the 1st, he found no water for thirty-six hours either for his people or horses, with a want of herbage likewise; but then he had no great heat to contend with.
[54] See pp. 215 to 222 of Mr. Salt’s Travels, for a comparison of the sum paid by Lady Hester to go to Palmyra, with that paid by Mr. Salt at Arhecko, to get to Gondar, where, after all, he never arrived. Chateaubriand pretended that it cost him 5,000 piasters to go to the Dead Sea.
In another book of Travels, published about 1829, I find the following passage; the author is speaking of Mahannah and his son:—“After much prevarication, during which they endeavoured to make us pay for the camels extra, they at length consented to our terms, as they said, for the love of the Malaka or queen, for such they were pleased to call Lady Hester, who gave £500 for this trip. Had we paid them as much money, no doubt, they would have called us two kings; for, like the Nubians, flûs, (money) is their idol.”
[55] The yzzár is a covering of white calico or cambric muslin, precisely of the form of a sheet when spread out, which is so put on as to envelop the whole body, and is worn by every female of any respectability throughout Syria. It is called likewise setarah and melaêah.
[56] Generally the legs of the culprit are passed through two nooses on a bar, which bar is held up at the two ends, the sufferer being on his back. This bar is called falak. Mr. B. on one occasion, being justly offended at the neglect of his groom, sent him to the governor, with a request that he might be punished: but the governor refused to do it, unless paid for it.
[57] In confirmation of this position, let us see what an English gentleman says, who, in relating what he saw in Egypt, was evidently not aware that Turkish women of any degree above paupers never bathe in cold water, and always use the hot baths of their own houses, if they have them, or of the city in which they reside. “At the end of the garden farthest from the palace, the pasha is amusing himself in erecting, round a large artificial sheet of water, an enclosed colonnade, with several apartments connected with it. In the centre of the colonnade, is a chamber with a large balcony for the use of the great man himself, from which he will enjoy the singular, and in Turkey alone not indelicate pleasure, of seeing his ladies bathe, and frequently, when he orders it, splash each other with water, and play various other pranks for his amusement.” Diary of a Tour through South India, Egypt, and Palestine, by a Field Officer of Cavalry, p. 238. Hatchard, 1823. Now, without having seen the sheet of water in question, I will venture to say, that, so long as there continues to be water in the basin, not a woman will ever bathe in it. The balcony is a place intended to sit and smoke in, and the water to contribute to the coolness always so eagerly sought after in such climates.
[58] As soon then as it is known that danger of infection threatens, people shut themselves up in their houses, lay in a stock of provisions of every kind, admit nobody to enter, and suffer nobody to go out: for which purpose the master of the house keeps the key of the street door. A Turk, (and some one is always to be found among the poor) for a small gratuity, purchases and brings every day meat, vegetables, and such things as form no part of the dry stock. All letters are received in vinegar, or over the fumes of nitre and sulphuric acid, or of assafetida, or of burnt feathers and the like. All cats are killed. Bread is aired for a day before being used: meat and vegetables are put in water to soak, and the hairs, &c. are carefully picked off by small tongs. Where a family is large, and has a spacious house or garden, there are no great hardships: as there is only the confinement and the interruption of business to complain of. But they fall very heavily on the poor, whose labour is suspended for so long a period, sometimes six months or more, and who are thus reduced to the miserable alternative of dying of the plague or of hunger. There is one great disadvantage resulting from the strictness of these regulations. No doctor can visit such as are infected; for, if he do, all other patients will refuse him admittance to their houses. If he be a stranger, and consequently a lodger, even the door of his own house would be shut against him. Hence no researches can be made on the disease, no experiments tried: and, excepting what light the French expedition in Egypt may have thrown on it, and the experiments of a few devoted men in the hospitals at Constantinople—mankind is no wiser than it was an age ago. In a word, the plague makes about as much impression in Turkey as a malignant epidemic in England. Its ravages are generally confined to the Mahometans, whose system of fatalism allows them to make use of few or no precautions against it; although there are many who do not hold so strong to their principles but they would willingly shut themselves up if they dared. But the zealots of the Mahometan religion immediately cry shame upon them, and thus compel them to submit to their destiny. Such however have a strong struggle between their fears of death and the dread of imputed dereliction of the tenets of their holy prophet.