[89] C’est une chose terrible, que, depuis que les femmes se mêlent de faire des enfans, elles ne savent pas encore accoucher toutes seules.—Mem. et Corresp. de Madame d’Epinay, p. 272.
[90] “And the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, and he said, when ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools,” &c.
[91] Funem umbilicalem nunquam ligant, nisi retardetur secundarum disjunctio; quo in casu, funem, cultello divisum, parturientis femori nodo annectunt: nec memini, per tres annos, quibus hoc pago commoratus sum, ullam feminam hæmorrhagiâ mortuam esse.
[92] Extract from Let. xxiii. of a work entitled “Letters of a Prussian Traveller;” Sayda, Sept. 1814.
“The day before our departure, the French Consul introduced us to a Christian in the Levantine costume,” (Damiani) “who, during the late war, acted as interpreter to Sir Sydney Smith, and is now major-domo to Lady Hester Stanhope, who, for several years past, has been travelling in the Levant. He informed us she was in a convent near the Drûze mountains, where she had been confined by indisposition, from which, however, she was fast recovering. When this lady visited Sayda, she wore a Turkish dress, and rode an Arabian charger, to the astonishment and admiration of the Turks, who hold her in the highest estimation; and we heard, in many places, that she was actually imagined to be an English princess.”
[93] Franks, of course, decline performing this ceremony.
[94] I was generally in the sepulchre, from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, and was obliged to have three assistants, two holding candles, whilst a third sponged the paintings, as I copied them, in order to bring out the colours, which method I learned from Mr. Bankes. Every thing was begun and completed on the spot, nothing being worked up at home; a custom too common with some persons, whose recollection is made to supply the place of reality.
[95] The sepulchre shown as that of Our Saviour at Jerusalem, as well as that of Nicodemus at Bethlehem, is of this kind.
[96] It was found near the spring which supplies the village of Abra with water. A French gentleman, at that time residing near the village, heard of the circumstance as a matter of gossip among the servants of his house, but too late to save it. It had been broken to pieces by the peasant boys, who attached no more value to it than to a common piece of useless pottery. A gold ring and a pair of ear-rings of the same metal were in it, and were sold to the goldsmiths of Sayda, who melted them down to make more modern trinkets.
[97] “Near it there are many sepulchres cut in the rock; some of them like stone coffins above ground: others are cut into the rocks like graves, having stone covers over them.”—Maundrell.