Leo Africanus, in his Description of Africa, p. 336 (edition Elzevir, of 1632), mentions the tribads of Fez:
“But those who have more common sense, call these women (he is speaking of witches) “Sahacat,” a word which corresponds with the Latin fricatrices, because they take their pleasure with each other. I cannot speak more plainly without offending decency. When good-looking women visit them, these witches fall at once in hot love with them, not less hot than the love of young men for girls, and they ask them in the guise of the devil to pay them by suffering their embraces. So it happens that very often when they think they have been obeying the behests of demons, they have really only had to do with witches. Many, too, pleased with the game they have played, seek of their own impulse to enjoy intercourse again with the witches, and under pretence of being ill, summon one of them or send their unfortunate husbands to fetch her. Then the witches, seeing how matters stand, asseverate that the wife is possessed by a demon, and can only be liberated by joining their association.”
You ask whether tribads are still to be found in our days? If there are none now, there certainly were some in existence in Paris only a short time before the Great Revolution, if we are to trust the author of Gynaeology, III., p. 428. There was a veritable college of tribads in Paris, who went by the names of Vestals, holding regular meetings in particular localities. There were a great many members, and of the highest classes; they had their statutes with respect to admission; the affiliated were divided into three degrees: aspirants, postulants, the initiated. Before the postulant could be admitted to the secret of the order, she had to undergo for three days a difficult probation: shut up in a cell tapestried with lewd pictures, and ornamented with carved Priapi of magnificent proportions, she had to keep up a fire with I do not know how many ingredients, and arranged in such a manner that it would go out if there was taken too much or too little of any of the materials; on the four altars of the temple, which was adorned with statues of Sappho, of the Lesbians she had loved, and of the Chevalier d’Eon, who for so many years successfully dissimulated his sex, and with splendid hangings, perpetual fires were burning. Kept English women, too, did not recoil at tribadism, as the same author states, III., p. 394. He affirms that not long before the close of the last century, confederacies of tribads, called Alexandrine confederacies, were still in existence in London, though in a small number only.
Enough now of those who are, strictly speaking, included under the name of tribads; but the word has a more extended signification. The term is also applied to those women who in default of a real mentula, make use of their finger or of a leathern contrivance, which they introduce into their vulva, and so attain a fictitious enjoyment. Germany, I have lately heard, has been ringing with complaints about this abuse. As regards the leathern engine[[133]], called by the Greeks olisbos, the women of Miletus, above all others, made it their instrument of pleasure. Aristophanes, in the Lysistrata, 108-110:
“For since the day the Milesians left us in the lurch, not an olisbos have I set eyes on, eight inches long,—that might give us its leathern aid....”
Suidas under the word “****”:
“A virile member made of leather which was used by Milesian women, as being tribads and immodest. It was also made use of by widows.”
The same author under the word “****”:
“Cratinus also says on this head: Lewd women will be using the olisbos.”
Hesychius quotes the same passage.