294 Love, Law, and Physic in Barbary. SEPT. 



view, and information can only be obtained by indirect means, still the 

 deficiency is supplied by the uniformity of the picture ; and the history of 

 a single one is a standard whereby to form a judgment of the whole. 

 In that which appears the greatest cruelty the withholding from them 

 that any development of the mind could but awaka them to a keener 

 the benefits of education there is certainly the attendant consolation 

 sense of their miserable destiny, namely, that of being kept as horses in 

 a stable for their masters' uses, and being prized by the same rules, the 

 beauties of blood and limb, the consciousness of which is now lost in 

 apathy and ignorance. 



The Moorish females spring into womanhood with astonishing rapi- 

 dity ; scarcely do they leave the arms of the mother before they are clasped 

 by those of the husband. At twelve or thirteen years of age, the 

 Moorish maiden is a bride ; at twenty-five an old woman ; her evanes- 

 cent charms are then already on the wane, and take a flight as rapid as 

 their coming on. The thick and raven tresses of youth become thinned 

 and grey ; the once symmetrical form becomes a mass of corpulence ; 

 wrinkles furrow the brow, and notwithstanding their former attractions, 

 nothing is left to tell the beauty of the broken flower, but the never- 

 failing lustre of the eye, now set within a sallow cheek. This sudden 

 change is not difficult to be accounted for ; they marry by far too young. 

 Were this not the case,from the plurality of wives allowed to Mussulmans, 

 a population would be created much beyond its actual amount ; whereas 

 at present a Mussulman with four or five wives has fewer children than 

 compose a single family in England. Again, the food which they eat 

 to superinduce corpulency, by no means strengthens the constitution, 

 which soon yields to the ravages of time and climate. Such is the 

 anxiety of mothers in Barbary to render their female children fat, that 

 they stand over them at meals with a stick, and punish those who do not 

 eat a sufficiency of the cous-cousou set before them. That which in 

 Europe is termed a well-shaped lady, is in Barbary compared to 

 " the back-bone of a fish," and would be the very last to excite the 

 favourable regards of a lover ; whereas a fat lady who could scarcely 

 walk, would need little recommendation beyond her size. 



A Moorish woman of distinction is seated all day long upon her 

 carpet, where she is waited on by a number of little slaves, a laziness 

 which also contributes to render her unwieldy ; then her dress does not 

 confine any part of her form, so that the universal al-haicka may be 

 said generally to conceal a much greater proportion of deformity than 

 beauty. Such a thing as a small waist or well-turned ancle is a rare 

 and uncommon sight. 



It is certainly not the fault of the fair sex in Barbary that they are 

 not better known to strangers j fear alone compels them to comply with 

 the harsh dictates of their " lords and masters/' Beneath the ample folds 

 of woman's guise has many a love affair been carried on. The unsus- 

 pecting husband, misled by the slippers* at the door of his wife's apart- 

 ment, has often turned aside to make room for his disguised rival's 

 escape, making good the truth of the old axiom, that " the best padlock 

 is that of the mind." A Moorish woman will not make the slightest 

 scruple of discovering her face to an European, and exclaiming, " Shoof 



* The slippers outside the apartment denote that the husband cannot enter the room, 

 a strange female being present. 



