302 Mr. Bankes's Letters on 



being almost that of the Hottentot Venus, both as to the hips and 

 behind. This is considered in Abyssinia as a great mark of distinction 

 and high birth. There was, when I first went to Jerusalem, an 

 Abyssinian Princess there, upon a pilgrimage, the daughter of a 

 deceased King, most remarkably proud in this respect, and who 

 piqued herself greatly upon it. I have heard an English Lady 

 say, that she could not believe the peculiarity to be natural till 

 she saw the lady in the bath. None but the Queens are ho- 

 noured with this figure in the bas reliefs, the female attendants 

 and the goddesses being as slender and as scanty as elsewhere 

 upon the Nile. The gods seem to have been the same as in Egypt, 

 only there is one with a sort of lotus head, that I do not feel well 

 acquainted with ; and the lion-headed Isis has, in one instance, 

 both her head and her arms tripled, so as to bear a great affinity 

 to the Indian deities. 



The country is not like Egypt, but covered with herbage and 

 abounding in forests, with monkeys leaping and chattering in the 

 branches : this circumstance, the historical sculptures lower down 

 had led me to expect, where the conqueror (probably Sesostris) is 

 represented chasing a naked people with flat noses and thick lips 

 into forests, in which monkeys are sitting, evidently placed there to 

 designate and characterize the country where the event took place. 



Linant observed no parrots, though Pliny very exactly sets down 

 (on the authority of the spies) the name of the place where they 

 are first found in following the Nile upwards ; always taking it for 

 granted that Psittacus should be so translated, of which I am by no 

 means sure. Both Linant, however, and an attendant who was 

 with him, speak in high terms of the beautiful plumage of many of 

 the birds which they saw (several of the skins they have brought 

 with them, but I have not yet got them from Jlilford), and of the 

 shrill cries and discordant notes which proceed from them, especially 

 about daybreak. The Ibis, so common in ancient times, but now 

 unknown in Egypt, is often seen, and is said to frequent the streets 

 even of Senna'ar (as Alexandria anciently), in a very confident and 

 domestic manner, at some seasons of the year, but not in that when 

 Linant was residing there. The Guineafowl abounds. 



