AND LOWER EGYPT. 2.6 I 



CHAP. xvr. 



Wives of the commonalty — Black of the eyes — Al- 

 quifoux — Red of the hands and of the feel — Henna 

 — Depilatories — Plumpness of the women, their 

 cleanliness, their cosmetics. 



Wherever an excessive luxury is concentrated 

 in a privileged class in the cities, indigence, and 

 all the horrors which follow in its train, are the 

 heritage of the most numerous class, and the de- 



CD ' 



solation of the plains. It would betray great ig- 

 norance of the state of women in Egypt, to 

 imagine that they are all endowed with the same 

 charms, that they enjoy the same delicate accom- 

 modations of life, as the beautiful foreign dames 

 of whom I have been just speaking, and who, si- 

 milar to exotic flowers, whose lustre is to be pre- 

 served only by attention and management, live 

 solely in the employment of prolonging the dura- 

 tion of the gifts derived from nature, and of adorn- 

 ing them by the richness of art. The women of 

 the lower order, instead of that whiteness, of that 

 delicate colouring with which the complexion of 

 the first is animated, have, like the men of the 

 same country, a tawny skin, and as the males of 

 the same order, they wear the impress and the 

 tatters of frightful poverty. Almost all of them, 



s 3 especially 



