278 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



to this rather severe process. If a reproduction 

 appears, it is only a soft down, like the finest 

 wool ; and, after a few years, vegetation of this 

 sort is absolutely destroyed. Should nature com- 

 mit a mistake in giving, to any of those females, 

 a beard on the face, they use the same recipe to 

 make it disappear, beyond the possibility of re- 

 turning. 



Next to the desire of having the skin soft, and 

 of the most beautiful polish, the great anxiety of 

 those ladies is to acquire as great a degree of 

 plumpness as possible. The taste of the men does 

 not incline them to slim and taper shapes, to ele- 

 gant and limber forms ; they love women that are 

 fat, and they accordingly employ every effort to 

 become so. In order to attain this high degree, 

 this perfection of beauty, they make use of various 

 drugs, as the nuts of the cocoa-tree, the bulbs of 

 the hermo-dactyl *, rasped down and mingled 

 with sugar. They never fail, after lying-in, to 

 eat plentifully of this last species of paste or com- 

 fit, in the persuasion that it is the surest means 

 of recruiting their strength, and of regaining the 

 flesh they have lost. 



* In Arabic, chamire. The greatest part of it, consumed in 

 Egypt, comes from Arabia. It grows likewise in sufficient 

 abundance in the vicinity of Aboukir. 



The 



