﻿OF HINZUAN, OR JOHANNA. 85 



it her ; conceiving, I suppose, that all mankind 

 must love and admire her. We promised to gratify 

 him ; and having made him several presents, permit- 

 ted him to leturn. As he reminded me oi Aladdin in 

 the Arabian talc, I designed to give him that name in a 

 recommendatory letter, which he pressed me to write, 

 instead or St. Domingo, as some European visiter had 

 ridiculously called him; but, since the allusion would 

 not have been generally known, and since the title of 

 Alauldtn, or eminence in faith, might have offended 

 his superiors, I thought it .advisable for him to keep 

 his African name. A very ind.fferent dinner was 

 •prepared for us at the house of the Governor, whom 

 we did not see the whole day, as it was the beginning 

 of Ramadan, the Mohammedan lent, and he was en- 

 gaged in his devotions, or made them his excuse ; 

 but his eldest son sat by us while we dined, together 

 with \lusa who was employed, jointly with his bro- 

 ther Husain, as purveyor to the Captain of the frigate. 



Having observed a very elegant shrub, that grew 

 about six feet hioh, in the court-vard, but was not 

 then in flower, I learned with pleasure, that it was 

 hinna, of which I had read so much in Arabian poems, 

 and which European botanists have ridiculously named 

 Laivso?iia. Mitsa bruised some of the leaves, and, 

 having moistened them with water, applied them to 

 our nails and the tips of our fingers, which in a short 

 time became of a dark orange-scarlet. I had be- 

 fore conceived a different idea of this dye, and ima- 

 gined, that it was used by the Arabs to imitate the 

 ■natural redness of those parts in young and healthy per- 

 sons, which in all countries must be considered as a 

 beauty :— perhaps a less quantity oi hinna, or the same 

 differently prepared, might have produced that effect. 

 The old men in Arabia used the same dye to conceal 

 their grey hairs, while their daughters were dying their 



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