MODE OF FATTENING GIRLS. 
67 
ceiving the change. The calves are left for a short time 
with their mothers, and are then shut up again in the thorn 
enclosure, where they remain the rest of the night and all 
day. 
The favourite female slaves of the princes receive the 
milk in calabashes, and distribute it again to their masters. 
Beauty amongst the Moors consists in enormous embon- 
point; and the young girls are therefore obliged to drink 
milk to excess ; the elder ones take a great quantity of 
their own accord, but the younger children are compelled 
by their parents, or by a slave whose office it is, to swallow 
their allowance. This poor creature commonly takes 
advantage of the "brief authority" that is granted her, to 
revenge herself by her cruelty for the tyranny of her masters. 
I have seen poor little girls crying and rolling on the ground, 
and even throwing up the milk which they had just drank ; 
neither their cries nor their sufferings making any impression 
upon the cruel slave, who beat them, pinched them till they 
bled, and tormented them in a thousand ways, to force them 
to take the quantity of milk which she thought proper. If 
their food were heavier, such a system would have fatal con- 
sequences ; but it is so far from hurting their constitutions, 
that they grow visibly stronger and fatter. At twelve years 
old they are enormous, but at twenty or twenty-two they 
lose their embonpoint ; I never saw a woman of that 
age who was remarkably corpulent. 
The largest women are reckoned the handsomest. The 
Moors have no taste for beauty of form or mind ; on the 
contrary, what we consider a capital defect is an attraction 
with them ; they admire women who have the two front 
teeth of the upper jaw projecting from the mouth 5 and am- 
bitious mothers employ all possible means, to make their 
daughters' teeth grow in that direction. 
The men, as I have said, feed also on milk ; but they 
drink less than the women. The slaves live upon cows' milk, 
F 2 
