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modest. They preserve with grace and delicacy the 
dignity which belongs to their situation, but the lower 
orders are very free, and even dissolute. All wear a 
handkerchief of transparent silk, generally yellow with 
flowers painted upon it, that covers the whole of the 
face, and with their immense white veils, gives them 
the appearance of walking spectres; but many of them 
throw the handkerchiefs over their forehead, so that 
their faces, like those of the African females, are only 
covered by their veil, which they open and close at 
pleasure. This freedom procured me the means of as- 
certaining that the women of Damascus are generally 
pretty, and some truly beautiful. They have all a very 
fine and lair skin, with a good colour. 
The race is much handsomer than it was formerly. 
In Damascus we meet with none of those chlorotic fe- 
males so frequent in Jerusalem and in Arabia, nor any 
of those gipsies with the tanned complexion of the other 
countries of Africa; nor those dirty, blear-eyed, dis- 
gusting children of Alexandria, and of so many other 
Mussulman nations; nor again those parched, copper- 
coloured, and black men of Africa and Arabia. Among 
the women and children are to be seen some celestial 
countenances. The men have a masculine aspect, a fine 
colour, and are well proportioned, robust, very fair. * 
In short, they are quite different people from those of 
Africa and Arabia, with the exception of the inhabitants 
of Fez, who differ least from them. I observed several 
women who, notwithstanding their ungraceful cover- 
* In this description of Damascus, as in several other parts of 
my travels, I have to make my excuse to those authors who speak 
in a totally different manner. I relate what I have seen with my 
©wn eyes. 
