J08 
THE MOOKS^ 
loaded with a parcel, and the young carry the children on their shoul- 
ders, suspended in a cloth girt round their bodies. 
In the more southern parts, the women are likewise employed in 
the care of the horses, in saddling and bridling them ; the husband is 
always a despot, issues his orders, and must be obeyed. The women 
travel without being veiled ; they are accordingly sun-burnt, and 
have but small pretensions to beauty. There are, however, some 
quarters in which they put on a little rouge ; they every where stain 
their feet, and the ends of their fingers, with a small herb called henna, 
which gives them a deep saftVon colour, a custom that must be very 
ancient among the people of Asia. Abu Beer dyed his eye-brows 
and beard with the same colour, and many of his successors imi- 
tated him, -mm . 7 flST' 
Moorish Women. 
The Moorish women, when settled, seldom leave the house, and 
when they do, are always veiled. The old very carefully hide their 
faces, but the young and handsome are somewhat more indulgent, 
at least towards foreigners, for they are extremely cautious with the 
Moors. Being veiled, their husbands do not know them in the 
street, and it is even unpolite to endeavour to see the faces of the 
women who pass. There are some very fine women among the 
Moors, especially up the country. As females in warm countries 
sooner arrive at maturity, they are also sooner old. 
The women of the south are in general the handsomest, and are 
so reserved, or so guarded, that their very relations do not enter 
their houses. Yet, so contradictory is their customs, that there are 
tribes in these provinces, among whom it is held to be an act of 
hospitality to present a woman to a traveller. The Moorish women 
who live in cities are more addicted to dress than those of the 
country; but as they generally leave the house only one day in the 
week, they seldom dress themselves. 
Not being allowed to receive male visitors, they remain in their 
houses employed by their families, and so totally in dishabille, that 
they often wear only a shift, with a coarser one over it, tied round 
their waist, with their hair plaited, and often without a cap. When 
dressed, they wear a fine linen shift, the bosom embroidered with 
gold ; a rich caftan of cloth, stuff, or velvet, worked in gold ; and 
one or two folds of gauze, streaked with gold and silk, round 
the head, and tied behind, so that the fringes, intermingled with 
their tresses, descend as low as the waist ; to which some add a rib- 
bon of about two inches broad, worked in gold or pearls, that encir- 
cles the forehead in form of a diadem. Their caftan is bound round 
their waist by a crimson velvet girdle, embroidered in gold, with a 
buckle of gold or silver, or a girdle of tamboured stuff manufactured 
at Fez. The women have yellow slippers, and a kind of stockings 
of fine cloth, tied below the knee, and at the ankle, over which it 
falls in folds. These stockings are less calculated to shew w’hat we 
call a handsome leg, than to make it appear thick, for to be fat is 
one of the rules of beauty among the Moorish women. To obtain 
this quality they take infinite pains; feed, when they become thin, on 
a diet somewhat like forced-meat balls, a certain quantity of which 
