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of a long piece of silk, or muslin, put on in graceful folds, falling 
like the drapery of the Grecian statues. 
The simplicity of the patriarchal age was realized in the rural 
occupations of the women at Harrasar: the pastoral lives of the 
Mesopotamian damsels, and many customs described by Homer, 
still exist in the Brahmin villages of the Concan: there women of 
the first distinction, like Rebeka and Rachel, draw water at the 
public wells, tend the cattle to pasture, wash their clothes in the 
tanks, and gather the flowers of the nymphea, for their innocent 
sacrifice at the dewal, and its foliage for plates and dishes; which 
are renewed every meal from the lotos, or some other vegetable 
with a large leaf. The young women washing on the margin of 
the lakes, resemble Homers picture of Nausicaa, a Pheacian 
princess, washing her brothers nuptial garments. 
cr They seek the cisterns, where Pheacian dames 
“ Wash their fair garments in the limpid streams; 
<f Where gathering into depth from falling rills, 
v “ The lucid wave a spacious basin fills : 
“ Then emulous the royal robes they lave, 
“ And plunge the vestures in the cleansing waves ; 
“ Then with a short repast relieve their toil. 
And o’er their limbs diffuse ambrosial oil; 
“ And while the robes imbibe the solar ray, 
“ O’er the green mead the sportive virgins play.” Homer's Odyssey . 
These delightful recreations soon restored me to health ; so that 
I had little occasion to bathe or drink at the hot-wells, which I 
afterwards visited, more from curiosity than necessity. 
The wells are situated in the Mahratta dominions, thirty 
miles from Port Victoria, and two from Dazagon: there are several 
