208 
YENGASHAH. 
command, little to be expected in any spot under the jurisdiction 
of an eastern satrap, we did not get within shelter till the per¬ 
severing husbandmen had no longer light to work. 
Rich as these villagers seemed to be in the produce of the 
earth, and certainly not deficient in personal industry; it was 
difficult to reconcile, with such advantages, the squalid poverty 
which every where marked the inside of their houses, and the 
appearance of the women. I would not describe the details of 
this appearance. Suffice it to say, when coming forth from their 
houses, they looked like hideous phantoms, issuing from a 
charnel-house ; the enveloping chadre (a wrapper of white, or 
chequered blue-and-white cotton, which folds them like a wind¬ 
ing-sheet) being usually in as complete a state of decomposition, 
as the dropping, loathsome garments it vainly attempts to hide. 
The peasant order of females, in this province, being less precise 
in the concealment of their faces than the women in the towns, 
I had an opportunity of observing the features of many; but did 
not see any that could pretend to the smallest degree of pretti¬ 
ness; and those who had passed the immediate blush of youth, 
were become mere hags. Indeed, the trite metaphor of the 
fleeting flower, when applied to beauty, may be here transferred 
to the evanescency of youth; its essentials not bearing the 
breath of years in these regions ; it buds, blooms, and perishes, 
in little more than a revolution of a single sun. The men seem 
to be more careful of the state of their apparel than the women; 
and hold their good looks by a tenure, apparently as long as that 
of most Europeans. It is difficult to account for so very dis- 
proportioned a difference between the constitutions and appear¬ 
ances of the sexes, as that which we so constantly meet in this 
part of the world; but, with regard to the higher ranks of the 
