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us, is a very serious affair. These sable beauties sometimes play the coquette with me, which is innocent enough. I asked my old negress about these and other coloured residents, and found there were many families of free negroes in Ghat. My friendly coquetting neighbours have a brother who is a free Negro and trades between Ghat and Soudan. A few of the free Negroes are perhaps bona fide immigrants, but these are really very limited. The dress of the women in this place is extremely simple; it consists solely of a chemise and a short-sleeved frock, with a barracan used as a shawl, and thrown over the head and shoulders, when there is wind or cold. The ladies have sandals, and some of them shoes. Beads are esteemed only by Negresses. Those particular beads made of a composition of clay at Venice and Trieste, are now the fashion. The Touarick ladies prefer pieces of coral and charms strung round their neck in necklaces. The arms, wrists, and ancles are hooped with wood-painted, and generally, metal armlets, bracelets, and anclets. Some ladies hang a small looking-glass about their necks, which is, of course in frequent use. The Touarick women industriously weave the woollen tobes, jibbahs, or frocks; they are very cheap, warm, and comfortable in the water. But the Soudan cottons are the great Saharan consumption. There are also now introduced from Europe quantities of, I think, what are called "Indians" in mercantile slang, or coarse white cottons. The merchants call them "new." These cottons are much liked in Morocco because they are cheap and pleasant clothing in summer. Men and women are clothed with them, and they are made up into every kind of dress. These European cottons are supplanting

those of Soudan, which furnish work for thousands in Central Africa. So the legitimate commerce, already so limited, is diminishing instead of increasing. Poor Africa thrice-poor, and every way poor, gets nothing at present by her intercourse with Europe, saving the enslavement of her unhappy children, and the impoverishment of her native manufactures. The Niger and other philanthropic and commercial expeditions have only laid bare her nakedness-they have not advanced her one step in the scale of improvement. Connected with Saharan female dress is naturally that of female beauty. The beau ideal of an Arab beauty, according to the Arabian poets Havivi and Montannibi, is, that "Her person should be slender like the bending rush, or taper lance of Yemen." This is also the beau ideal of female beauty amongst Touaricks. I have seen no fat fed-up women amongst Touaricks, like those in such esteem and the bon-ton of the Moors. The enbonpoint of Mooresses is well known, and beauty amongst them is literally by the weight. Recent discoveries in Malta have made us acquainted with this enbonpoint, as an essential feature of female or other beauty in the most early times, say as far back as the Carthaginian and other ancient settlers in Malta. The rude statues lately dug up in that island are all remarkable for obese processes from the waist downwards.

The taste of the Arabs has been greatly vitiated, and the slight, spare, "bending rush" is often rejected for the bridal beauty who requires a camel to carry her to the house of her husband. The Moors resident in Ghat have imported the vicious Moorish ideas, and the Negress slaves are fattened for the market, and fetch higher prices.

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The dress of Touarick men is more elaborate than that of their women. The principal garment is the Soudanic cotton frock, smock-frock, or blouse, sometimes called tobe, with short and wide open sleeves, and wide body reaching below the knee. Under this is at times worn a small shirt. The pantaloons are also of the same cotton, not very wide in the leggings, and scarcely reaching to the ancles, and something in the Cossack style. The frock is confined low round the waist with the "leather girdle," and often by a sash in the style of the Spaniards. There is generally attached to it a good-sized red leather bag, not unlike an European lady's work-bag, and this is made into various compartments, one for tobacco, one for snuff, one for trona or ghour nuts, another for striking-light matters, another for needles and thread, another containing a little looking-glass, &c., &c.; and I have seen a Touarghee fop adjust his toilette with as much coquetry as the most

brilliant flirt,—indeed, the vanity of some of these Targhee dandies surpasses all our notions of vanity in European dress. Over the frock, on one of the shoulders, is carried the barracan or hayk, which is sometimes cotton, and white and blue-striped, or figured in checks, of Timbuctoo manufacture, but generally a plain woollen wrapper. The hayk is wound several times round the body, and is the only real protection the Touarick, or his wife, (for the women likewise wear them,) has, from the cutting cold winds of The Sahara. A red or white cap sometimes covers the naked shaved head, but many do not wear a cap, as besides many do not shave the head. But the grand distinguishing object in the dress of Touarick men is the Lithām (l), from which article of dress the Touaricks have been called ages ago by historians and tourists of The Desert "The

اللثام)

people of the Litham" (J). The litham is nothing more than a thin wrapper, which is first wound round the head, and then made to cover the whole of the forehead and partially the eyes, and the lower part of the face, especially the mouth. The mouth and the eyes are the two grand objects to protect in The Desert, and in Saharan travelling, equally against heat and cold, and wind. A Saharan traveller, having his mouth well covered with the litham, will go at least twenty-four hours longer, fasting in abstinence, whilst his lips will not be parched with thirst. The litham shelters the eyes effectually from the hot sand grains, borne on the deadly wing of the Simoom. A turban is mostly folded

round the head as a mark of orthodox Islamism. The young beaux prefer the great red sash wound round the head in shape of the turban.

The Touarick, from his habit of wearing the litham, does not like a beard, which, indeed, could rarely be seen. As it grows, they pull it out, and so in time it often disappears altogether. In the matter of beard, the almost sacred ornament of the Moor and the Arab, the Touarick is placed again in strong contrast with his Mahometan neighbour. All wear a profusion of talismans suspended round the neck, or sewn

stuck

about the head, like so many liberty or election cockades.

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This is the usual style of the dress of Touaricks; and, with dagger under the left arm, sword swung from the back, and spear in the right hand, it looks sufficiently novel and imposing, befitting the wild scenery and wild sons of The Desert. Many, however, of the Touaricks go almost naked, whilst the younger Sheikhs occasionally indulge in the foreign fashions of the Moors of the north, dressing very fantastically and elaborately.

VOL. II.

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