This taste of the Moors for massive beauties induces the women to take the greatest care to make themselves fat. Every morning they eat an enormous quantity of cuscus, and drink several jugs of camel’s milk. The girls are obliged to take this food, whether they have an appetite or not; and when they refuse they are beaten to compliance. This forced diet does not occasion indigestion or any other disease; on the contrary, it induces that degree of fatness which passes for perfection in the eyes of the Moors. The Moorish girls are in other respects little attended to; and their education is totally neglected. These people think nothing of moral qualifications: for voluptuousness, submission, and corpulence are all that the Moors admire. The boys are better treated; they are generally taught to read and write the Arabic language; and as soon as they begin to grow up, they are respected by the Moorish women, and even by their mothers, who no longer eat with them. At an early period they are accustomed to use the poniard adroitly, and to tear out with their nails the bowels of their adversaries: they are taught to give a lye the semblance of truth; are, in short, familiarized with wickedness, and are instructed to commit a crime with as much pleasure as they would do a good action. A plurality of wives being permitted amongst the Moors, a hut is seldom seen with less than eight or ten children. The women live together under the same tent, and are witnesses of the partial attachment of the husband, without betraying any marks of jealousy. The tent destined to receive a new married couple is ornamented with a little white flag, and the bridegroom has a band round his forehead of the same colour; and whether he be young or old, or be married for the first or sixth time, he is always decorated with the symbol of virginity. On the day of the ceremony the bridegroom causes a camel to be killed, for the purpose of regaling the guests. The bride, with the women and young girls of her acquaintance, dance all day round a kettle-drum, and their motions are of a most indecent kind. They dance singly, and one after the other. She who begins the performance stretches out her neck, and makes the most shocking grimaces, which are repeated by the spectators with astonishing precision. They beat time with their hands; and at length all the company put themselves in motion. The day after the wedding the bride is separated from her husband, and her friends wash her from head to foot; they afterwards comb her, plait her hair, redden her nails, and clothe her in a new drapery. She then pays visits through the camp, and in the evening is taken back to her spouse.