Almost all of the slaves become converts to the faith of El-Islám; but, in general, they are little instructed in the rites of their new religion; and still less in its doctrines. Most of the white female slaves who were in Egypt during my former visit to this country were Greeks; vast numbers of that unfortunate people having been made prisoners by the Turkish and Egyptian army under Ibráheem Básha; and many of them, males and females, including even infants scarcely able to walk, sent to Egypt to be sold. Latterly, from the impoverishment of the higher classes in this country, the demand for white slaves has been small. A few, some of whom undergo a kind of preparatory education (being instructed in music or other accomplishments, at Constantinople), are brought from Circassia and Georgia. The white slaves, being often the only female companions, and sometimes the wives, of the Turkish grandees, and being generally preferred by them before the free ladies of Egypt, hold a higher rank than the latter in common opinion. They are richly dressed, presented with valuable ornaments, indulged, frequently, with almost every luxury that can be procured, and, when it is not their lot to wait upon others, may, in some cases, be happy: as lately has been proved, since the termination of the war in Greece, by many females of that country, captives in Egyptian hareems, refusing their offered liberty, which all of these cannot be supposed to have done from ignorance of the state of their parents and other relations, or the fear of exposing themselves to poverty. But, though some of them are undoubtedly happy, at least for a time, their number is comparatively small: most are fated to wait upon more favoured fellow-prisoners, or upon Turkish ladies, or to receive the unwelcome caresses of a wealthy dotard, or of a man who has impaired his body and mind by excesses of every kind; and, when their master or mistress becomes tired of them, or dies, are sold again (if they have not borne children), or emancipated, and married to some person in humble life, who can afford them but few of the comforts to which they have been accustomed. The female slaves in the houses of persons of the middle classes in Egypt are generally more comfortably circumstanced than those in the hareems of the wealthy: if concubines, they are, in most cases, without rivals to disturb their peace; and if menials, their service is light, and they are under less restraint. Often, indeed, if mutual attachment subsist between her and her master, the situation of a concubine-slave is more fortunate than that of a wife: for the latter may be cast off by her husband in a moment of anger, by an irrevocable sentence of divorce, and reduced to a state of poverty; whereas a man very seldom dismisses a female slave without providing for her in such a manner that, if she have not been used to luxuries, she suffers but little, if at all, by the change: this