When females in the East are betrothed, their palms and fingers are tinged of a crimson colour, with the herb hinnah. This is called “the crimson of consent.”--_Tales of Inatulla_, vol. ii, p. 15. PAGE 246. _... violate the rights of hospitality_ So high an idea of these rights prevails amongst the Arabians, that “a bread and salt traitor,” is the most opprobrious invective with which one person can reproach another.--RICHARDSON’S _Dissertation on the Languages, etc., of Eastern Nations_, p. 219. See also the Story of Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves, in the _Arabian Nights_, vol. iv, p. 166. PAGE 246. _... narcotic powder_ A drug of the same quality, mixed in lemonade, is given to Zobeide, in the Story of Ganem. PAGE 248. _Funeral vestments were prepared; their bodies washed, etc._ The rites here practised had obtained from the earliest ages. Most of them may be found in Homer and the other poets of Greece. Lucian describes the dead in his time as washed, perfumed, vested, and crowned, ὡραιος ανθεσιν, with the flowers most in season; or, according to other writers, those in particular which the deceased were wont to prefer. The elegant editor of the _Ruins of Palmyra_ mentions the fragments of a mummy found there, the hair of which was plaited exactly in the manner as worn at present by the women of Arabia. The burial dress from the days of Homer hath been commonly white, and amongst Mahometans is made without a seam, that it may not impede the ceremonial of kneeling in the grave, when the dead person undergoes examination.--HOMER, EURIPIDES, etc., _passim_. LUCIAN, tom. ii, p. 927. PASCHAL, _De Coron._, p. 225. _Ruins of Palmyra_, pp. 22, 23. _Iliad_, xviii, 352. _Relig. Cerem._, vol. vii, p. 117. PAGE 248. _... all instruments of music were broken_ Thus, in the _Arabian Nights_: “Haroun al Raschid wept over Schemselnihar, and, before he left the room, ordered all the musical instruments to be broken.”--Vol. ii, p. 196. PAGE 248. _... imans began to recite their prayers_ An iman is the principal priest of a mosque. It was the office of the imans to precede the bier, praying as the procession moved on.--_Relig. Cerem._, vol. vii, p. 117. PAGE 248. _The wailful cries of La Ilah illa Alla!_ This exclamation, which contains the leading principle of Mahometan belief, and signifies _there is no God but God_, was commonly uttered under some violent emotion of mind. The Spaniards adopted it from their Moorish neighbours, and Cervantes hath used it in _Don Quixote_: “En esto llegáron corriendo con grita, LILILIES (literally _professions of faith in Alla_), y algazara los de las libreas adonde Don Quixote suspenso y atónito estava.”--_Parte segunda_, cap. lxi, tom. iv, p. 241. The same expression is sometimes written by the Spaniards, _Lilaila_, and _Hila hilahaila_. PAGE 249. _... the angel of death had opened the portal of some other world_