Here we were shortly joined by a very old woman, who came to pay her compliments to us; and who, from her manner, was evidently a confidential person in the harem. She had been extremely beautiful, and was still a fine ruin; the outline of her features being delicate and regular; while her hair, of a bright chesnut colour, unmixed with a taint of gray, gave her a softness of expression perfectly singular. This latter circumstance only served to convince me of the great superiority of the dyes in use among the Turkish women, to those common in Europe; a fact which I had already occasion to notice: whatever may be the age of a Turkish female, she is seldom disfigured by gray hair, but, on the contrary, her tresses are as pure in colour, and as smooth and glossy, as those of the youngest girl in her family. A female slave shortly afterwards appeared to conduct us to the apartment of the Buyuk Hanoum, which, when we entered, was half filled with attendants, some standing in a semicircle round the mangal, and others squatted on the carpet at the extremity of the room. As this was the first harem that I had visited, where the establishment was on the true Turkish footing—or, to speak more plainly, where there were more candidates than one for the affections of the master of the house, although there was, in point of fact, actually but one wife—I paid particular attention to those delicate shades of etiquette and gradations of ceremony that I had been prepared to notice in these “princely families.” The Buyuk Hanoum occupied the upper end of the sofa, against which the tandour was placed; she was a plain woman, with a cold and somewhat stern expression of countenance: and there was more haughtiness in the bend and the smile wherewith she welcomed us, than I had yet seen exhibited by a Turkish female; when we entered, she was amusing herself, as is common with both sexes in this country, (as well Turks as Armenians) in passing rapidly through her fingers the beads of a chaplet, that rested on the gold-embroidered covering of the tandour. I must be permitted a momentary digression on the subject of these chaplets, which are as popular, or very nearly so, as the chibouk. They resemble, somewhat, the rosary of the Roman Catholics, save that instead of being terminated by a crucifix and a knot of relics, they are merely beads strung upon a silk cord, divided at intervals by some of a larger size, and secured, at the junction of the cord, by a carved acorn, or an ornament of a like description. They are commonly made of a wood, which, becoming heated by the action of the hand emits a delicious perfume; but their material depends upon the taste and means of the owner; the poorer classes carrying chaplets of berries, common beads, and other cheap substitutes, for this somewhat costly indulgence.