To protect the reigning Sultan from the power of the Evil Eye during his state progresses through the streets of the capital, a peculiar head-dress was invented for the Imperial body-pages, whose ornamented plumes were of such large dimensions as, collectively, to form a screen about his sacred person. Even Sultan Mahmoud, who is superior to many of the popular prejudices, has just caused a Firman to be published, prohibiting the women from looking earnestly at him as he passes them, on pain of—what think you, reader?—of subjecting their husbands or brothers to the bastinado! The Turkish laws are too gallant to condemn females to suffer this punishment in their own persons, and Mahmoud is consequently to be protected from the possibly fatal effects of the ladies’ eyes by their fears for their male relations. Another singular custom is that of pouring water where any one has fallen, to prevent a recurrence of the accident on the same spot, which is religiously observed by the lower orders; as well as flinging stones at the body of a decapitated criminal, in order to secure the dreams of the spectator from an intrusion of the ghastly object. No Turk of the lower ranks of society ever passes a shred of paper which may chance to lie upon his path; he always gathers it up with the greatest care; as the popular belief leads him to place implicit faith in an ancient superstition that all paper thus obtained will be collected after death, and scattered over the burning soil through which he is to pass to paradise; and that consequently the more he is enabled to secure, the less suffering he will have to endure hereafter. A most extraordinary fact came to my knowledge a short time before I left the East, relatively to the female Arabs of the harem. They have a species of society, or institution—I scarcely know how to term it—in which they are initiated from their girlhood, that they call “Babaluk,” whose principle of mystery is kept as secret as that of freemasonry; while the occasional display of its influence is wild and startling enough to remind the spectator of the Priestesses of Delphi.