The family consisted of the father and mother, the son and the son’s wife, the daughter and her husband, and a younger and adopted son. The ladies were lying upon cushions, buried up to their necks under the coverings of the tandour; and, as they flung them off to receive us, I was struck with the beauty of the daughter, whose deep blue eyes, and hair of a golden brown, were totally different from what I had expected to find in a Turkish harem. Two glances sufficed to satisfy me that the mother was a shrew, and I had no reason subsequently to revoke my judgment. The son’s wife had fine, large, brilliant, black eyes, but her other features were by no means pleasing, although she possessed, in common with all her countrywomen, that soft, white, velvety skin, for which they are indebted to the constant use of the bath. To this luxury, in which many of them daily indulge, must be, however, attributed the fact that their hair, in becoming bright and glossy, loses its strength, and compels them to the adoption of artificial tresses; and these they wear in profusion, wound amid the folds of the embroidered handkerchiefs that they twine about their heads in a most unbecoming manner, and secure by bodkins of diamonds or emeralds, of which ornaments they are inordinately fond. They all wore chemisettes or under garments of silk gauze, trimmed with fringes of narrow ribbon, and wide trowsers of printed cotton falling to the ancle: their feet were bare, save that occasionally they thrust them into little yellow slippers, that scarcely covered their toes, and in which they moved over the floor with the greatest ease, dragging after them their anterys, or sweeping robes; but more frequently they dispensed with even these, and walked barefoot about the harem. Their upper dresses were of printed cotton of the brightest colours—that of the daughter had a blue ground, with a yellow pattern, and was trimmed with a fringe of pink and green. These robes, which are made in one piece, are divided at the hip on either side to their extreme length, and are girt about the waist with a cachemire shawl. The costume is completed in winter by a tight vest lined with fur, which is generally of light green or pink.