When we had selected a pleasant nook, and had spread our carpet, arranged our cushions, and provided ourselves with fruit, one of the party started on a shooting expedition among the hills; and my friend Madame S—— and myself strolled round the magic circle, which became each moment more thronged. We received many a gracious salutation as we moved along, in return for our glances of involuntary admiration; and at length were fairly stopped by a smiling entreaty that we would inform a party of ladies, who had been too aristocratic in their ideas, or too indolent in their habits, to descend from their araba, who we were, whence we came, and to answer a score more of those simple questions, which make a claim only upon your patience. Not one among them was pretty, but they were all polite and good-natured; and, if they did ask us many things which concerned them not in any possible way, they at least communicated to us, in their turn, a variety of circumstances relating to themselves, which regarded us quite as little. Nothing can exceed the courtesy of the Turkish ladies to strangers. They always appear delighted to converse with an European female who seems disposed to meet them half way; and they do so with a frankness and ease which at once destroy every feeling of _gène_ on the part of the stranger. In five minutes every thing they have is at your service; the fruit of which they are partaking, and the scented sherbet that they have prepared with their own hands. To make acquaintance with them, you require only to be cheerful, willing to indulge their harmless curiosity, and ready to return their civility in as far as you are enabled to do so. There is none of that withering indifference, or that supercilious scrutiny which obtains so much in Europe, to be dreaded from a Turkish gentlewoman; but there is, on the contrary, an earnest urbanity about her which is delightful, and which emanates from the intuitive politeness so universal among the natives; coupled with a simplicity of feeling, and a sincerity of good-nature that lend a double charm to the courtesies of life. Nor is the eye less satisfied than the heart, in these moments of agreeable, although brief, communion; for the graceful bearing of an Oriental female greatly enhances the charm of her ready kindness; and her self-possession, and dignity of manner, render her superior to the paltry affectation of assumed coldness; while they convince you that she would be as prompt to resent impertinence, as she had been ready to proffer courtesy.