Having presented Quasimodo with a _backshich_, which sent him halting away with a second hideous grin, we proceeded to the Charshee, which is of considerable extent. As it chanced to be Sunday, the stalls usually occupied by Armenian and Greek merchants were closed; but many a Hassan, an Abdallah, and a Soleiman was squatted upon his carpet, with his wares temptingly arranged around him, his long beard falling to his girdle, his chibouk lying on the carpet beside him, and his slippers resting against its edge. Here, a green-turbaned descendant of the Prophet, with half a dozen ells of shawl twisted about his head, dark fiery eyes, and a beard as white as snow, pointed silently as we passed to his embossed silver pistols, his richly-wrought yataghans, and his velvet-sheathed and gilded scimitars. There, a keen-looking Dervish, with his broad flat girdle buckled with a clasp of agate, and his gray cap pulled low upon his forehead, extended towards us one of his neatly-turned ivory perfume-boxes. While examining his merchandize we might have been inclined to believe that we could purchase of him perpetual youth, and imperishable beauty. He had dyes, and washes, and pastes, and powders—essences, and oils, and incenses, and perfumed woods—amulets, and chaplets, and consecrated bracelets, and holy rings; all set forth with an order and precision worthy of their high qualities. A little further on, a solemn-looking individual presided over a miniature representation of Araby the Blest—Spices were piled around him pyramidically, or confined in crystal vases, according to their nature and costliness: there were sacks of cloves, heaps of mace, piles of ginger, mountains of nutmegs, hampers of allspice, baskets of pepper, faggots of cinnamon, and many others less commonly known. Opposite the spice-merchant was the gay stall of the slipper-maker, with its gaudy glories of purple, crimson, and yellow—its purple for the Jew, its crimson for the Armenian, and its yellow for the Turk. I purchased a pair of slippers of the true Musselmaun colour, for which I paid about twice as much as their value, being a Frank; and we then continued our walk. Not far from the slipper-merchant, on the platform in front of one of the closed shops, sat a ragged Turk, surrounded by flowers of a pale lilac colour, which emitted a delicious odour. While I was purchasing some, I inquired whence they came, and learnt that they were wild auriculas from Mount Olympus. I paid twice the price demanded for them, and bore them off. How knew I but that the seed might have been sown by Venus herself?