It is a little disconcerting for the European at first, and seems a startling drop back through a good many centuries, when you turn a corner in the road suddenly, and find yourself confronted by a group of maidens, who have put all their clothes in the big copper to wash, and are engaged in performing that office for one another. However, if the stranger is embarrassed, they are not. It is not manners to stare of course; and they sit still undisturbed till the man has passed, without even interrupting their conversation. Good narrow-minded folk at home say that they have no sense of decency. That, however, is an absolute libel; and it is far more near to the truth to say that it is the sense of indecency that is absent, as it was in the Garden of Eden. Layard had experience of this custom when he brought men of these tribes down to Mosul to work at his excavations. This he did for convenience' sake, in that they, having only a mountaineer's superstitions, were immune to those of the plain; and did not raise the same difficulties about digging in the mounds that the Arabs did. Naturally, his excavators brought their wives and daughters to cook for them; and naturally, those ladies brought their habits, and took their tubs as they had always done at home. When it was represented to them by their employer that they had scandalized the decent and respectable city of Mosul by so doing, they replied innocently, "But, sahib, if the Mussulmans object, they need not look." A Saturday tub in Tyari is a solemn and proper ceremonial. All the family go down together, and the washing is carried out, in true Homeric style, by the ladies personally. The old women scrub the old men, and the damsels the youths. When the men have finished the girls take their tubs. Certainly one poor Englishman had a painful experience, when he, a newcomer to the country, took a walk down the valley of Tyari on a Saturday afternoon. Turning a corner abruptly, he found a fair maiden sitting in all innocence in her bath. The Englishman had been properly brought up, so he averted his gaze, and passed by, as far away as the narrow limits of the path allowed. However, the damsel had been properly brought up too, but in a rather different school; and seeing that it was a _qasha_ (Priest), who was passing, she sprang out of her bath and came to kiss his hand as politeness dictates. Saint Anthony fled, totally misunderstanding her purpose; and the damsel followed after, ejaculating plaintively "Rabbi, Rabbi, what have I done that you will not allow me to kiss your hand?" It is said that he ultimately covered his eyes with his left hand, and extended his right at arm's length for the salute. However, a very few weeks' experience gave him perfect indifference to the spectacle.