The ladies of Cairo, when they went abroad, affected the most superb dresses, adorning their necks and foreheads with clusters of brilliant gems, and wearing upon their heads lofty hurlets or coifs shaped like a tube, and of the most costly materials. Their cloaks or mantles, exquisitely embroidered, they covered with a piece of beautiful Indian muslin, while a thick black veil, thrown over all, enabled them to see without being seen. These elegant creatures, however, were very bad wives; for, disdaining to pay the slightest attention to domestic affairs, their husbands, like the citizens of modern Paris, were obliged to purchase their dinners ready dressed from restaurateurs. They enjoyed the greatest possible liberty, riding about wherever they pleased upon asses, which they preferred to horses for the easiness of their motions. Here and there among the crowd you heard the strange cry of those old female practitioners who performed the rite which introduced those of their own sex into the Mohammedan church, though their words, as the traveller observes, were not extremely intelligible. From Egypt Leo travelled into Arabia, Persia, Tartary, and Turkey, but of his adventures in these countries no account remains. On returning from Constantinople, however, by sea, he was taken by Christian corsairs off the island of Zerbi, on the coast of Tripoli, and being carried captive into Italy, was presented to Pope Leo X. at Rome, in 1517. The pope, who, as is well known, entertained the highest respect for every thing which bore the name of learning, no sooner discovered that the Moorish slave was a person of merit and erudition, than he treated him in the most honourable manner, settled upon him a handsome pension, and having caused him to be instructed in the principles of the Christian religion, had him baptized, and bestowed upon him his own name, Leo. Our traveller now resided principally at Rome, occasionally quitting it, however, for Bologna; and having at length acquired a competent knowledge of the Italian language, became professor of Arabic. Here he wrote his famous “Description of Africa,” originally in Arabic, but he afterward either rewrote or translated it into Italian. What became of him or where he resided after the death of his munificient patron is not certainly known.—One of the editions of Ramusio asserts that he died at Rome; but according to Widmanstadt, a learned German orientalist of the sixteenth century, he retired to Tunis, where, as is usual in such cases, he returned to his original faith, which he never seems inwardly to have abandoned. Widmanstadt adds, that had he not been prevented by circumstances which he could not control, he should have undertaken a voyage to Africa expressly for the purpose of conversing with our learned traveller, so great was his admiration of his genius and acquirements.