fruit kind, they would make very well, if the badness of their butter did not spoil them. A large pilaw, with a dish of sweet starch[467], which they sometimes eat with it, comes last, excepting the _khushaf_; which is a very thin syrup, with currans, raisins, dried apricots, pistaches, slices of pears, apples, or the like, swimming in it; and of this each person takes a large spoonful, with spoons brought in with it on purpose, and finishes the repast. Water is their liquor at table, and after dinner they drink coffee. Almost all their dishes are either greasy with fat, or butter pretty high-seasoned with salt and spices; many of them made sour with verjuice, pomegranate, or lemon-juice; and onions and garlick often complete the seasoning. They sup early, that is, about five o’clock in the winter, and six in the summer, in much the same manner that they dine; and in winter, as they often visit one another, and sit up late, they have a collation of _kennafy_[468], or other sweet dishes. In the summer their breakfast commonly consists of fruits; and, besides dinner and supper, they often, within the compass of the day, eat water-melons, cucumbers, and other fruits, according to the season. It is to be observed, that they are not so regular in their times of eating as the _Europeans_: and though it should happen that they are but just rose from table, they cannot withstand the invitation of another company, but sit down and eat again with them. The common people have no such variety as has been before described. Bread, dibbs, leban, butter, rice, and a very little mutton, make the chief of their food in the winter; as rice, bread, cheese, and fruits, do in the summer. Their principal meal is in the evening, when they return to their families from the exercise of their respective occupations. Through the whole of the month of _Ramadan_[469], they fast from the dawn of day till sunset, and do not either eat or smoke: but, as soon as the sun is down, they eat a hearty meal; and, such as can afford to sleep in the day, keep eating and drinking the greatest part of the night, living more luxuriously than at other times, and generally spending as much money in that one, as in any other two months in the year: but the poor labourers, or those whose business calls them abroad in the day, suffer a great deal during this fast, more especially when it happens in the summer. Though wine and spirits are only drank by the irreligious and licentious among the _Turks_, yet the number of these is more than what from appearance one would apprehend: for as these liquors are prohibited by their religion, they chiefly drink in secret at their gardens, or privately in the night; and, if they once begin, they generally drink to great excess whenever they can come at liquor.