To put on the haïk, it is dropped on the ground; one corner is lifted and brought over the left shoulder, and held upon the breast by the right hand. Then, by stepping backwards, the fold passes behind, and is brought under the right arm round in front. Another step across it, and it is behind again; then taken by both hands outstretched, it is brought over the head, measured so as to be left hanging low enough on both sides for the play of the arms. The end is then thrown over the left shoulder and hangs down the back. There are no ties, no buttons, no separate parts: the drapery is wrapped round with the sole fastening of its own folds. Dispensing with so many adjuncts, it supersedes all intermediaries. It is made under the tent; there is no tailor wanted; no shopman, no dealer, required; this is the link between a national costume and a people’s well-being. The Spaniard’s cloak, of which the style consists in the lap thrown over the left shoulder, is a mixture of the haïk and the bornoos: to this day the Spaniard looks upon the want of a cloak as the want of decent covering;--to be without a cloak is, as it were, to be naked. Great as is the distance between the attire of Europe and that of the East, not greater is the distance between its magnificence and the dignity of that of Numidia. The excellence of all other costumes resides in their own composition. There is not one which does not strain or coerce the human frame into its own design. The excellence of this is, that it follows nature, neither designing to embellish nor endeavouring to conceal; it reveals, but does not expose; it covers, but does not disguise. The antique is, however, only present where all the subsidiary garments disappear, and the haïk remains the sole clothing: there protrudes an arm and part of a leg, or the breast is heaved, or sometimes the whole outline of one side is visible; for the drapery is shifted in all conceivable ways, and according to their occupations; so that there are passing before you, and called up, as you look around, all the celebrated statues or groups of antiquity. One of these, which has remained most strongly in my eye, occurred in a boar hunt. While watching in my cover, a rustling called my attention to a neighbouring clump, and there stood an Arab; his gun resting on an edge of rock, his haïk unwound from both shoulders, and secured by a cord of plaited palmetto over the shoulder, as is often seen in the ancient statues; the drapery falling behind and extending over the ground; the left limb advanced, slightly bent, and exposed to mid-thigh, where the drapery swept to the ground. Here was a statue, and yet a man; not a model set up in a studio, and the form of the antique adapted to a modern musket!