The mantilla is not spoken of as a piece of dress that fits well or ill. Such a lady, they say, wears her mantilla well, just as if they were speaking of a ship carrying her colours. The port of a Spanish lady is, indeed, like the bearing of a ship. The mantillas, reversing the effect of our costume--which is to impress the wearer with the feelings of a block--gives at once freedom and dexterity. The mantilla, fan, castanet, guitar and dance--which last is not here the business of the legs alone--keep the arms always busy. The head is disencumbered of bonnet, cap, ribands and curls; hence that grace of the Spanish women, which all recognize and none can describe, for mere form or feature does not explain it. I need not say that beneath a mantilla there are no curls; nor need I add, that where neither bonnets nor caps are worn, and the head is always exposed, the hair is well kept. A Spanish lady remarked to me, that what struck her principally when she travelled in other countries, was the want of cleanliness in the women’s hair. It is always exposed, as hair was intended to be, to the air and wind, and it is every day in water, for they wet it before using the comb. The hair is dressed in two styles. One is called _sarrano_. The only explanation I could get for this name was, that _sierra_ means mountain, and that the mountaineers dress in this way. But neither does it seem to be the style of the Sierra, nor does the word sarrano mean mountain: there is, indeed, no such word in Spanish.[82] _Sar_ and _sarrano_ were Phœnician forms of Tyre[83] and Tyrian. The Tyrian, not the Greek or Roman, pronunciation would prevail in Spain and Africa. Columella, a Spaniard, says, “_Sarranam violam_;” Silvius Italicus has “_Sarranum muricem_;” Ennius, “_Sarranum ostrum_;” consequently, “Sarrano head-dress” means neither more nor less than “Tyrian head-dress.”[84] Such an etymology is in no ways far-fetched. It is quite natural to look for a Tyrian mode of dressing the hair, under a covering of the head, described by Solomon, in a city built by the Tyrians, and from which you can perceive another city, which to this day bears the name of Sidon. Saint Augustine quotes it as an instance of the retentive memory of the people of his age, that the rustics in the neighbourhood of Carthage, when asked who and what they were, answered, “We are from Canaan;” whence they had come one thousand and ninety years before, and after the name of Canaan had long been obliterated. Here is a head-dress with the name of Tyre,[85] more than double that interval of years.