Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria, and across the desert into Egypt ...

ID2
TRAVELS IN ASIATIC TURKEY,
lar steps, the rider feels a sensation similar to that of being rocked
in a cradle.*
The Syrians are in general of an ordinary stature, and of a spare
thin make, but very active and alert. Their speed, both in run-
ning and walking, is very great ; and being inured as well to privations
as to fatigues, they are capable of enduring an extreme toil,
with a very scanty support, for a considerable length of time. In
this particular they have a great resemblance to the Indians of
America. Their countenances are meagre and wan; and their
complexion so dark as, in a variety of instances, to approach nearly
to black. Their hair is of a
shining black, and it is worn by
the
women very long, extending
even to the waist. They dress and
decorate it in a very fanciful manner, suspending from it, and round
the head, different coins, such as paras, sequins, and piastres, large
bunches of which are also suspended from the ears. On the wrists
they wear bracelets of coloured glass. They stain their nails of an
orange colour with the henna, and blacken their
eyelids with a
powder, of which I have already spoken in the details I have given
relative to Turkey.
The inhabitants of Syria arc very abstemious in their diet,
which is simple in the extreme. It consists chieflv of salted olives,
cheese of a poor and indigestible quality, a coarse bread badly
baked, and formed into flat cakes, and rancid butter, or perhaps
oil. They rarely indulge themselves in the use of animal food ;
but on these occasions prepare a wholesome, and to many a palatable
dish called pilaw, by stewing the flesh with rice. Notwith-
standing their common beverage is water, a spirituous compound,
called rackcy, made from the fermented husks and stalks of
grapes, distilled with aniseeds, is imported into Syria from Turkey
and Asia.
During our stay at Jaffa we were well supplied with fish, such
as mullets, breams, &:c. Our butter we were obliged to procure
from Jerusalem : it was made without salt, and cost nearly eigh-
teen pence English per pound.
In every part of the country there
is an abundance of fowls; but we did not meet with either tame
ducks, geese, or turkies, with the exception of those brought from
Cyprus, where they arc bred in great numbers.
* I do not recollect to have seen, either in
Syrjq
or in Egypt, more than one protuberance
on the back of the camels, whether or
bedtgins, dromedaries, which appear to be
only a more blender and smaller species of the camel.