The Death Of - Bey Was Announced In The French
Papers A Few Weeks Back.
My above kind-hearted and agreeable young informant used to
discourse, in our evenings in the Lazaretto at Malta, very
eloquently about the beauty of his wife, whom he had left behind
him at Cairo - her brown hair, her brilliant complexion, and her
blue eyes.
It is this Circassian blood, I suppose, to which the
Turkish aristocracy that governs Egypt must be indebted for the
fairness of their skin. Ibrahim Pasha, riding by in his barouche,
looked like a bluff jolly-faced English dragoon officer, with a
grey moustache and red cheeks, such as you might see on a field-day
at Maidstone. All the numerous officials riding through the town
were quite as fair as Europeans. We made acquaintance with one
dignitary, a very jovial and fat Pasha, the proprietor of the inn,
I believe, who was continually lounging about the Ezbekieh garden,
and who, but for a slight Jewish cast of countenance, might have
passed any day for a Frenchman. The ladies whom we saw were
equally fair; that is, the very slight particles of the persons of
ladies which our lucky eyes were permitted to gaze on. These
lovely creatures go through the town by parties of three or four,
mounted on donkeys, and attended by slaves holding on at the
crupper, to receive the lovely riders lest they should fall, and
shouting out shrill cries of "Schmaalek," "Ameenek" (or however
else these words may be pronounced), and flogging off the people
right and left with the buffalo-thong.
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