It Was The Fig-Season, And We Passed Through Several
Alleys Encumbered With Long Rows Of Fig-Dressers, Children And
Women for the most part, who were packing the fruit diligently into
drums, dipping them in salt-water first, and
Spreading them neatly
over with leaves; while the figs and leaves are drying, large white
worms crawl out of them, and swarm over the decks of the ships
which carry them to Europe and to England, where small children eat
them with pleasure - I mean the figs, not the worms - and where they
are still served at wine-parties at the Universities. When fresh
they are not better than elsewhere; but the melons are of admirable
flavour, and so large, that Cinderella might almost be accommodated
with a coach made of a big one, without any very great distension
of its original proportions.
Our guide, an accomplished swindler, demanded two dollars as the
fee for entering the mosque, which others of our party subsequently
saw for sixpence, so we did not care to examine that place of
worship. But there were other cheaper sights, which were to the
full as picturesque, for which there was no call to pay money, or,
indeed, for a day, scarcely to move at all. I doubt whether a man
who would smoke his pipe on a bazaar counter all day, and let the
city flow by him, would not be almost as well employed as the most
active curiosity-hunter.
To be sure he would not see the women.
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