But In This Way Much Of
The Oil Is Lost, As May Be Seen By The Greasy Surface Of The Water Below
Where This Rude Process Is Going On.
Among the oil-women, we noticed a
girl who would have been very pretty and fascinating had she washed
herself instead of the olives.
We entered an Arab house inhabited by
some twenty persons, chiefly women, who forthwith unceremoniously took
off our caps, examined very minutely all our clothes with an excited
curiosity, laughed heartily when we put our hands in our pockets, and
wished to do the same, and then pulled our hair, looking under our faces
with amorous glances. On the hill overlooking the town, we also met two
women screaming frightfully and tearing their faces; we learned that one
of them had lost her child. The women make the best blankets here with
handlooms, and do the principal heavy work.
We saw some hobaras, also a bird called getah, smaller than a partridge,
something like a ptarmigan, with its summer feathers, and head shaped
like a quail. The Bey sent two live ones to R., besides a couple of
large jerboahs of this part, called here, _gundy_. They are much like
the guinea-pig, but of a sandy colour, and very soft and fine, like a
young hare. The jerboahs in the neighbourhood of Tunis are certainly
more like the rat. The other day, near the south-west gates, we fell in
with a whole colony of them - which, however, were the lesser animal, or
Jerd species - who occupied an entire eminence to themselves, the
sovereignty of which seemed to have been conceded to them by the Bey of
Tunis.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 147 of 196
Words from 39541 to 39822
of 53114
