This is merely playing with them. Jews fry them in
oil and salt, and sell them as we sell shrimps, the taste of which they
resemble.
On my return, I passed a Mooress, or rather a Mauritanian Venus, who was
so stout that she had fallen down, and could not get up. A mule was
fetched to carry her home. But the Moor highly relishes these enormous
lumps of fat, according to the standard beauty laid down by the
talebs - "Four things in a woman should be ample, the lower part of the
back, the thighs, the calves of the legs and the knees."
Some time ago, there were discovered at Malta various rude statues of
women very ample in the lower part of the "back," supposed to be of
Libyan origin, so that stout ladies have been the choicest of the
fashion for ages past; the fattening of women, like so many capons and
turkeys, begins when they are betrothed.
They then swallow three times a day regular boluses of paste, and are
not allowed to take exercise. By the time marriage takes place, they are
in a tolerable good condition, not unlike Smithfield fattened heifers.
The lady of one of the European merchants being very thin, the Moors
frequently asked her husband how it was, and whether she had enough to
eat, hinting broadly that he starved her.
On the other hand, two or three of the merchant's wives were exceedingly
stout, and of course great favourites with the men folks of this city.
The discrepancies of age, in married people, is most unnatural and
disgusting; whilst the merchants were at Morocco, a little girl of nine
years of age was married to a man upwards of fifty. Ten and eleven is a
common age for girls to be married. Much has been said of the reverence
of children for their parents in the East, and tribes of people
migrating therefrom, and the fifth commandment embodies the sentiment of
the Eastern world. But there is little of this in Mogador; a European
Jewess, who knows all the respectable Jewish and many of the Moorish
families, assured me that children make their aged parents work for
them, as long as the poor creatures can. "Honour thy father and thy
mother," is quite as much neglected here as in Europe. However, there is
some difference. The indigent Moors and Jews maintain their aged parents
in their own homes, and we English Christian shut up ours in the Union
Bastiles.
To continue this domestic picture, the marriage settlements, especially
among the Jews, are ticklish and brittle things, as to money or other
mercenary arrangements.
A match is often broken off, because a lamp of the value of four dollars
has been substituted for one of the value of twenty dollars, which was
first promised on the happy day of betrothal.
Indeed, nearly all marriages here are matters of sale and barter. Love
is out of the question, he never flutters his purple wings over the
bridal bed of Mogador. A Jewish or Moorish girl having placed before her
a rich, old ugly man, of mean and villanous character, of three score
years and upwards, and by his side, a handsome youth of blameless
character and amiable manners, will not hesitate a moment to prefer the
former. As affairs of intrigue and simple animal enjoyment are the great
business of life, the ways and means, in spite of Moorish and Mahometan
jealousy, as strong as death, by which these young and frail beauties
indulge in forbidden conversations, are innumerable. Although the Moors
frequently relate romantic legends of lovely innocent brides, who had
never seen any other than the faces of their father, or of married
ladies, who never raised the veil from off their faces, except to
receive their own husbands, and seem to extol such chastity and
seclusion; they are too frequently found indulging in obscene
imaginations, tempting and seducing the weaker sex from the path of
virtue and honour. So that, if women are unchaste here, or elsewhere,
men are the more to blame: if woman goes one step wrong, men drag her
two more. Men corrupt women, and then punish her for being corrupt,
depriving them of their natural and unalienable rights.
Salt in Africa as in Europe is a domestic superstition. A Jewess, one
morning, in bidding adieu to her friends, put her fingers into a
salt-cellar, and took from it a large pinch of salt, which her friend
told me afterwards was to preserve her from the evil one. Salt is also
used for a similar important purpose, when, during the night, a person
is obliged to pass from one room into another in the dark. It would be
an entertaining task to collect the manifold superstitions in different
parts of the world, respecting this essential ingredient of human food.
The habit of drinking white brandy, stimulates the immorality of this
Maroquine society. The Jews are the great factors of this _acqua
ardiente_, its Spanish and general name. Government frequently severely
punishes them for making it; but they still persevere in producing this
incentive to intoxication and crime. In all parts of the world, the most
degraded classes are the factors of the means of vice for the higher
orders of society. Moors drink it under protest, that it is not the
juice of the grape. On the Sabbath, the Jewish families are all flushed,
excited, and tormented by this evil spirit; but when the highest
enjoyments of intellect are denied to men, they must and will seek the
lower and beastly gratifications.
Friend Cohen came in one afternoon, and related several anecdotes of the
Maroquine Court. When Dr. Brown was attending the Sultan, the Vizier
managed to get hold of his cocked hat, and placing it upon his head,
strutted about in the royal gardens.
