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.
