It is usual
for Europeans to carry long sticks with them, for the express
purpose of keeping off the chosen people. I always felt ashamed to
strike the poor fellows myself, but I confess to the amusement with
which I witnessed the observance of this custom by other people.
The Jew seldom got hurt much, for he was always expecting the blow,
and was ready to recede from it the moment it came: one could not
help being rather gratified at seeing him bound away so nimbly,
with his long robes floating out in the air, and then again wheel
round, and return with fresh importunities.
{9} Marriages in the East are arranged by professed match-makers;
many of these, I believe, are Jewesses.
{10} A Greek woman wears her whole fortune upon her person in the
shape of jewels or gold coins; I believe that this mode of
investment is adopted in great measure for safety's sake. It has
the advantage of enabling a suitor to RECKON as well as to admire
the objects of his affection.
{11} St. Nicholas is the great patron of Greek sailors. A small
picture of him enclosed in a glass case is hung up like a barometer
at one end of the cabin.
{12} Hanmer.
{13} ". . . ubi templum illi, centumque Sabaeo
Thure calent arae, sertisque recentibus halant."
- Aeneid, i, 415.
{14} The writer advises that none should attempt to read the
following account of the late Lady Hester Stanhope except those who
may already chance to feel an interest in the personage to whom it
relates. The chapter (which has been written and printed for the
reasons mentioned in the preface) is chiefly filled with the
detailed conversation, or rather discourse, of a highly eccentric
gentlewoman.
{15} Historically "fainting"; the death did not occur until long
afterwards.
{16} I am told that in youth she was exceedingly sallow.
{17} This was my impression at the time of writing the above
passage, an impression created by the popular and uncontradicted
accounts of the matter, as well as by the tenor of Lady Hester's
conversation. I have now some reason to think that I was deceived,
and that her sway in the desert was much more limited than I had
supposed. She seems to have had from the Bedouins a fair five
hundred pounds' worth of respect, and not much more.
{18} She spoke it, I dare say, in English; the words would not be
the less effective for being spoken in an unknown tongue. Lady
Hester, I believe, never learnt to speak the Arabic with a perfect
accent.
{19} The proceedings thus described to me by Lady Hester as having
taken place during her illness, were afterwards re-enacted at the
time of her death.
