Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/83

Rh all the people came to see what seemed to them so unfemininc a mode of riding.

The women in the town of Mytilene are handsome, but very few of them have good teeth. Like the Greek women of old, they wear rouge, and till lately dyed their teeth with henna. They have well-cut features, but there is something mean in the whole character of the face, and I found more to remind me of the old classical type in the massive grandeur of features of the Roman contadina. The ladies of Lesbos are jealously guarded by their husbands. Since I have been here, I have seldom seen one in the streets. Occasionally they come out of their cage to take a walk of a summer's evening, when they gather together on the sea-shore, and strut about in Smyrna finery, redolent of musk, vain as peacocks, and even shriller in their cackling.

It is to be feared the rigid incarceration of so many Danaes has an unfavourable effect on domestic life. It is said that the ladies find means to avenge themselves on their tyrants, and that the morals of this beautiful little island have not improved since Sappho's time as much as could be desired.

The Turks in Mytilene are a decaying and decreasing population. With the exception of the Pasha himself, who possesses very large landed property in the island, and his son, there are no very rich Turkish proprietors. They live, as usual, in the seclusion of their own quarter, and are not very friendly to Franks. No Jews have ever been able to exist at Mytilene. A sententious old Turk told us