Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/418

308 Arabians consider long and straight hair as beautiful. The Abyssinians prefer the short and curled. The Arabians perfume themselves and their shifts with a composition of musk, ambergrease, incense, and benjoin, which they mix with the sharp horny nails that are at the extremity of the fish surrumbac; but why this ingredient is added I know not, as the smell of it, when burnt, does not at all differ from that of horn. They put all these ingredients into a kind of censer on charcoal, and stand over the smoke of it. The smell is very agreeable; but, in Europe, it would be a very expensive article of luxury.

Arab women are not black, there are even some exceedingly fair. They are more corpulent than the men, but are not much esteemed.-- The Abyssinian girls, who are bought for money, are greatly preferred; among other reasons, because their time of bearing children is longer; few Arabian women have children after the age of twenty.

Loheia we received a letter from Mahomet Gibberti, telling us, that it would yet be ten days before he could join us, and desiring us to be ready by that time. This hurried us extremely, for we were much afraid we should not have time to see the remaining part of the Arabian Gulf, to where it joins with the Indian Ocean.

the 27th, in the evening, we parted from Loheia, but were obliged to tow the boat out. About nine, we anchored between an island called Ormook, and the land; about eleven we set sail with a wind at north-east, and passed a cluster of islands on our left.