favored with a sight of the faces of these beauties. More than once it has
happened to me, in meeting a veiled lady, sailing along in her
balloon-like feridjee, that she has allowed the veil to drop by a skilful
accident, as she passed, and has startled me with the vision of her
beauty, recalling the line of the Persian poet: "Astonishment! is this the
dawn of the glorious sun, or is it the full moon?" The Circassian face is
a pure oval; the forehead is low and fair, "an excellent thing in woman,"
and the skin of an ivory whiteness, except the faint pink of the cheeks
and the ripe, roseate stain of the lips. The hair is dark, glossy, and
luxuriant, exquisitely outlined on the temples; the eyebrows slightly
arched, and drawn with a delicate pencil; while lashes like "rays of
darkness" shade the large, dark, humid orbs below them. The alabaster of
the face, so pure as scarcely to show the blue branching of the veins on
the temples, is lighted by those superb eyes--

"Shining eyes, like antique jewels set in Parian statue-stone,"

--whose wells are so dark and deep, that you are cheated into the belief
that a glorious soul looks out of them.

Once, by an unforeseen chance, I beheld the Circassian form, in its most
perfect development. I was on board an Austrian steamer in the harbor of
Smyrna, when the harem of a Turkish pasha came out in a boat to embark for
Alexandria. The sea was rather rough, and nearly all the officers of the
steamer were ashore. There were six veiled and swaddled women, with a
black eunuch as guard, in the boat, which lay tossing for some time at the
foot of the gangway ladder, before the frightened passengers could summon
courage to step out. At last the youngest of them--a Circassian girl of
not more than fifteen or sixteen years of age--ventured upon the ladder,
clasping the hand-rail with one hand, while with the other she held