_veiled_ in the streets, they dare hardly speak to a man, even on
business. Everybody must be strangers to them; it would be indecent to
fix your eyes on them; and you must let them pass you as if there were
something contagious in their nature. The situation of the women among
the Orientals, occasions a great contrast between their manners and
ours. Such is their delicacy on this head, that they never speak of
them; and it would be esteemed highly indecent to make any inquiries of
the men respecting the women of their family. They are unable to
conceive how our women go with their faces uncovered; when, in their
country, an uplifted veil is the mark of a prostitute, or the signal for
a love adventure."

Pitt's account coincides with the above. "At Algiers, if there are two,
three, or four families in one house, as many times there happens to be,
yet they may live there many years and never see one another's wife." p.
63. "The women wear veils, so that a man's own wife may pass him in the
street and he not have the least knowledge of her. They will not stop to
speak with men, or even with their own husbands in the street." p. 67.

Niebuhr says, p. 44. "A man never salutes women in public; he would even
commit an indecency if he looked at them steadily. An Arab lady who met
us in a wide valley of the desert of Mount Sinai, went out of the way,
gave her camel to be led by her servant, and walked on foot till we were
passed; another, who met us in a narrow way, and who was on foot, sat
down, and turned her back towards us."

We see by the above, the importance attached to this part of female
dress in the East. The females of the Jewish nation, as referred to
above, in the case of Rebekah, wore the veil as a token of modesty,
reverence, or _subjection_ to their husbands. Chardin also says,