lace. Captain Cumings, at our request, asked permission of the Duke to
allow us to see his wives, who live in a square formed of mud huts, with
a communication from the back part of his house. The Duke very
courteously complied with our wishes, and sent persons to attend us.
There were about sixty Queens, besides little Princes and Princesses,
with a number of slave-girls to wait upon them. His favourite Queen, the
handsomest of the royal party, was so large that she could scarcely
walk, or even move, indeed they were all prodigiously large, their
beauty consisting more in the mass of physique, than in the delicacy or
symmetry of features or figure. This uniform tendancy to _en bon point_,
on an unusual scale, was accounted for, by the singular fact, that the
female upon whom His Majesty fixes his regards, is regularly fattened up
to a certain standard, previously to the nuptial ceremony, it appearing
to be essential to the Queenly dignity that the lady should be
enormously fat. We saw a very fine young woman undergoing this ordeal.
She was sitting at a table, with a large bowl of farinaceous food; which
she was swallowing as fast as she could pass the spoon to, and from, the
bowl, and her mouth; and she was evidently taking no inconsiderable
trouble to qualify herself for that happy state, which Pope tell us is
the object of every woman's ambition, that of being Queen for life, the
royal road to which, in this country, lies through a course of
gormandizing. The same custom extends to the wives of the great men, who
undergo a similar operation before marriage. On the morning of their
wedding-day they are seated at a table, to receive presents from their
relations and friends; a yard of cloth from one, some silk from another,
some beads from a third, according to the taste incapacity of the
donors. My companions were not much struck with the beauty of the
Queens, for they declared that some of the pretty young slave-girls had
much more lovely looks. Each of the Duke's wives bring, or send, a jug
of water for his large brass-pan bath every morning, and his favourite