fortunate to have escaped maiming or mutilation should he incautiously
give a pretext for Ethiopian or Nubian intervention.

Few persons of foreign birth and training would go more than twice
to visit the Sweet Waters of Asia, whose peculiarities and amusements
have been thus briefly sketched. The spectacle at the European Sweet
Waters differs somewhat from the routine already described. There,
although you also meet the Turks, the greater proportion of the
visitors are either Greeks or native Christians of different races.
You see fewer arabas and telekis, and more carriages, or rather hacks,
and men galloping along on raw-boned horses in a kind of imitation
"Rotten-Row" style. The men wear the European dress, often surmounted
by the red fez: the women dress in an insane imitation of French
fashions, and glitter with jewelry--a passion with Eastern women of
all races and creeds. Frequently a woman carries her whole fortune
and her husband's in these ornaments, which, in a country where the
difference between _meum_ and _tuum_ is so little observed by persons
in authority, is regarded as the safest mode of investment.

The European Sweet Waters are rather more dull and less interesting
than the Asiatic, owing to the causes already described, nor is
compensation to be found in the superior beauty of the women; for,
as a general rule, the Greek men are better looking than the women;
and the intercourse between the sexes is regulated on the Eastern
plan to a very great extent, though there is not the same absolute
prohibition, nor the same peril attendant on the attempt to open an
acquaintance. In all Eastern countries, however, the position and
treatment of woman are modified by the prevailing prejudice, which
places her on a much lower level than the man, and deprives her of
most of the cherished privileges of her more favored Western sisters.