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The Turkish soldiers in dark uniform and red fez; the cheerful, grinning water-carriers with their dripping, bulbous goatskins on their backs; the white-turbaned Druses with their bold, clean-cut faces; the bronzed, impassive sons of the desert, with their flowing mantles and bright head-cloths held on by thick, dark rolls of camel's hair; the rich merchants in their silken robes of many colours; the picturesquely ragged beggars; the Moslem pilgrims washing their heads and feet, with much splashing, at the pools in the marble courtyards of the mosques; the merry children, running on errands or playing with the water that gushes from many a spout at the corner of a street or on the wall of a house; the veiled Mohammedan women slipping silently through the throng, or bending over the trinkets or fabrics in some open-fronted shop, lifting the veil for a moment to show an olive-tinted cheek and a pair of long, liquid brown eyes; the bearded Greek priests in their black robes and cylinder hats; the Christian women wrapped in their long white sheets, but with their pretty faces uncovered, and a red rose or a white jasmine stuck among their smooth, shining black tresses; the seller of lemonade with his gaily decorated glass vessel on his back and his clinking brass cups in his hand, shouting, "A remedy for the heat," "Cheer up your hearts," "Take care of your teeth;" the boy peddling bread, with an immense tray of thin, flat loaves on his head, crying continually to Allah to send him customers; the seller of turnip-pickle with a huge pink globe upon his shoulder looking like the inside of a pale watermelon; the donkeys pattering along between fat burdens of grass or charcoal; a much-bedizened horseman with embroidered saddle-cloth and glittering bridle, riding silent and haughty through the crowd as if it did not exist; a victoria dashing along the street at a trot, with whip cracking like a pack of firecrackers, and shouts of, "O boy!
There were thousands of blue-shirted and red-tarbouched or white-turbaned Egyptians, buying or selling, or else merely amusing themselves; dealers in sugar-cane, pipe-pedlars, and vendors of rosaries; jugglers and minstrels. At last we came to a middle-aged woman seated on the ground behind a basket containing beads, glass armlets, and similar trinkets.
It soon proved that those white-turbaned, loose-garmented, supple jointed, highly-picturesque troops of the sultan were not likely to distinguish themselves for anything but wonderful rapidity in retreat.
A peasant girl was hoeing in the field, white-turbaned and black-limbed. All this we saw, but the spell still lay upon us. How curious a land is this, how full of untold story, of tragedy and laughter, and the rich legacy of human life; shadowed with a tragic past, and big with future promise! This is the Black Belt of Georgia.
"I'll tend the baby ef he wakes, Miss Sairay; let me lay him down now," she said, lifting him with her powerful black hands; "he likes his old Aunt Hester!" and she nestled him against her broad bosom, and bent her stately white-turbaned head caressingly over him. Molly, who was always fascinated by her, watched every movement, her eyes dancing, and her checks dimpling with some inner thought.
As the magnificently painted and gorgeously gilt barge, which twenty-four white-turbaned rowers urged along with almost horse-race speed, neared the strand, Nisida observed, beneath a velvet canopy in the stern, a personage, who by his splendid apparel, his commanding demeanor, and the respect paid to him by the slaves accompanying him, was evidently of exalted rank.
The slave disappeared with flying feet to catch up his wasted moments, but when the Turk turned to serve the silent Druze, he, too, had vanished, and some white-turbaned Arabs pressed forward in his place.
Even great men in the East rise early; so, when I arrived before the castle of the great Druze chief at six o'clock of a summer's morning, I was not surprised to find a crowd of black-cloaked and white-turbaned mountaineers already waiting for an audience of his grace; nor yet, when I had gained admittance as a favoured person, to find the chief himself afoot and wide awake.
They looked down on men and women in Roman chariots, men on horseback, women on horseback, on elephants, on camels painted ladies in howdahs, painted ladies in sedan chairs Cleopatra, Pompadour history reduced to pantomime, color imposed upon color, glitter upon glitter, the beat of the tom-tom, the crash of the band, the thin piping, as the white-turbaned snake-charmer showed in the press of the crowd.
In its cool dining room, decorated in the old Egyptian style with figures of gods and goddesses, with lotus blossoms and papyrus flowers, with hieroglyphics and symbols, painted on frieze, walls, and window sash, the tourists were waited on by white-robed, white-turbaned, red-sashed, red-slippered natives. The flies were a great pest.
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