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Each pressed a great toe, like a dark-skinned potato, on the seat in front of him for support in the fierce effort of rowing. Turbans were torn off shaved, perspiring heads, and even skull-caps went in the last extreme. Wild appeals were chanted to all the handiest saints to grant aid in the terrible undertaking. An eagle-eyed child at the steering wheel gazed pityingly at his agonized elders.
Such skull-caps, it has been observed in a prior page of this work, were worn by barristers under their wigs, and country gentlemen at home, during the last century. Into such caps readers have seen Sir Francis North put his fees. When Shaftesbury sat in court as Lord High Chancellor of England he wore a hat, which Roger North is charitable enough to think might have been a black hat.
There were sou'westers, and tarpaulins, and skull-caps; frieze jackets, and overalls, and hickory shirts; tarpaulin coats, and heavy sea-boots, and duck blouses with old bunches of oakum sticking out of the pockets; there were coils of rope-yarn well tarred, and jack-knives in leather cases, still black with whale-gurry: and a few telescopes and log-glasses. "Take 'em all," said the captain.
Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from their own little quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at tambourines and crying in wild discords, "God bless our Lord!" "God give victory to our Lord the Sultan!"
'Who knows! said the gypsy. Down the way, dashing and splashing, and scattering man, horse, and cart to the left and right, came an open barouche, drawn by four smoking steeds, with postilions in scarlet jackets and leather skull-caps. Two forms were conspicuous in it; that of the successful bruiser, and of his friend and backer, the sporting gentleman of my acquaintance.
The motley crowd of vendors, clamouring, gesticulating, are chiefly distinguished by their hats the Arabs in white turbans, the Turks in dingy fezes jauntily cocked over dark, unshaven faces, some fezes swathed in bright silk scarves; the Caucasians in golden fleece hats, bright yellow sheepskin busbies; the few Russians in battered peak caps, like porters' discarded head-gear; Persians in skull-caps; Armenians in shabby felts, astrakhans, or mud-coloured bashliks.
At Banawe we saw more examples of native arts and crafts than we had heretofore. For example, the pipe is smoked, and we saw some curious specimens in brass, much decorated with pendent chains; others were of wood, some double-bowled on the same stem. Some of the men wore helmets, or skull-caps, cut out of a single piece of wood.
The skull-caps of plaited and blackened palm leaf, though common in the interior, are here rare; an imitation is produced by tressing the hair longitudinally from occiput to sinciput, making the head a system of ridges, divided by scalp-lines, and a fan-shaped tuft of scarlet-stained palm frond surmounts the poll. I noticed a fashion of crinal decoration quite new to me.
A few of the better-paid older men wore turbans of cheap white muslin, wrapped round brown felt skull-caps, or fezes. The carriers of rubbish, who received the smallest pay of any, dispensed with the drawers as well as with the turban.
The women, with golden ducats braided in their hair; the priests, with tall brimless hats and long yellow robes; the men, with round skull-caps, leathern girdles with knives in them, and waistcoats ornamented with hundreds of glittering buttons, are all unconscious of the change which is creeping in by the Danube, and to which they will presently find themselves submitting.
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