Many of these Turkish women were smoking pipes of tobacco with an appearance of extreme enjoyment, and drinking small cups of coffee without milk.
Two or three friends often made use of the same pipe, which was passed round from mouth to mouth.

These ladies seemed also to be partial to dainties: most of them were well provided with raisins, figs, sugared nuts, cakes, etc., and ate as much as the little ones.
They seemed to treat their slaves very kindly; the black servants sat among their mistresses, and munched away bravely: the slaves are well dressed, and could scarcely be distinguished from their owners, were it not for their sable hue.
During my whole journey I remarked with pleasure that the lot of a slave in the house of a Mussulman is not nearly so hard as we believe.

The Turkish women are no great admirers of animated conversations; still there was more talking in their societies than in the assemblies of the men, who sit silent and half asleep in the coffee-houses, languidly listening to the narrations of a story- teller.
The ladies' garden resembles a churchyard.

Funeral monuments peer forth at intervals between the cypresses, beneath which the visitors sit talking and joking cheerfully.

Every now and then one would suddenly start up, spread a carpet beside her companions, and kneel down to perform her devotions.
As no one of the male sex was allowed to be present, all were unveiled.