[Footnote 20: page 58.--_Wilder gestures of the dancing girls._ These dancing girls abound throughout Asia. The most famous are the Almeh of Egypt, and the Nautch of India. These last are a caste, the first only a profession.]
[Footnote 21: page 64.--_For thee the bastinado_. The bastinado is the common punishment of the East, and an effective and dreaded one. It is administered on the soles of the feet, the instrument a long cane or palm-branch. Public executions are very-rare.]
[Footnote 22: page 73.--_A door of tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl_. This elegant mode of inlay is common in Oriental palaces, and may be observed also in Alhambra, at Granada.]
[Footnote 23: page 74.--_A vaulted, circular, and highly embossed roof, of purple, scarlet, and gold._ In the very first style of Saracenic architecture. See the Hall of the Ambassadors in Alhambra, and many other chambers in that exquisite creation.]
[Footnote 24: page 74.--_Nubian eunuchs dressed in rich habits of scarlet and gold._ Thus the guard of Nubian eunuchs of the present Pacha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, or rather Caliph, a title which he wishes to assume. They ride upon white horses.]
[Footnote 25: page 74.--_A quadrangular court of roses._ So in Alhambra, 'The Court of Myrtles,' leading to the Court of Columns, wherein is the famous Fountain of Lions.]
[Footnote 26: page 75.--_An Abyssinian giant._ A giant is still a common appendage to an Oriental court even at the present day. See a very amusing story in the picturesque 'Persian Sketches' of that famous elchee, Sir John Malcolm.]
[Footnote 27: page 75.--_Surrounded by figures of every rare quadruped._ 'The hall of audience,' says Gibbon, from Cardonne, speaking of the magnificence of the Saracens of Cordova, 'was encrusted with gold and pearls, and a great basin in the centre was surrounded with the curious and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds.'-_Decline and Fall_, vol. x. p. 39.]
[Footnote 28: page 76.--_A tree of gold and silver._ 'Among the other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver, spreading into eighteen large branches, on which, and on the lesser boughs, sat a variety of birds made of the same precious metals, as well as the leaves of the tree. While the machinery effected spontaneous motions, the several birds warbled their natural harmony.'-_Gibbon,_ vol. x. p. 38, from Abulfeda, describing the court of the Caliphs of Bagdad in the decline of their power.]