here they would proceed to dry themselves, and resume
their garments; and women may not infrequently be seen bathing in
pools by the wayside, conversing quite unconstrainedly with their
male acquaintances, who are seated on the bank. The mere
unclothed body conveys to their minds no idea of indecency.
Immodesty and indelicacy of manner are practically unknown." He
adds that the excessive zeal of missionaries in urging their
converts to adopt European dress--which they are only too ready
to do--is much to be regretted, since the close-fitting, thin
garments are really less modest than the loose clothes they
replace, besides being much less cleanly. (R.A. Freeman, _Travels
and Life in Ashanti and Jaman_, 1898, p. 379.)

At Loango, says Pechuel-Loesche, "the well-bred negress likes to
cover her bosom, and is sensitive to critical male eyes; if she
meets a European when without her overgarment, she instinctively,
though not without coquetry, takes the attitude of the Medicean
Venus." Men and women bathe separately, and hide themselves from
each other when naked. The women also exhibit shame when
discovered suckling their babies. (_Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_,
1878, pp. 27-31.)

The Koran (Sura XXIV) forbids showing the pudenda, as well as the
face, yet a veiled Mohammedan woman, Stern remarks, even in the
streets of Constantinople, will stand still and pull up her
clothes to scratch her private parts, and in Beyrout, he saw
Turkish prostitutes, still veiled, place themselves in the
position for coitus. (B. Stern, _Medizin, etc., in der Tuerkei_,
vol. ii, p. 162.)

"An Englishman surprised a woman while bathing in the Euphrates;
she held her hands over her face, without troubling as to what
else the stranger might see. In Egypt, I have myself seen quite
naked young peasant girls, who hastened to see us, after covering
their faces." (C. Niebuhr, _Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien_,
1774, vol. i, p. 165.)

When Helfer was taken to visit the ladies in the palace of the
Imam of Muskat, at Buscheir, he found that their faces were
covered with black masks, though the rest of the body might be
clothed in a transparent sort of crape; to look at a naked face
was very painful to the ladies themselves; even a mother never
lifts the mask from the face of her daughter after the age of