“The second division to which this room led, consisted of three parts; the central one was a large and deep bath, filled with warm water, its bottom being level with the lower floor of the building, and the ascent to it being by three or four steep steps.

“As few pleasures are entirely perfect, so here, with all its general apparent superiority to the baths of Turkey, this was inferior to them in the most essential points.  The attendants seemed quite ignorant of the art of twisting the limbs, moulding the muscles, cracking the joints, opening the chest, and all that delicious train of operations in which the Turks are so skilful.  The visitors were merely well though roughly scrubbed, and their impurities then rinsed off in the large cistern above, from which there was neither a running stream to carry off the foul water, nor cocks of hot and cold to renew and temper it at pleasure, as in Turkey.

“In place of the luxurious moulding of the muscles, the use of the hair-bag, or glove, for removing the dirt, and the profusion of perfumed soap, with which the Turks end a course of treatment full of delight, the Persians are occupied in staining the beard and hair black, the nails of the toes and fingers of a deep red, and the whole of the feet and hands of a yellow colour, by different preparations of henna.  This operation is the most unpleasant that can be imagined.  The Persians do not shave the whole of the head, as is usual with most of the Turks and Arabs, but, taking of all the hair from the forehead, over the crown, and down the neck, for about a hand’s breadth, they leave on each side two large bushy masses depending over their shoulders.  This, then, with a very long and full beard, in which all the people here take pride, is plastered with a thick paste, of the consistence of hog’s lard, and not less than two pounds weight of which is sometimes used on one person.  It possesses a strongly astringent and penetrating quality, and requires great skill in the use of it, to avoid doing considerable mischief.  As the eye-brows are plastered with it, as well as the rest of the hair, and as it softens by the heat of the room and of the body, it frequently steals into the eyes, and produces great pain.

“When all is finished, and the visiter leaves the inner bath, he is furnished with two cloths only, one for the waist, and the other to throw loosely over the head and shoulders:  he then goes into the outer room into a colder air, thus thinly clad, and without slippers or pattens; no bed is prepared for him, nor is he again attended to by any one, unless he demands a nargeel to smoke; but, most generally, he dresses himself in haste, and departs.”

ORIGIN OF PSALMODY.