critical at Mesket.  Famine at last broke out, and the people were well-nigh distracted, as no assistance or relief could be expected from without.  It was therefore decided to attempt a last sortie in order to die at least with glory.  There was just sufficient powder left for one more attack, but there was no more lead for either guns or muskets.  In this emergency the regent ordered iron nails and pebbles to be used in place of balls.  The guns were loaded with all the old iron and brass that could be collected, and she opened her treasury to have bullets made out of her own silver dollars.  Every nerve was strained, and the sally succeeded beyond all hope.  The enemy was completely taken by surprise and fled in all directions, leaving more than half their men dead and wounded on the field.  Mesket was saved, and, delivered out of her deep distress, the brave woman knelt down on the battlefield and thanked God in fervent prayer.

From that time her Government was a peaceful one, and she ruled so wisely that she was able to transfer to her nephew, my father, an empire so unimpaired as to place him in a position to extend the empire by the conquest of Zanzibar.  It is to my great-aunt, therefore, that we owe, and not to an inconsiderable degree, the acquisition of this second empire.

She, too, was an Eastern woman!

All through her book the Princess protests against the idea that Oriental women are degraded or oppressed, and in the following passage she points out how difficult it is for foreigners to get any real information on the subject: 

The education of the children is left entirely to the mother, whether she be legitimate wife or purchased slave, and it constitutes her chief happiness.  Some fashionable mothers in Europe shift this duty on to the nurse, and, by-and-by, on the governess, and are quite satisfied with looking up their children, or receiving their visits, once a day.  In France the child is sent to be nursed in the country, and left to the care of strangers.  An Arab mother, on the other hand, looks continually after her children.  She watches and nurses them with the greatest affection, and never leaves them as long as they may stand in need of her motherly care, for which she is rewarded by the fondest filial love.

If foreigners had more frequent opportunities to observe the cheerfulness, the exuberance of spirits even, of Eastern women, they would soon and more easily be convinced of the untruth of all those stories afloat about the degraded, oppressed, and listless state of their life.  It is impossible to gain a true insight into the actual domesticity in a few moments’ visit; and the conversation carried on, on those formal occasions, hardly deserves that name; there is barely more than the exchange of a few commonplace remarks—­and it is questionable if even these have been correctly interpreted.