It is very wonderful, that these people, who are remarkably fond of society, and particularly that of their women, should exclude its pleasures from the table, where among all other nations, whether civil or savage, they have been principally enjoyed.[11] How a meal, which every where else brings families and friends together, came to separate them here, we often enquired, but could never learn.  They eat alone, they said, because it was right; but why it was right to eat alone, they never attempted to tell us:  Such, however, was the force of habit, that they expressed the strongest dislike, and even disgust, at our eating in society, especially with our women, and of the same victuals.  At first, we thought this strange singularity arose from some superstitious opinion; but they constantly affirmed the contrary.  We observed also some caprices in the custom, for which we could as little account as for the custom itself.  We could never prevail with any of the women to partake of the victuals at our table when we were dining, in company; yet they would go, five or six together, into the servants’ apartments, and there eat very heartily of whatever they could find, of which I have before given a particular instance; nor were they in the least disconcerted if we came in while they were doing it.  When any of us have been alone with a woman, she has sometimes eaten in our company; but then she has expressed the greatest unwillingness that it should be known, and always extorted the strongest promises of secrecy.

[Footnote 11:  This is not true, as the reader will find, if he knows it not already, when he comes to the next note.  Dr H. does not seem to have read extensively on the customs of different nations.  It is indeed wonderful, that he did not advert to what had long been known of the practices of the East.  A single quotation from one author, may be sufficient to prepare the reader for any additional information, on the subject of the public separation of the sexes.  “The regulations of the haram,” says Dr Russel, speaking of the Moosulmauns, “oppose a strong barrier to curiosity; inveterate custom excludes females from mingling in assemblies of the other sex, and even with their nearest male-relations they appear to be under a restraint from which, perhaps, they are never emancipated, except in familiar society among themselves.”—­E.]

Among themselves, even two brothers and two sisters have each their separate baskets, with provision and the apparatus of their meal.  When they first visited us at our tents, each brought his basket with him; and when we sat down to table, they would go out, sit down upon the ground, at two or three yards distance from each other, and turning their faces different ways, take their repast without interchanging a single word.

The women not only abstain from eating with the men, and of the same victuals, but even have their victuals separately prepared by boys kept for that purpose, who deposit it in a separate shed, and attend them with it at their meals.