that no man could boast of her favours, without being her husband.  The admiral was transported at this kind offer, and sent back the money to her relations, saying, he was too happy in her possession.  He married her, and never took any other wife, and (as she says herself) she never had reason to repent the choice she made.  He left her, some years after, one of the richest widows in Constantinople.  But there is no remaining honourably a single woman, and that consideration has obliged her to marry the present captain bassa (i.e. admiral) his successor.—­I am afraid that you will think my friend fell in love with her ravisher; but I am willing to take her word for it, that she acted wholly on principles of honour, though I think she might be reasonably touched at his generosity, which is often found amongst the Turks of rank.

’TIS a degree of generosity to tell the truth, and ’tis very rare that any Turk will assert a solemn falsehood.  I don’t speak of the lowest sort; for as there is a great deal of ignorance, there is very little virtue amongst them; and false witnesses are much cheaper than in Christendom; those wretches not being punished (even when they are publicly detected) with the rigour they ought to be.

NOW I am speaking of their law, I don’t know whether I have ever mentioned to you one custom peculiar to their country, I mean adoption, very common amongst the Turks, and yet more amongst the Greeks and Armenians.  Not having it in their power to give their estates to a friend or distant relation; to avoid its falling into the grand signior’s treasury, when they are not likely to have any children of their own, they chuse some pretty child of either sex, amongst the meanest people, and carry the child and its parents before the cadi, and there declare they receive it for their heir.  The parents, at the same time, renounce all future claim to it; a writing is drawn and witnessed, and a child thus adopted, cannot be disinherited.  Yet I have seen some common beggars, that have refused to part with their children in this manner, to some of the richest among the Greeks; (so powerful is the instinctive affection that is natural to parents!) though the adopting fathers are generally very tender to these children of their souls, as they call them.  I own this custom pleases me much better than our absurd one of following our name.  Methinks, ’tis much more reasonable to make happy and rich an infant whom I educate after my own manner, brought up (in the Turkish phrase) upon my knees, and who has learned to look upon me with a filial respect, than to give an estate to a creature, without other merit or relation to me, than that of a few letters.  Yet this is an absurdity we see frequently practised.—­Now I have mentioned the Armenians, perhaps it will be agreeable to tell you something of that nation, with which I am sure you are utterly unacquainted.  I will not trouble you with the geographical account of the