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.

Notwithstanding his innate hospitality, the Arab has the greatest
possible objection to having his home pried into by those of another
land and creed. Whenever, therefore, a European lady called on us,
the enormous circumference of her hoops (which were the fashion then,
and took up the entire width of the stairs) was the first thing to
strike us dumb with wonder; after which, the very meagre conversation
generally confined itself on both sides to the mysteries of different
costumes; and the lady retired as wise as she was when she came, after
having been sprinkled over with attar of roses, and being the richer
for some parting presents.