And Now, Dear L., I Will Attempt To Gratify Your Just Curiosity Concerning
_The_ Sex In Eastern Africa.
The Somali matron is distinguished--externally--from the maiden by a
fillet of blue network or indigo-dyed cotton, which, covering the head and
containing the hair, hangs down to the neck.
Virgins wear their locks
long, parted in the middle, and plaited in a multitude of hard thin
pigtails: on certain festivals they twine flowers and plaster the head
like Kafir women with a red ochre,--the _coiffure_ has the merit of
originality. With massive rounded features, large flat craniums, long big
eyes, broad brows, heavy chins, rich brown complexions, and round faces,
they greatly resemble the stony beauties of Egypt--the models of the land
ere Persia, Greece, and Rome reformed the profile and bleached the skin.
They are of the Venus Kallipyga order of beauty: the feature is scarcely
ever seen amongst young girls, but after the first child it becomes
remarkable to a stranger. The Arabs have not failed to make it a matter of
jibe.
"'Tis a wonderful fact that your hips swell
Like boiled rice or a skin blown out,"
sings a satirical Yemeni: the Somal retort by comparing the lank haunches
of their neighbours to those of tadpoles or young frogs. One of their
peculiar charms is a soft, low, and plaintive voice, derived from their
African progenitors. Always an excellent thing in woman, here it has an
undefinable charm. I have often lain awake for hours listening to the
conversation of the Bedouin girls, whose accents sounded in my ears rather
like music than mere utterance.
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