33
Presents at Zayla...........................................100
Price of four mules with saddles and bridles................225
Price of four camels........................................ 88
Provisions (tobacco, rice, dates &c.) for three months......428
Price of 150 Tobes..........................................357
Nine pieces of indigo-dyed cotton........................... 16
Minor expenses (cowhides for camels, mats for tents,
presents to Arabs, a box of beads, three handsome
Abyssinian Tobes bought for chiefs).....................166
Expenses at Berberah, and passage back to Aden.............. 77
----
Total Cos. Rs. 1490 = L149
====
[12] I shall frequently use Somali terms, not to display my scanty
knowledge of the dialect, but because they perchance may prove serviceable
to my successors.
[13] The Somal always "side-line" their horses and mules with stout stiff
leathern thongs provided with loops and wooden buttons; we found them upon
the whole safer than lariats or tethers.
[14] Arabs hate "El Sifr" or whistling, which they hold to be the chit-
chat of the Jinns. Some say that the musician's mouth is not to be
purified for forty days; others that Satan, touching a man's person,
causes him to produce the offensive sound. The Hejazis objected to
Burckhardt that he could not help talking to devils, and walking about the
room like an unquiet spirit. The Somali has no such prejudice. Like the
Kafir of the Cape, he passes his day whistling to his flocks and herds;
moreover, he makes signals by changing the note, and is skilful in
imitating the song of birds.
