With The Exception Of The First-Named, A Hard-
Featured Man At Least Forty Years Old, The Brothers Were Good-Looking
Youths, With Clear Brown Skins, Regular Features, And Graceful Figures.
They Entered The Gurgi When Invited, But Refused To Eat, Saying, That They
Came For Honor Not For Food.
The Hajj Sharmarkay's introductory letter was
read aloud to their extreme delight, and at their solicitation, I perused
it
A second and a third time; then having dismissed with sundry small
presents, the two Abbans Raghe and Rirash, I wrote a flattering account of
them to the Hajj, and entrusted it to certain citizens who were returning
in caravan Zayla-wards, after a commercial tour in the interior.
Before they departed, there was a feast after the Homeric fashion. A sheep
was "cut," disembowelled, dismembered, tossed into one of our huge
caldrons, and devoured within the hour: the almost live food [25] was
washed down with huge draughts of milk. The feasters resembled
Wordsworth's cows, "forty feeding like one:" in the left hand they held
the meat to their teeth, and cut off the slice in possession with long
daggers perilously close, were their noses longer and their mouths less
obtrusive. During the dinner I escaped from the place of flies, and
retired to a favourite tree. Here the End of Time, seeing me still in
pain, insisted upon trying a Somali medicine. He cut two pieces of dry
wood, scooped a hole in the shorter, and sharpened the longer, applied
point to socket, which he sprinkled with a little sand, placed his foot
upon the "female stick," and rubbed the other between his palms till smoke
and char appeared.
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