The Women Husked The Pineapple-Formed Heads In Mortars Composed Of A Hollowed Trunk [13], Smeared The Threshing Floor With

Cow-dung and water to defend it from insects, piled the holcus heads into neat yellow heaps, spanned and crossed

By streaks of various colours, brick-red and brownish-purple [14], and stacked the Karbi or straw, which was surrounded like the grain with thorn, as a defence against the wild hog. All seemed to consider it a labour of love: the harvest-home song sounded pleasantly to our ears, and, contrasting with the silent desert, the hum of man's habitation was a music.

Descending the steep slope, we reposed, after a seven miles' march, on the banks of a bright rivulet, which bisects the Kobbo or valley: it runs, according to my guides, from the north towards Ogadayn, and the direction is significant,--about Harar I found neither hill nor stream trending from east to west. The people of the Kutti [15] flocked out to gaze upon us: they were unarmed, and did not, like the Bedouins, receive us with cries of "Bori." During the halt, we bathed in the waters, upon whose banks were a multitude of huge Mantidae, pink and tender green. Returning to the camels, I shot a kind of crow, afterwards frequently seen. [16] It is about three times the size of our English bird, of a bluish-black with a snow-white poll, and a beak of unnatural proportions: the quantity of lead which it carried off surprised me.

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