The Gourd Is A Conspicuous Article;
Smoked Inside And Fitted With A Cover Of The Same Material, It Serves As
Cup, Bottle, Pipe, And Water-Skin:
A coarse and heavy kind of pottery, of
black or brown clay, is used by some of the citizens.
The inhabitants of Harar live well. The best meat, as in Abyssinia, is
beef: it rather resembled, however, in the dry season when I ate it, the
lean and stringy sirloins of Old England in Hogarth's days. A hundred and
twenty chickens, or sixty-six full-grown fowls, may be purchased for a
dollar, and the citizens do not, like the Somal, consider them carrion.
Goat's flesh is good, and the black-faced Berberah sheep, after the rains,
is, here as elsewhere, delicious. The staff of life is holcus. Fruit grows
almost wild, but it is not prized as an article of food; the plantains are
coarse and bad, grapes seldom come to maturity; although the brab
flourishes in every ravine, and the palm becomes a lofty tree, it has not
been taught to fructify, and the citizens do not know how to dress,
preserve, or pickle their limes and citrons. No vegetables but gourds are
known. From the cane, which thrives upon these hills, a little sugar is
made: the honey, of which, as the Abyssinians say, "the land stinks," is
the general sweetener. The condiment of East Africa, is red pepper.
* * * * *
To resume, dear L., the thread of our adventures at Harar.
Immediately after arrival, we were called upon by the Arabs, a strange
mixture.
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