[42] Several Acacias afford gums, which the Bedouins eat greedily to
strengthen themselves. The town's people declare that the food produces
nothing but flatulence.
[43] "Subhan' Allah!" an exclamation of pettishness or displeasure.
[44] The hills not abounding in camels, like the maritime regions, asses
become the principal means of transport.
[45] This barbarous practice is generally carried out in cases of small-
pox where contagion is feared.
[46] Fear--danger; it is a word which haunts the traveller in Somali-land.
[47] The Somali Tol or Tul corresponds with the Arabic Kabilah, a tribe:
under it is the Kola or Jilib (Ar. Fakhizah), a clan. "Gob," is synonymous
with the Arabic Kabail, "men of family," opposed to "Gum," the caste-less.
In the following pages I shall speak of the Somali _nation_, the Eesa
tribe, the Rer Musa _clan_, and the Rer Galan _sept_, though by no means
sure that such verbal gradation is generally recognised.
[48] The Eesa, for instance, are divided into--
1. Rer Wardik (the royal clan). 6. Rer Hurroni.
2. Rer Abdullah. 7. Rer Urwena.
3. Rer Musa. 8. Rer Furlabah.
4. Rer Mummasan. 9. Rer Gada.
5. Rer Guleni. 10. Rer Ali Addah.
These are again subdivided: the Rer Musa (numbering half the Eesa), split
up, for instance, into--
1. Rer Galan. 4. Rer Dubbah.
2. Rer Harlah. 5. Rer Kul.
3. Rer Gadishah. 6. Rer Gedi.
[49] Traces of this turbulent equality may be found amongst the slavish
Kafirs in general meetings of the tribe, on the occasion of harvest home,
when the chief who at other times destroys hundreds by a gesture, is
abused and treated with contempt by the youngest warrior.
[50] "Milk-seller."
[51] For instance, Anfarr, the "Spotted;" Tarren, "Wheat-flour;" &c. &c.
[52] It is used by the northern people, the Abyssinians, Gallas, Adail,
Eesa and Gudabirsi; the southern Somal ignore it.
[53] The most dangerous disease is small-pox, which history traces to
Eastern Abyssinia, where it still becomes at times a violent epidemic,
sweeping off its thousands. The patient, if a man of note, is placed upon
the sand, and fed with rice or millet bread till he recovers or dies. The
chicken-pox kills many infants; they are treated by bathing in the fresh
blood of a sheep, covered with the skin, and exposed to the sun. Smoke and
glare, dirt and flies, cold winds and naked extremities, cause ophthalmia,
especially in the hills; this disease rarely blinds any save the citizens,
and no remedy is known. Dysentery is cured by rice and sour milk, patients
also drink clarified cows' butter; and in bad cases the stomach is
cauterized, fire and disease, according to the Somal, never coexisting.
Haemorroids, when dry, are reduced by a stick used as a bougie and allowed
to remain in loco all night. Sometimes the part affected is cupped with a
horn and knife, or a leech performs excision. The diet is camels' or
goats' flesh and milk; clarified butter and Bussorab dates--rice and
mutton are carefully avoided. For a certain local disease, they use senna
or colocynth, anoint the body with sulphur boiled in ghee, and expose it
to the sun, or they leave the patient all night in the dew;--abstinence
and perspiration generally effect a cure. For the minor form, the
afflicted drink the melted fat of a sheep's tail. Consumption is a family
complaint, and therefore considered incurable; to use the Somali
expression, they address the patient with "Allah, have mercy upon thee!"
not with "Allah cure thee!"
There are leeches who have secret simples for curing wounds. Generally the
blood is squeezed out, the place is washed with water, the lips are sewn
up and a dressing of astringent leaves is applied. They have splints for
fractures, and they can reduce dislocations. A medical friend at Aden
partially dislocated his knee, which half-a-dozen of the faculty insisted
upon treating as a sprain. Of all his tortures none was more severe than
that inflicted by my Somali visitors. They would look at him, distinguish
the complaint, ask him how long he had been invalided, and hearing the
reply--four months--would break into exclamations of wonder. "In our
country," they cried, "when a man falls, two pull his body and two his
legs, then they tie sticks round it, give him plenty of camel's milk, and
he is well in a month;" a speech which made friend S. groan in spirit.
Firing and clarified butter are the farrier's panaceas. Camels are cured
by sheep's head broth, asses by chopping one ear, mules by cutting off the
tail, and horses by ghee or a drench of melted fat.
CHAP. VI.
FROM THE ZAYLA HILLS TO THE MARAR PRAIRIE.
I have now, dear L., quitted the maritime plain or first zone, to enter
the Ghauts, that threshold of the Ethiopian highlands which, beginning at
Tajurrah, sweeps in semicircle round the bay of Zayla, and falls about
Berberah into the range of mountains which fringes the bold Somali coast.
This chain has been inhabited, within History's memory, by three distinct
races,--the Gallas, the ancient Moslems of Adel, and by the modern Somal.
As usual, however, in the East, it has no general vernacular name. [1]
The aspect of these Ghauts is picturesque. The primitive base consists of
micaceous granite, with veins of porphyry and dykes of the purest white
quartz: above lie strata of sandstone and lime, here dun, there yellow, or
of a dull grey, often curiously contorted and washed clear of vegetable
soil by the heavy monsoon. On these heights, which are mostly conoid with
rounded tops, joined by ridges and saddlebacks, various kinds of Acacia
cast a pallid and sickly green, like the olive tree upon the hills of
Provence.
