Enters A Crowd Of
Visitors, Anxious To Pass The Afternoon.
We proceed with a copy of the
forenoon till the sun declines, when it is time to escape the flies, to
repair to the terrace for fresh air, or to dress for a walk.
Generally our
direction is through the town eastwards, to a plain of dilapidated graves
and salt sand, peopled only by land-crabs. At the extremity near the sea
is a little mosque of wattle-work: we sit there under the shade, and play
a rude form of draughts, called Shantarah, or at Shahh, a modification of
the former. [14] More often, eschewing these effeminacies, we shoot at a
mark, throw the javelin, leap, or engage in some gymnastic exercise. The
favourite Somali weapons are the spear, dagger, and war-club; the bow and
poisoned arrows are peculiar to the servile class, who know
"the dreadful art
To taint with deadly drugs the barbed dart;"
and the people despise, at the same time that they fear firearms,
declaring them to be cowardly weapons [15] with which the poltroon can
slay the bravest.
The Somali spear is a form of the Cape Assegai. A long, thin, pliant and
knotty shaft of the Dibi, Diktab, and Makari trees, is dried, polished,
and greased with rancid butter: it is generally of a dull yellow colour,
and sometimes bound, as in Arabia, with brass wire for ornament. Care is
applied to make the rod straight, or the missile flies crooked: it is
garnished with an iron button at the head, and a long thin tapering head
of coarse bad iron [16], made at Berberah and other places by the Tomal.
The length of the shaft may be four feet eight inches; the blade varies
from twenty to twenty-six inches, and the whole weapon is about seven feet
long.
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