The Great Quantity Of Honey That Is Gathered,
And A Prodigious Number Of Cows That Is Kept Here, Have Often Made
Me Call Abyssinia A Land Of Honey And Butter.
Chapter III
The manner of eating in Abyssinia, their dress, their hospitality,
and traffic.
The great lords, and even the Emperor himself, maintain their tables
with no great expense. The vessels they make use of are black
earthenware, which, the older it is, they set a greater value on.
Their way of dressing their meat, an European, till he hath been
long accustomed to it, can hardly be persuaded to like; everything
they eat smells strong and swims with butter. They make no use of
either linen or plates. The persons of rank never touch what they
eat, but have their meat cut by their pages, and put into their
mouths. When they feast a friend they kill an ox, and set
immediately a quarter of him raw upon the table (for their most
elegant treat is raw beef newly killed) with pepper and salt; the
gall of the ox serves them for oil and vinegar; some, to heighten
the delicacy of the entertainment, add a kind of sauce, which they
call manta, made of what they take out of the guts of the ox; this
they set on the fire, with butter, salt, pepper, and onion. Raw
beef, thus relished, is their nicest dish, and is eaten by them with
the same appetite and pleasure as we eat the best partridges. They
have often done me the favour of helping me to some of this sauce,
and I had no way to decline eating it besides telling them it was
too good for a missionary.
The common drink of the Abyssins is beer and mead, which they drink
to excess when they visit one another; nor can there be a greater
offence against good manners than to let the guests go away sober:
their liquor is always presented by a servant, who drinks first
himself, and then gives the cup to the company, in the order of
their quality.
The meaner sort of people here dress themselves very plain; they
only wear drawers, and a thick garment of cotton, that covers the
rest of their bodies: the people of quality, especially those that
frequent the court, run into the contrary extreme, and ruin
themselves with costly habits. They wear all sorts of silks, and
particularly the fine velvets of Turkey.
They love bright and glaring colours, and dress themselves much in
the Turkish manner, except that their clothes are wider, and their
drawers cover their legs. Their robes are always full of gold and
silver embroidery. They are most exact about their hair, which is
long and twisted, and their care of it is such that they go bare-
headed whilst they are young for fear of spoiling it, but afterwards
wear red caps, and sometimes turbans after the Turkish fashion.
The ladies' dress is yet more magnificent and expensive; their robes
are as large as those of the religious, of the order of St. Bernard.
They have various ways of dressing their heads, and spare no expense
in ear-rings, necklaces, or anything that may contribute to set them
off to advantage.
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