A Narrative Of Captivity In Abyssinia With Some Account Of The Late Emperor Theodore, His Country And People By Henry Blanc
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Some Takruries, Having
Served For A Time In The Egyptian Army, Returned To Their Adopted
Land Full Of The Value Of Disciplined Troops, And Of The Superiority
Of Muskets Over Lances And Sticks.
They prevailed on their countrymen
to form a regiment on the model of "master's," Old muskets were
purchased, and Sheik Jumma had the glory to see during his reign
the 1st, or Jumma's Own, rise to existence.
A more ludicrous sight
could not, I believe, be witnessed. About a hundred flat-nosed,
woolly, grinning negroes march around the parade-ground in Indian
file, out of step, for about ten minutes. Line is then formed, but
not being as yet well up to the proper value of the words of command,
half face on one side, half on the other. Still the crowd admires;
white teeth are displayed from ear to ear. The yellow-eyed monsters
now feel confident that with such support nothing is impossible,
and no sooner is "stand at ease" proclaimed, than the spectators
rush, forward to admire more closely, and to congratulate, the
future heroes of Metemma.
Sheik Jumma is an ugly specimen of an ugly race: he is about sixty
years of age, tall and lank, with a wrinkled face, very black,
having a few grey patches on the chin, and the owner of a nose so
flat that it requires time to see that he has one at all; He is
generally drunk, and spends the greater part of the year carrying
the tribute either to the Abyssinian Lion, or to his other master
the Pasha of Khartoum.
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