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Coarse leathern sandals, a rosary and a tooth-stick rendered perpetually necessary by the habit of chewing tobacco, complete the costume: and arms being forbidden in the streets, the citizens carry wands five or six feet long. The women, who, owing probably to the number of female slaves, are much the more numerous, appear beautiful by contrast with their lords.
Possibly he confuses it with the use as a tooth-stick, the article which Asia and Africa prefer to the unclean hog's- bristle brush of Europe. On the left of the throne sat the Nchinu, or "second king," attired in a footman's livery of olive-coloured cloth, white-worn at the seams, and gleaming with plated buttons, upon which was the ex-owner's crest a cubit arm.
For the rude African form see my Mission to Dahome, i. 332, and for that of Darfour, pp. 360-69 of Shaykh Mohammed's Voyage before quoted. "Siwak"=a tooth-stick; "Siwa-ka"=lit. other than thou. "Arak"=tooth stick of the wild caper-tree; "Ara-ka" lit.=I see thee. In India many other woods are used, date-tree, Salvadora, Achyrantes, phyllanthus, etc. Hence Koran, chaps. xcv. 1.
By so doing one attains to long life. The tooth-stick should be cast off when done with, and a new one should be used every day. One should eat only such food as is not forbidden in the scriptures, abstaining from food of every kind on days of the new moon and the full moon. One should, with senses restrained, answer calls of nature, facing the north.
The Bedouins are fond of attaching a tooth-stick to the neck thong. Beads are useful in the Somali country as presents, and to pay for trifling purchases: like tobacco they serve for small change. The kind preferred by women and children is the "binnur," large and small white porcelain: the others are the red, white, green, and spotted twisted beads, round and oblong.
One should attend every day to one's fire. One should every day give alms. One should, restraining speech the while, clean one's teeth with the tooth-stick. One should never be in bed when the sun is up. If one fails any day to be up with the sun, one should then perform an expiation. Rising from bed, one should first salute one's parents, and preceptors, or other seniors deserving of respect.
They are better than our unclean tooth-brushes because each tooth gets its own especial rubbing' not a general sweep; at the same time the operation is longer and more troublesome. In parts of Africa as well as Asia many men walk about with the tooth-stick hanging by a string from the neck. "Khaznah"=a thousand purses; now about 5000. The reasons are obvious.
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