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Updated: May 27, 2025
The new burden, however, after vain attempts at extortion, soon disappeared, carrying away with him a gun. For tanning water-skins the Somal here always use, when they can procure it, a rugged bark with a smooth epidermis of a reddish tinge, a pleasant aromatic odour, and a strong astringent flavour. They call it Mohur: powdered and sprinkled dry on a wound, it acts as a styptic.
This peculiarity is not uncommon amongst the Somal; it is considered by them a sign of warm temperament. The Moslem should first recite the Farz prayers, or those ordered in the Koran; secondly, the Sunnat or practice of the Prophet; and thirdly the Nafilah or Supererogatory.
The even tenor of such days was varied by a perpetual reference to the rosary, consulting soothsayers, and listening to reports and rumours brought to us by the Somal in such profusion that we all sighed for a discontinuance.
An idea exists on the Lower River that our hardware is broken up for the purpose of being made into spear-heads and other weapons. Such is not generally the case. The Wamasai, the Somal and the Cape Kafirs indeed, all the metal-working African barbarians call our best Sheffield blades "rotten iron."
In the morning they arise with headaches and heavy eyes; but these symptoms, which we, an industrious race, deprecate, are not disliked by the Somal they promote sleep and give something to occupy the vacant mind.
During Lieutenant Speke's detention, the Somal battened on his provisions, seeing that his two servants were absent, and that no one guarded the bags. Half the rice had been changed at Las Kuray for an inferior description. The Sultan's son taught them to win the day by emptying and hiding the water-skins, by threatening to kill the servants if they fetched water, and by refusing to do work.
The Somal declare the Waraba to be a hermaphrodite; so the ancients supposed the hyaena to be of both sexes, an error arising from the peculiar appearance of an orifice situated near two glands which secrete an unctuous fluid.
On our way home we passed through some extensive cemeteries: the tombs were in good preservation; there was nothing peculiar in their construction, yet the Somal were positive that they belonged to a race preceding their own.
These, flying from Berberah, settled at the haven of Bulhar, and by their old connection with the Indian and other foreign traders, succeeded in drawing off a considerable amount of traffic. But the roadstead was insecure: many vessels were lost, and in 1847 the Eesa Somal slaughtered the women and children of the new-comers, compelling them to sue the Ayyal Ahmed for peace.
Both sexes are equally temperate from necessity; the mead and the millet-beer, so common among the Abyssinians and the Danakil, are entirely unknown to the Somal of the plains. As regards their morals, I regret to say that the traveller does not find them in the golden state which Teetotal doctrines lead him to expect.
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