First Footsteps in East Africa. Sir Richard Francis Burton

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СКАЧАТЬ not, however, confine themselves to one craft. Many Midgans employ themselves in hunting and agriculture. Instead of spear and shield, they carry bows and a quiver full of diminutive arrows, barbed and poisoned with the Waba—a weapon used from Faizoghli to the Cape of Good Hope. Like the Veddah of Ceylon, the Midgan is a poor shot, and scarcely strong enough to draw his stiff bow. He is accused of maliciousness; and the twanging of his string will put to flight a whole village. The poison is greatly feared: it causes, say the people, the hair and nails to drop off, and kills a man in half an hour. The only treatment known is instant excision of the part; and this is done the more frequently, because here, as in other parts of Africa, such stigmates are deemed ornamental.

      In appearance the Midgan is dark and somewhat stunted; he is known to the people by peculiarities of countenance and accent.

      [11] The reason why Europeans fail to explain their thoughts to Orientals generally is that they transfer the Laconism of Western to Eastern tongues. We for instance say, "Fetch the book I gave you last night." This in Hindostani, to choose a well-known tongue, must be smothered with words thus: "What book was by me given to you yesterday by night, that book bringing to me, come!"

      [12] I have alluded to these subjects in a previous work upon the subject of Meccah and El Medinah.

      [13] This is one of the stock complaints against the Moslem scheme. Yet is it not practically the case with ourselves? In European society, the best are generally those who prefer the companionship of their own sex; the "ladies' man" and the woman who avoids women are rarely choice specimens.

      [14] The Shantarah board is thus made, with twenty-five points technically called houses. [Illustration] The players have twelve counters a piece, and each places two at a time upon any of the unoccupied angles, till all except the centre are filled up. The player who did not begin the game must now move a man; his object is to inclose one of his adversary's between two of his own, in which case he removes it, and is entitled to continue moving till he can no longer take. It is a game of some skill, and perpetual practice enables the Somal to play it as the Persians do backgammon, with great art and little reflection. The game is called Kurkabod when, as in our draughts, the piece passing over one of the adversary's takes it.

      Shahh is another favourite game. The board is made thus, [Illustration] and the pieces as at Shantarah are twelve in number. The object is to place three men in line—as the German Muhle and the Afghan "Kitar,"—when any one of the adversary's pieces may be removed.

      Children usually prefer the game called indifferently Togantog and Saddikiya. A double line of five or six holes is made in the ground, four counters are placed in each, and when in the course of play four men meet in the same hole, one of the adversary's is removed. It resembles the Bornou game, played with beans and holes in the sand. Citizens and the more civilised are fond of "Bakkis," which, as its name denotes, is a corruption of the well-known Indian Pachisi. None but the travelled know chess, and the Damal (draughts) and Tavola (backgammon) of the Turks.

      [15] The same objection against "villanous saltpetre" was made by ourselves in times of old: the French knights called gunpowder the Grave of Honor. This is natural enough, the bravest weapon being generally the shortest—that which places a man hand to hand with his opponent. Some of the Kafir tribes have discontinued throwing the Assegai, and enter battle wielding it as a pike. Usually, also, the shorter the weapon is, the more fatal are the conflicts in which it is employed. The old French "Briquet," the Afghan "Charay," and the Goorka "Kukkri," exemplify this fact in the history of arms.

      [16] In the latter point it differs from the Assegai, which is worked by the Kafirs to the finest temper.

      [17] It is called by the Arabs Kubabah, by the Somal Goasa. Johnston (Travels in Southern Abyssinia, chap. 8.) has described the game; he errs, however, in supposing it peculiar to the Dankali tribes.

      [18] This is in fact the pilgrim dress of El Islam; its wide diffusion to the eastward, as well as west of the Red Sea, proves its antiquity as a popular dress.

      [19] I often regretted having neglected the precaution of a bottle of walnut juice—a white colour is decidedly too conspicuous in this part of the East.

      [20] The strict rule of the Moslem faith is this: if a man neglect to pray, he is solemnly warned to repent. Should he simply refuse, without, however, disbelieving in prayer, he is to be put to death, and receive Moslem burial; in the other contingency, he is not bathed, prayed for, or interred in holy ground. This severe order, however, lies in general abeyance.

      [21] "Tuarick grandiloquence," says Richardson (vol. i. p. 207.), "savours of blasphemy, e.g. the lands, rocks, and mountains of Ghat do not belong to God but to the Azghar." Equally irreverent are the Kafirs of the Cape. They have proved themselves good men in wit as well as war; yet, like the old Greenlanders and some of the Burmese tribes, they are apparently unable to believe in the existence of the Supreme. A favourite question to the missionaries was this, "Is your God white or black?" If the European, startled by the question, hesitated for a moment, they would leave him with open signs of disgust at having been made the victims of a hoax.

      The assertion generally passes current that the idea of an Omnipotent Being is familiar to all people, even the most barbarous. My limited experience argues the contrary. Savages begin with fetisism and demon- worship, they proceed to physiolatry (the religion of the Vedas) and Sabaeism: the deity is the last and highest pinnacle of the spiritual temple, not placed there except by a comparatively civilised race of high development, which leads them to study and speculate upon cosmical and psychical themes. This progression is admirably wrought out in Professor Max Muller's "Rig Veda Sanhita."

      [22] The Moslem corpse is partly sentient in the tomb, reminding the reader of Tennyson:

      "I thought the dead had peace, but it is not so;

       To have no peace in the grave, is that not sad?"

      [23] The prayers for the dead have no Rukaat or bow as in other orisons.

      [24] The general Moslem name for the African coast from the Somali seaboard southwards to the Mozambique, inhabited by negrotic races.

      [25] The Moslem rosary consists of ninety-nine beads divided into sets of thirty-three each by some peculiar sign, as a bit of red coral. [Illustration] The consulter, beginning at a chance place, counts up to the mark: if the number of beads be odd, he sets down a single dot, if even, two. This is done four times, when a figure is produced as in the margin. Of these there are sixteen, each having its peculiar name and properties. The art is merely Geomancy in its rudest shape; a mode of vaticination which, from its wide diffusion, must be of high antiquity. The Arabs call it El Baml, and ascribe its present form to the Imam Jaafar el Sadik; amongst them it is a ponderous study, connected as usual with astrology. Napoleon's "Book of Fate" is a specimen of the old Eastern superstition presented to Europe in a modern and simple form.

      [26] In this country, as in Western and Southern Africa, the leopard, not the wolf, is the shepherd's scourge.

      [27] Popular superstition in Abyssinia attributes the same power to the Felashas or Jews.

      [28] Our Elixir, a corruption of the Arabic El Iksir.

      [29] In the Somali tongue its name is Barki: they make a stool of similar shape, and call it Barjimo.

      [30] Specimens of these discourses have been given by Mr. Lane, Mod. Egypt, chap. 3. It is useless to offer others, as all bear the closest resemblance.

CHAP. III.

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