Another salutation among respectable individuals is, by each placing his right hand on his heart, indicating that part to be the residence of the friend!
The Jews of this country retain the customs of their ancestors more pure and unmixed than those in other countries.
When a Jew dies he is interred the same day, or the day after at farthest. The female relations and the friends of the deceased assemble round the corpse, and utter bitter lamentations, tearing their faces and their hair in a most woeful manner; they disfigure their faces with their finger-nails, till they bleed, and during the whole time keep stamping or moving their legs, beating time, as it were, with their feet; these lamentations are continued, with occasional intermission, till the body of the deceased is carried away for interment. The performers of these bitter lamentations appear to have all the marks of hideous grief inscribed on their faces, but most of them feel no real concern; some of the girls, young and handsome, near akin to the deceased, are ambitious to disfigure themselves, and they lacerate their pretty faces most lamentably. The more wounds these bear on their cheeks the greater is their grief considered to be. But the corpse being removed the mourners regale themselves with Mahaya, or African brandy, and make up for their lamentations, by converting their bitter strains into conviviality.
There is a strange resemblance between this custom and that practised by the inhabitants of New Zealand; insomuch that we might imagine the latter to be one of the lost tribes of this extraordinary people. It is true that we have no record of such a perfection of navigation as to enable us to conjecture how a tribe of Jews could reach New Zealand: but many things remain in great obscurity even in this enlightened age; and we have had no historical record transmitted to us from the ancients of many extraordinary discoveries that recently have been made in Egypt.
INTEREST OF MONEY.
Application of the Superflux of Property or Capital.
In this country the law allows no interest of money; the consequence is, that the country is overwhelmed with usurers, who exact, generally, an oath of secrecy, and lend money on pledges of valuable and convertible merchandise: the interest paid on these negociations is most exorbitant; I have known five, six, eight, ten, and even twelve per cent, per month paid for the use of money! There is no paper money in this country; but a bank might be established at Mogodor, for the convenience of internal trade: the sine qua non of the bank should be, AN ADEQUATE CAPITAL. The advantages that would necessarily result from an establishment of this kind are incalculable; the paper of a bank, thus established, would be current in a short time, UNDER JUDICIOUS AND INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT, in all the territories of Sudan, through the heart of Africa, through Bambâra, Timbuctoo, Houssa, Cashna, Wangara, Bernôh, Fas, and Marocco, and various other countries. The immense advantages of the carriage of paper through the Desert and through Sudan, convertible into cash at every commercial city, port, or district in a country like this, would greatly facilitate the operations of commerce; this must be evident to every political economist acquainted with the nature of commercial negociations in Africa.
The superflux of coin, consisting principally of Mexico dollars, and doubloons, (over and above the quantum necessary for the circulating medium of commercial negociations,) is either buried under ground by the owner, or converted into jewels for the ladies of his family; there is a general propensity to these subterraneous hordes; the bulk of the people, the lower classes in particular, have an idea that they will enjoy in the next world what they save in this; which opinion is not extraordinary, when we consider how many cases there are, wherein we see the sublimest capacity prostrate at the shrine of an early imbibed superstition. Many of these erring philosophers, therefore, attentive to the accumulation of riches, retire from this sublunary world with an immense immolated treasure, wherewith to begin, as they imagine, their career in the world to come!
"We," they say, "convert our superflux to jewels and costly apparel for our females, and we have the gratification of seeing them well apparelled and agreeably ornamented. Moreover, a great part of our possessions is appropriated to the sacred rites of hospitality, which you Christians know not how to practise; for you worship the idol of ostentation; you invite your friends to dinner; you incur an intolerable and injudicious expense, and provide a multiplicity of dishes to pamper their appetites, sufficient for a regiment of muselmen; when nature and national beings, which men were born to be, require only one dish. Moreover, your sumptuous entertainments are given to those only who do not want; therefore is it an ostentatious and a wanton waste! We, on the contrary, that is to say, every good Muselman, gives one-tenth of his property to the poor; and moreover much of his substance is appropriated to the support, not of the rich and independent, who do not want it, but to (deefan) strange guests who journey from one country to another; insomuch that, with us, a poor man may travel by public beneficence and apt hospitality from the shores of the Mediterranean to the borders of Sahara, without a fluce [166] in (hashituh) the corner of his garment. [167] A traveller, however poor he may be, is never at a loss for a meal, several meals, and even for three days entertainment, wherever he travels through our country; and if any man were to go to a douar in any of the Arab provinces of our Sovereign's empire, and not receive the entertainment and courtesy of a brother, that douar would be stamped with a stigma of indelible disgrace! Pardon us, therefore, if we say, you have not such hospitality in your country, although the great principle of (Seedna Aisa) our Lord Jesus, is charity." [168] I should, however, observe that this hospitality is shown almost exclusively to Muhamedans.