During the four weeks we had been compelled to reside in Tajourah, few incidents occurred worthy of being recorded. Most of our time we were sitting below in the court, on a rude, cord-bottomed couch, covered with a mat. Close to the ends were placed two large pillows, belonging to Mr. Cruttenden, for us to recline upon; whilst, before us, squatting upon the ground, and ranged along the opposite wall, were generally some of our Dankalli acquaintances, who seemed to be anxious to learn something of our institutions and manners. Discussions upon the Christian religion were very frequent; and they soon were made to understand the difference between us and the Roman Catholic nations, whom they include under one name—Feringee.
I also became acquainted with a singular mode of descent, or manner in which the power and title of Sultaun is transmitted to the next possessor. It appears that Tajourah is principally inhabited by two subdivisions of the great Adu Allee tribe, the same from whom it has been asserted the Abyssinian name of this people (Adal) is derived. These two families (the Burhanto and the Dinsarrah) have each their own Chief, who alternately assumes the supremacy of the town on the death of the other, whilst the next expectant fills the office of Vizier, or chief adviser. This mode of succession does not appear to be peculiar to Tajourah, but to be a general principle of state economy through all the important tribes; for, in the same manner, I had an opportunity of observing, was determined the possession of the chief dignity among the Debenee; and I was given to understand it was also the custom of the Wahamah, and the Muditee of Owssa. The present Sultaun of Tajourah is named Mahomed, and belongs to the Burhanto family; the Vizier, who was absent on a pilgrimage to Mecca when we first arrived, was the principal man of the Dinsarrah. He returned in time to receive a present, to prevent him interfering in the arrangements, which were then just completed, and a promise of future patronage on the next occasion of a kafila being required by our Government. His arrival accelerated, in some measure, our departure; for had we remained any time afterwards, he would certainly, with his friends, have compelled a change in the distribution of the stores, and thus have led to another detention, or perhaps would have entirely prevented their going up to Shoa. Izaak and Cassim, who had had it so far in their own hands, were therefore interested in hastening the departure of the kafila; and from the day of the Vizier’s first appearance in Tajourah, I found the boxes were gradually removed from under our own care to the houses of the carriers. On occasions of counsel, it was usual for the principal men of the town (Hukells, as I heard them called) to assemble in front of the Sultaun’s residence, where they sat upon their heels, or upon the large stones and trunks of the date trees placed for that purpose. With his back leaning against the enclosure of his own house, the Sultaun Mahomed occupied a stone, with Izaak generally sitting on another by his side, together helping the parties present to small cups of strong black coffee. This was poured out of a long-necked, globular, earthenware vessel, of common red clay, into the mouth of which was stuffed a quantity of dried grass, to act as a strainer. The cups were of the same coarse manufacture, being exactly in form and appearance like the very smallest flower-pots in a green-house, except that the latter, without the aperture at the bottom, would, I think, be much more elegant and convenient.
The usual dress of the males of Tajourah was the fotah, or waist-cloth, and the sarree, which is an Indian term for part of a woman’s dress, exactly corresponding to it in use and shape. It is a long robe, worn round the body, generally of white calico, with a red or blue border at the two extremities; it is usually among the townspeople seven cubits long—that is, seven times the length of the hand and arm from the elbow. Among the Bedouins—the people inhabiting the country—it is but three and a-half, or about the same size as a Scotch plaid, which I noticed one day, as I saw the two distinct and yet similar formed garments drying together upon the ground after a shower of rain.
The ladies wear a long blue chemise with short sleeves, and a very heavy necklace, made of beads, shells, or of large carved pieces of mother of pearl, reposes upon their delicate bosoms. Ear-rings are a very extraordinary vanity amongst them. They consist of large loops of twisted brass wire, five or six in number, placed each through its own perforation in the outer lobe of the ear; whilst depending from each of these is one, sometimes two oblong plates of tin, or pewter, at least an inch broad, and one and a-half inch in length. Bracelets and anklets of brass and pewter, large and heavy, were very common among them; and as they chanted their monotonous songs of prayer or grief, they clattered them against each other as a kind of accompaniment to their voices. They dressed their hair in a number of small plaits, which were connected round the back of the head by parallel bands of red or white cotton, interwoven with and crossing the hair transversely, and in this manner forming a kind of tippet upon the neck and shoulders. I was once a witness to the difficulty of unravelling or combing out this intangled mass, which reminded me of the hair of Samson, interwoven with the web of the loom. The lady whose hair was to be operated upon sat upon a stone in the court, beneath one of our windows, and behind her, on her knees, was a stout hale slave girl, who held in both hands a long-handled wooden fork-like comb, having four very strong prongs, which she dragged through the woolly, greasy, and black hair of her mistress with the force of a groom currying a horse’s tail.
When not attired in their full dress, or are occupied in household duties, the women wear nothing else but the fotah, or waistcloth, which appears to be a garment common both to male and female Dankalli. The better kind of fotah passes twice round the body, and the ends are secured by the women by merely tucking them under a fold of the upper edge; but the men fasten it up with the belt of their never absent short knife. Sandals made of several layers of cow-skin, prepared with the hair on and sewed together by a thong of leather, sometimes in a very neat and ornamental manner, are worn by both sexes, and are secured to the foot by a loop for the second toe, and slight strips of leather crossing the ancle are attached to the heel, and to two small lappels on the sides.
The slave children, who live in the houses of their owners merely for the purpose of recruiting after their long and painful journey from Abyssinia, live happily enough whilst in Tajourah; for too young to comprehend the evils of their destiny, and their bodily wants being carefully attended to, they soon regain their lost condition and health, and are then forwarded to the markets of Mocha and other parts of the Red Sea. They are nearly all dressed in a long dirty frock of very coarse calico, which constitutes the whole of their apparel. The male inhabitants of Tajourah have no other occupation than the traffic in slaves, which they exchange for the merchandise of India and Arabia, but principally the former, whose traders they meet at the fair of Berberah.
The women occupy themselves with household duties, and carrying water from a well about half a mile from the town. The water is carried in large entire skins of the goat, which they tan with the pounded bark of a mimosa, very common in the jungle near the town, and which, moistened with a little water, they rub well into the skin. If it be designed to be divested of the hair, the skin, before being tanned, is left for two or three days until slight putrefaction has commenced, and the hair is then easily detached. The most laborious occupation of the women is grinding the jowaree, or millet, which is imported into Tajourah from Aden and the Persian Gulf. They use for this purpose a large flat stone, concave from above downwards, and placed upon the ground, behind this upon her knees, the woman, half-naked, with long depending skinny breasts, hangs over the mill, passing and repassing the grain beneath a large heavy rolling-pin of stone. During the progress of the operation, she frequently sprinkles the bruised mass with water, until a fine powdered paste is produced, which, without more preparation, is carried away to be baked upon the kiln-like oven I have before described. It requires some time to make a few pounds of bread in this manner; and when baked into flat cakes of about one pound each in weight, they are, as might be expected, very heavy, and of a disagreeable acid taste. Whilst grinding, two or three slaves, or women, (for the same term is applied to all,) relieve each other, so that labour, except in the house of a poor man, is not great.
I saw in Tajourah two old men weaving, who had learned the art in Abyssinia; also an Arab blacksmith. It is usual for all the young men to be able to make their own sandals. One of their principal occupations in-doors is to make wooden spoons, sometimes carved in a most elegant manner, and fedeenahs, or rests for the head during the night, and which are the constant companion of the Dankalli when journeying. They differ considerably in form from the wooden pillows of the New Zealanders; but still it is singular that a somewhat similar manner of resting the head during the night is in use among these two distant and distinct nations. The ancient Egyptians employed the fedeenah exactly of the shape of those of the Dankalli; but these, it seems, were sometimes made of alabaster, and covered with hieroglyphics.
The principal mosque of the place stood at the further end of a large open space, reaching to the sea-shore, in the centre of which was the solitary cannon used as a saluting battery on particular occasions, and the touchhole of which vied in extent with the bore of the piece. Occupying one side of the open space was the square enclosure of mats, with little huts of the same material, which had been erected for the use of the English agent in Tajourah, Mr. Hatchetoor, on the occasion of the last kafila, or second division of the stores, being sent up to Shoa with Messieurs Bernatz and Scott. Here, during one night, three of the native servants were treacherously murdered as they lay asleep, by some of the inhabitants of the town. On the other side were a few native houses, standing in the usual compounds, or courts, and out of the doors of which peeped, with a mixture of curiosity and alarm, several little slave children whenever we passed by.
This mosque stood between the commencement of two narrow lanes, the one leading through the town, the other to the Sultaun’s house, and completed the third side of the irregular square, which was open towards the sea. The mosque was built in a square form, with the untrimmed branches of trees, as they were cut off in the jungle, and thatched with leaves of the palm-tree, fastened down by the common string of the country, made of the leaf of the doom palm split and twisted by the hand into a strong rope; a small fence of stones, two or three feet high, enclosed in front a little semicircular court, in which were planted four palm-trees, two on each side of the entrance. In this court, squatting under the shade of the trees, or idly lounging upon the top of the wall, were collected all the idlers of the town; and as these, besides gossiping and dozing, were particularly attentive to the daily prayers and ablutions as prescribed in the Koran, I had not a doubt that they were the worst characters in Tajourah, for I never met among the Mahomedans a strict observer of the stated hours and forms of prayer, but I always found him to be crafty, designing, and treacherous. The only man I ever met with during my subsequent journey, who deliberately, and for days, watched for an opportunity to assassinate me, was one of these pharisaical rascals, who always chose the largest boulder or detached piece of rock he could find, on which to exalt himself above every one else during the performance of his prostrations or prayers.