Very few natives are so tied down to any village as to be dependent on a local rainfall. If rain is seen to fall for an hour or so in any direction for several days in succession, they have only to make a bundle of their tent and cooking-pot and be off to the favoured spot. Even beyond the limits of their tribal districts the whole desert is home; there are no fixtures in it other than the wells. Inland there are no permanent villages; indeed, in the north country, it is rare to see more than two or three tents together. Even in the fixed villages of the coast and the considerable suburbs of Suakin about Shâta, the majority of the habitations are tents, and most of their owners are there only for part of the year to buy corn until the rain comes again[27].
Every year my men have leave to go, one or two at a time, to visit their relatives. A hundred miles’ journey to search for persons whose whereabouts he knows extremely vaguely, and who are continually moving, is nothing to the native, even though he may do all, or nearly all, afoot. Only once has a man come back to report that he had tramped all his three weeks’ leave away without coming across those he sought. Not family affection only prompts these visits, though I believe that feeling is strong in most cases. They desire to drink milk, as they put it, rightly believing that a diet of rice and dûra needs the addition of milk for a month or two in the year if health is to be preserved. This is especially the case with the men in my employ who are often either those who possess few animals or who have made over their flocks to relatives.
This desert is a great camel-breeding area. For travel or military purposes the camel bred in Egypt and fed on juicy clover is obviously useless, so, every spring, representatives of the Coast Guards and Slavery Repression Department come down from Egypt to buy. As a good camel is worth £12 to £18 the man who has a couple to sell is sure of enough money for himself and his family to live on for a year. The milk of the females is a source of food.
An article made in considerable quantities in the country is butter, so called, or samin to give it its native name. It is a whitish liquid with a powerful cheesy smell, repulsive to the European. The native regards it as one of the necessities of life; I have known sailors leaving for a week’s voyage to turn up next day with “we forgot our samin” as their excuse for returning. This is, to their minds, as good a reason as if they had forgotten the rice, the water, and the matches as well[28].
The nomads’ tents are illustrated opposite the next page. Externally they are made of palm-leaf matting[29], in colour as well as in shape suggesting haycocks. The sheets of this material are stretched over long, bent sticks and fastened together with wooden skewers. The doorway of the tent is on the less steeply-sloping side and though only two or three feet high is partly curtained with a piece of sacking or other cloth. They are invariably built with their backs to the north, that is, against the prevailing wind. This is the case even in the summer, when to be out of the wind is torture to the European. If the wind changes to the south, the door is closed up and the wall propped up a little on the north side. In all, except the poorest, the house is divided into two parts, even though the whole space is generally only about 10 feet square. The larger division is formed by the erection of a kind of second tent of goat’s hair cloth within that of matting. This is entirely closed in by a curtain from the low space by the doorway where the cooking is done, and where visitors sit on their heels.
The inner compartment is really a sort of four-poster family bed, the bed and bedding consisting of some boards arranged as a flooring a few inches above the ground, on which is spread a mat made of the split midribs of palm-leaves placed parallel to each other and tied together with thin strips of leather. This is known as the “serîr,” a word which in Egypt denotes a bedstead. For bedding there is perhaps a hard leather pillow, or a piece of rough log will serve this purpose. I have seen odd ends of squared poles thrown away from some carpenter’s shop used thus, for sharp angles in the pillow are not regarded by men whose idea of comfort is a plank bed minus blankets.
If a regular bedstead be part of the furniture of a town house, it is an “angarîb” made of cords stretched over a frame. This, if large and well made, is very comfortable, judged even by European standards.
Of the other objects to be seen in the house the most conspicuous is the master’s shield, with dagger belt and sword, and the most essential is a large water jar. To one of the upright sticks supporting the tent are hung various utensils containing the family larder, e.g., the bowls and skins of milk (which is generally sour and evil smelling). The milk bowls are curious, being either closely woven, water-tight baskets of palm-leaf, gourds[30], or bottles hollowed out of solid blocks of hard wood. Some of these latter are great works of art, being perfectly round and nearly as thin as porcelain vessels, though cut out of a dark red wood entirely by the unaided hand. The practical advantages of enamelled iron ware appeal to the natives; the brass cooking pots of antique design, such as shewn in [Fig. 50] on Plate XXIII, and the fellows of which may be seen at Pompeii, are being replaced by this prosaic material. For cups, empty meat tins, cleaned and the edges straightened, are most commonly used if an European lives near. A stock of samin butter may be kept in a four-gallon paraffin tin.
Plate XV
