[10]Apart from the use of henna, I have detected a distinct red tinge in some men’s hair, but the wonderful gold and brown mops of the Somalis are not seen here.
[11]Some Arabs grow bushy beards as dense as any European’s, but the majority, at any rate before middle age have only scanty beards, if any.
[12]Contrast Zanzibar and the tropical coast of East Africa where nearly the whole population is supposed to be a cross between Arab and negro.
[13]Presumably General Grenfell’s engagement with the dervishes, Dec. 1888.
[14]Inverted commas indicate quotations from Mabrûk’s statement. The probability is that the hardships of a seven months’ voyage were actually compressed into so many weeks.
[15]The camel kneels and his halter rope is bound round one foreknee. Only a fractious beast will rise when so tied, and straying or running away is impossible.
[16]I am told that the sexual freedom of women is a peculiarity of one tribe only—the Aliab—but it certainly applies to all the maritime people with whom I live.
[17]The word Shêkh, meaning literally an old man, is used to designate alike a dead saint of the highest supernatural powers or one whose sanctity is barely acknowledged by an occasional decoration of his tomb by a piece of rag on a stick. Among the living the Shêkh may be a native leader of any grade, from the head of a great tribe, with whom the British Governor of a Province may consult, and to whom is entrusted real power, to one of his subordinate agents. In my village one of these combines the trade of butcher with a dreadful dentistry.
[18]Anglicised into “hangar.”
[19]I give a few examples, but Dr and Mrs Seligmann, being expert anthropologists, were able to extract more curious information from my own men in half an hour’s talk than I had done in five years. Their report will be of the highest interest.