I returned to my house, or rather my ship, to take my usual nap at noon; but the right shore being close at hand, separated only from our island by a narrow canal, obliges me almost immediately to rise again. The multifarious and manifold adorned and unadorned people afford a pleasing sight as I look at them from my windows. I view, as if from a box at the opera, the stage of black life on the whole length of the shore. Two women appear among the others; their anteriora and posteriora covered with two semicircular leathern aprons, tanned red, according to the usual custom here. One is coloured red from head to foot; the other has only her still youthful firm breasts and her head of that hue. She looks, therefore, as if she wore a black narrow jacket under the breasts, and breeches of the same colour under the red apron. She may have been surprised in her toilette by the news of our arrival, and have run off to the shore just as she was; the whole lower part of the body from the breasts downwards was tattooed in the manner customary on the White River.
Buying and bartering are going on; cheating and robbing—the latter, however, only on our side. My servants are on the shore, and making gestures and signs with their fingers, to know what they shall purchase for me of the national wares. I do not bargain in person, for I am afraid of the sun. The people, in spite of their good humour, are, as I have convinced myself here, surprisingly mistrustful. Goods and the price of their purchase, are exchanging hands simultaneously. As the people transact but little business among themselves, it is very natural and right that they should exercise precaution in their transactions with a foreign people like ourselves; and it is certain that we have given the first cause for suspicion.
As I said before, the hair is generally kept short; they decorate it, for want of something better, with a cock’s or guinea-fowl’s feather. A more elaborate coiffure is of black ostrich-feathers, placed together in a globular form, and the lower ends plaited, in a little basket, the thickness of a fist. This tress-work, holding the feathers, stands on the centre of the head, fastened by two strings round the neck, and appears pretty generally worn. Prince Dogalè also wore one, but of somewhat larger size. Some have their hair, which is tolerably long, smeared so thick with ochre, that merely little tufts are to be seen hanging about. Moreover, leather caps, fitting exactly to the skull, were worn with long or short tassels, hardly to be distinguished from the coloured hair. This antique kind of covering for the head, from which the Greeks and Romans formed their helmets, is similar, as regards form, to the modern fesi or tarbush and takië (the cotton under-cap worn under the Turkish knitting-worsted cap). They appear here to serve principally as a protection against the sun. It was only with difficulty that I could procure two different specimens, and the sellers pointed quite dolefully to the hot sun, when they bared their shaven heads.
Leathern strings, as also strings consisting of aglets, strung in a row, not made, as I thought at first, of conchylia, but of the shells of ostrich-eggs, were slung round their hips. Several of the latter strings, which are also much in request with the women in Belled Sudàn, and require laborious work, were purchased by the crew, and I got, also, specimens, but they were all, with one exception, immediately purloined. To my great astonishment, I saw subsequently in the Imperial Cabinet of Arts at Berlin, with which my Ethnographical collection is incorporated, a string exactly similar, which Mr. Von Olfers had brought from the Brazils. These strings wander, therefore, from the north of Africa to the west coast of that part of the globe, and from thence with the slaves to America, in the same way as they come from the other side to Sennaar by means of the slaves; or it may be, that they are made of the same size by the American savages. If the former be the case, this single fact would shew that there is a connection between the country of Bari and the Atlantic Ocean. I was told that the blacks break in pieces the ostrich-eggs, grind the fragments on a stone to a circular form of about two lines in diameter, and then string one lamina after another on a thread, to the length of several ells—a work which requires great patience.
Sometimes from mere stupid wantonness, shots were fired in the air from the vessels, and the natives disappeared from the shore for a short time, but returned directly that the report of the shots died away. Several women now approached, part of them decked with the before-named leathern apron, and part with a rahàt girded round their hips, as in the land of Sudàn. The threads hanging down from the girdle are not narrow slips of leather, such as those in Sennaar, but twisted cotton, and only the length of a finger. These scarcely form in front a light thread apron of a span in breadth, and leave the hips free, on which laces with tassels and small iron chains hang down, and a tuft falls down over the os sacrum, moving to and fro when they walk like an animal’s tail.
Now I see that the women wish to paint themselves, as I saw them before. There are two who have coloured their nipples and navels to the size of a dollar. The breasts are more rounded, and have not that horizontal conical form found in the black slaves of the land of Sudàn. I have already previously remarked that the women on the White Stream possess modesty in the concrete sense of the word; and though part of them are young and beautiful, but not tall, compared with the men, yet they regard these naked and magnificent manly forms without any immodest look; so, likewise, the men, kings of the world, gaze tranquilly upon the women. I am fully persuaded that, where woman bears in her mind the principle of the most necessary covering, naked truth is exactly the thing to keep up constantly a chaste as well as a decent relation between the sexes. Only give these women the deceits of the dress of European ladies, and clothe the men, and we shall see what will become of the blameless Ethiopians!
I am the more desirous to see continual repetitions of the sights peculiar to the land of Bari, because, by the festive occasion of the royal visit, these are multiplied in every form, and therefore I am still acquiring much knowledge. The square shields, about three feet long and two feet broad, with scallopped edges projecting into four sharp points, appear to be little used. They are of neat’s hide, and have a stick badly fixed in the centre to hold them by, the edge of which is not even turned to give a firmer hold. They have blue and red stripes crossed, each of a hand’s breadth, as their external decoration, and these are coloured with earth, so that they are easily obliterated. The Frenchmen made white stripes with chalk between these colours, and thus was the tricolour found in the middle of Africa. Whether the blue and red streaks serve as signs to distinguish one party from the other in warfare, I know not. Generally the men here carried round, high-arched hand-shields, a foot in length, made of very solid thick leather. These hand-shields appear now, and perhaps exclusively, adapted for warding off a blow with the clubs, for they would probably be of little avail as a protection against arrows and spears to such colossal bodies, in spite of all the dexterity of these men. Yet they gave me to understand previously, that they warded off hostile spears by means of these shields.
The boar’s tusks on the bracelets were mostly imitations of ivory, and therefore like the small iron bull’s horns, are perhaps symbols of valour and the power of nature. They had, besides, all kinds of knick-knackeries on the arm and neck, such as little tortoise-shells, dogs’ or monkeys’ teeth, entire strings of which even they wear, pieces of bones, &c. It struck me that little bones of this kind are either remembrances or amulets, from the circumstance of their always wishing to retain them when we had already purchased the articles to which they were fastened. The iron necklaces were of very different kinds: close to them were iron ornaments arranged in a row, in the form of a narrow leaf, or in small open spindles, from which little red fruits projected. I observed here also, the wide iron rings for the neck, of the thickness of a finger, which reach over the head, and down to the middle of the breast, and are not only worn in Khartùm, but also in Egypt, by the daughters of the Fellàhs. We here find an old fellow who will not sell his spear, the shaft of which is roughly wrought from iron, and who laughs at the sug-sug offered to him as idle toys.
I must break off for the moment from this subject, for a fresh clamour resounds, and the cry of “Hui, ih;” therefore away I go to Selim Capitan. We do not sit long with anxious curiosity, and look at the vacant carpet on which the great Matta was to recline, under the shade of the ship’s tent (Denda, perhaps derived from the Italian tenda, for a war-tent is called Gemma, and a shepherd’s-tent of straw-mats Birsh), for the sandal which had fetched the supreme chief from the right shore, arrives. The Melek or Sultan, as the Turks and Arabs call him, on account of his vast power, steps on our vessel, with a retinue of followers, part of whom we knew. The dress and coiffure distinguish his tall figure from all the others. Notwithstanding every one removed on one side, and we form a divàn upon cushions and chests around the carpet before the cabin, yet he treads upon the vessel with an insecure step, for he has his eyes directed towards us, and stumbles against the projecting foot of the gun-carriage. He carried his throne himself,—the little wooden stool, which we should call a foot-stool, and of which all make use; but he bore also an awful sceptre, consisting of a club: its thick knob was studded with large iron nails, to inspire greater respect.
At the Arabic invitation, “fadl ochaut,” accompanied by a motion of the hand, he took his seat on the oval and somewhat hollowed-out stool, of about one foot long, and three quarters of a foot broad. There is something naturally dignified in his countenance and bearing, without any assumption; he looks at the semicircle surrounding him, so that he may not do anything derogatory to his position as Sultan, seeking probably him who is pointed out as the matta, or whom he takes to be our matta. He then slides along to Selim Capitan, who might appear to him to be of that rank from his corpulence, takes his right hand, and sucks his finger-ends, which appears to me a humiliation. The large-bearded Suliman Kashef, vain and proud like all Circassians, wanted to have the same honour paid to him, and held out his fist with its powerful broad knuckles; but King Làkono was autocrat enough to conclude, from the principle of his sovereignty, that two mattas or monarchs could not be or exist by the side of one another. Selim Capitan, therefore, was to him the only real and supreme head of the foreigners, and he refused this homage in a very contemptuous manner to Suliman Kashef, who, contrary to his usual custom, was not arrayed in all his bravery to-day. In order not to make himself ridiculous, the latter suppressed the word “Kiàffar,” or “Abd,” which I saw was already trembling on his lips.