The Arabs of the neighbouring desert import other articles, as melted butter, oxen, cows’ hides, and honey. The Rezeigat, especially, bring large quantities of butter. Other tribes trade in salt, which they fetch from the wells of Zaghawy. This substance is much sought after in Darfur, where it is often sold one measure for twenty measures of millet. The salt of Mydaub is especially set apart for the viziers and other great people. That of Zaghawy is the worst that can be found in the world, being mixed with great quantities of earth. People in easy circumstances dissolve it in water, which they strain off, and afterwards allow to evaporate. Verily! if the Forians were to behold salt like that of Rosetta or Tunis, they would fight for it sword in hand. The Falgo salt, found in the Marrah mountains, is used in pieces as money.[51]
As might be expected, industry is little developed in Central Africa. In Darfur and Wadaï there are no trades scarcely but those of the weaver, the blacksmith, the cultivator, the spinner, and the founder, that is to say, the maker of lances, of bows and arrows, and some rough utensils for agriculture and the ordinary uses of life. In Darfur there are strangers from Katakou, who dye in blue, with indigo, and know how to produce the varying blue-black tints of the Godeny and the Teykan. The Forians are very clever in tanning skins, for which they have all the necessary implements and substances. They prepare, with the hides of oxen and camels, sacks, and large fine pieces of leather, which are used to sit or sleep upon, or to bolt wheat. With the skins of goats they make excellent bags for carrying travelling provisions. With sheep-skins, red or green, they cover scabbards or saddles.
There are scarcely any other arts in Darfur than those which I have indicated. The wants which in civilised countries have created the professions are satisfied by mutual assistance. Neighbours shave the heads of one another, and then there is no need of barbers. If a man requires a house, he calls in his friends, and pays them with a dinner and supper, and so there is no need of builders.
If a man dies, a friend, and, above all, a Fakih, performs the last duties, washing the corpse and burying it, for every one knows the simple ceremonies necessary. If a woman dies, the funereal duties are performed by some old person of her own sex. To carry the corpse to the burial-place, they knock up on the spot a rough litter, made of two sticks with cross strings. Upon this is placed a kind of bed, made of mats. The corpse is placed thereon, and thus taken to the place where the friends of the deceased have dug a grave, which is in all cases separate from any other. Neither those who wash the corpse, nor those who carry it, receive any kind of payment; and no charge whatever is made by those who recite the Koran for the repose of the soul of the deceased, or who repeat the prayers of deliverance, or who tell the chaplet of pardon. There is, therefore, no need of undertakers or priests in that country.
In Darfur I have seen the prayers of the chaplet counted by means of little fragments of reeds. Whoever wants to take part in these kind of prayers cuts ten small fragments of reed and ten large ones. When he has pronounced on his ordinary chaplet the first hundred of La Illah il’Allah—“There is no other God but God,” he puts aside one of the small pieces of reed; after the second hundred, he puts aside another piece; and so on until all the ten are united. Then he knows that he has articulated a thousand times his confession of faith. In order to count the thousands, he puts aside one of the large pieces of reed, so that at last he knows exactly when he has uttered the sacred words ten thousand times. The Forians pretend that the fragments of reed thus used acquire beneficent virtues. If they are burned near a fever patient, they at once cure him. The ashes mixed with water form an effective collyrium, which cures ophthalmia, if applied three days successively in the morning. Some of the fragments placed between a corpse and its shroud induce God to treat the soul of the deceased with benevolence, and not to be severe in the appreciation of its faults. Fraternal charity, in reference to the will of God, is a common thing in Darfur. He upon whom any misfortune falls is always succoured by his friends and those who know him.[52]
The Forian women have no knowledge of the domestic labours to which the women of civilised countries are accustomed to. The daughters of the rich spend a part of the day in adorning themselves; in rubbing their bodies with butter and their hair with grease, in putting kohl in their eyes, in perfuming themselves, and curling their hair. When they have finished they occupy themselves with household duties, and then pass their time in making fine mats with slips of daum leaves, which they have stained of different colours—red, black, green, or yellow. These mats are light and handsome, and seem to invite those who see them to sit down and sleep.
A Forian woman, of whatever class, generally prepares the food of her husband and the guests who come to the house. The poor assist the men in sowing and reaping, in gathering grain and cotton. At other periods of the year they collect a store of fruit and many kinds of wild grains for their families. It is they also who gather in the water-melons, and pound them, and prepare them for eating. They go out into the fields with their husbands and cut down the weeds, which they collect for fuel. The very young girls keep the flocks, and afterwards accompany their parents in their work. In the evening it is the wife who brings home upon her head a great packet of wood and dry grass or weeds, to serve for the purposes of cookery and to light up the huts.
The poor people generally endeavour to buy each a she-goat or a sheep, on the milk of which they live. They are in a most frightful state of want and misery, suffering from the tyranny of their governors and the exigencies of war. Their life is that of slaves.
Let us turn from the consideration of these humble topics to that of the government and the constitution of the country of Wadaï. Certes, the most powerful and the most respected sovereign in all Soudan was Sultan Saboun. It is the custom in Wadaï to recognise as a prince only one who is born of a mother of noble origin, whose genealogy is pure, and who belongs to one of the five privileged tribes. The son of a slave, even if she were a descendant of the Prophet, can never ascend the throne. I have already traced back Sultan Saboun to the great Seleih, and it is not necessary to repeat what I then said.
The functions and dignities of Darfur differ in nature from those of Wadaï. In the latter country there are eight Kamkolaks; four of the first rank and four of the second. They form a judicial tribunal, whose decisions can never be reversed by the Sultan. If he has strong reasons for blaming any particular sentence, and they persist in it, he may discharge them, but he cannot reverse what they have decreed without the assistance of the Grand Kadi.