[21]The Sheikh gives a detailed account of the operation, as also of various other kinds of treatments for different diseases, which it may be curious for medical men to consult. I have no doubt that many barbarous nations are in possession of valuable medical secrets.
[22]So the Forians, as well as the English, regard as a delicacy meat in which the process of putrefaction has commenced.
[23]The zhalym has on each wing eight beautiful white plumes, and the rabdah eight grey ones.
[24]I suppose this is the same tree as the tholukh, so often mentioned in Mr. Richardson’s “Journal.”
[25]Chloroform?
[26]This royal way of paying debts appears to be common in Soudan. See the exploits of the Sarkee of Zinder, in Richardson’s “Journal.”
[27]Those who are acquainted with the history of recent political events, need not go to the centre of Africa for an example of a prince pausing in the midst of massacre to perform those pious duties which public opinion is always ready to set down to the account of the powerful.
[28]I cannot again refrain from pointing out the singular similarity which exists between the histories of all nations in which the idea of authority is developed, and in which a man or a family presumes to look upon a whole people as personal property. The fact of this similarity is, perhaps, the only useful information we can derive from a study of the bloody annals of empires, present or past, expiring or nascent.
[29]It is amusing to see the right divine of kings asserted in the person of the ferocious Saboun, and how priests of all forms of faith are ready to justify bloodshed in the interest of authority. It must be observed, that the learned men to whom this case was submitted made no allusion to the mild alternative expressed in the last words of the law.
[30]This splendid description of how an African prince wades through slaughter to a throne, and at once becomes an idol, is an unconscious satire of some of the great events of modern history.