Cos. Rs. Passage money from Aden to Zayla............................ 33 Presents at Zayla...........................................100 Price of four mules with saddles and bridles................225 Price of four camels........................................ 88 Provisions (tobacco, rice, dates &c.) for three months......428 Price of 150 Tobes..........................................357 Nine pieces of indigo-dyed cotton........................... 16 Minor expenses (cowhides for camels, mats for tents, presents to Arabs, a box of beads, three handsome Abyssinian Tobes bought for chiefs).....................166 Expenses at Berberah, and passage back to Aden.............. 77 ---- Total Cos. Rs. 1490 = L149 ==== [12] I shall frequently use Somali terms, not to display my scanty knowledge of the dialect, but because they perchance may prove serviceable to my successors. [13] The Somal always "side-line" their horses and mules with stout stiff leathern thongs provided with loops and wooden buttons; we found them upon the whole safer than lariats or tethers. [14] Arabs hate "El Sifr" or whistling, which they hold to be the chit- chat of the Jinns. Some say that the musician's mouth is not to be purified for forty days; others that Satan, touching a man's person, causes him to produce the offensive sound. The Hejazis objected to Burckhardt that he could not help talking to devils, and walking about the room like an unquiet spirit. The Somali has no such prejudice. Like the Kafir of the Cape, he passes his day whistling to his flocks and herds; moreover, he makes signals by changing the note, and is skilful in imitating the song of birds. [15] In this country camels foal either in the Gugi (monsoon), or during the cold season immediately after the autumnal rains. [16] The shepherd's staff is a straight stick about six feet long, with a crook at one end, and at the other a fork to act as a rake. [17] These utensils will be described in a future chapter. [18] The settled Somal have a holy horror of dogs, and, Wahhabi-like, treat man's faithful slave most cruelly. The wild people are more humane; they pay two ewes for a good colley, and demand a two-year-old sheep as "diyat" or blood-money for the animal, if killed. [19] Vultures and percnopters lie upon the wing waiting for the garbage of the kraals; consequently they are rare near the cow-villages, where animals are not often killed. [20] They apply this term to all but themselves; an Indian trader who had travelled to Harar, complained to me that he had always been called a Frank by the Bedouins in consequence of his wearing Shalwar or drawers.