The Highlands of EthiopiaHarris, William Cornwallis, Sir
History
The Highlands of Ethiopia
Harris, William Cornwallis, Sir
Ethiopia -- Description and travel
"Honesty," saith the Arab proverb, "is found only amongst poor fools."
The Bedouin has for ages been celebrated for his ingenuity and daring,
and the African offset is nothing behind the parent stock. A Somauli
thief is perhaps "the cunningest knave in the universe." He has been
known to cut away a pile of tobacco so as to leave to the merchant who
reposed thereon, naught but the effigy of his own figure: and after
entering through the roof of a house, the burglar has taken his exit
through the door with chests of treasure, from the top of which the
sleeping proprietor has been first hoisted, with his bed, by a tackle
lowered through the aperture, and so left hanging until the morning!
Muffled in a Spanish mantilla, see the spouse of the bigoted Islam
taking the air upon the crupper of a donkey, her fat face so
scrupulously concealed, that nothing of it is visible save two sloe
black eyes which glitter through perforations in the white veil, and
impart a similitude to the horned owl. On the rude steps of the
clustering habitations that she has passed, surrounded by rosy-cheeked
urchins, are seated numerous dark-eyed and well-dressed Jewesses.
Rachel, although discreet, and preserving the strictest decorum, is
unveiled. Were it possible to prevail upon her to have recourse to
daily ablution, in lieu of the hebdomadal immersion which celebrates her
sabbath eve, her complexion would not be less fair than that of the
native of Southern Europe; and in the well-chiselled features and
aquiline profile of the brunette, are preserved all those marked
peculiarities which in every part of the world distinguish the scattered
daughters of Israel.
The children of the tribe of Judah are most completely identified with
the soil of Aden, and may be regarded as the artisans and manufacturing
population. Victims heretofore of the tyranny and intolerant
persecution which the infidel has ever to expect at the hand of the true
believer, they toiled and accumulated, but feared lest a display of the
fruits of their labour should excite the cupidity of a rapacious master.
Now their prospect has brightened, and the remnant of a mighty though
fallen and dispersed people, no longer exists here in poverty and
oppression, insulted and despised as they have always been in every part
of the Eastern world; but in uninterrupted security ply their
industrious occupation, and under British protection fearlessly practise
those rites which have been religiously preserved from the time that
their priests bore aloft the ark of the covenant. Stone slabs with
Hebrew inscriptions mark the resting-place of the departed; schools
witness the education of the rising generation; and men and women,
arrayed in their holiday apparel, sit apart in the synagogue, to listen
at each return of their sabbath to the law which had been read since "by
way of the wilderness of the Red Sea" their fathers "went up harnessed
out of the land of Egypt."
Volume One, Chapter IV.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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