The Best Precaution Against Disappointment Would
Be The Registering Abbans At Aden; Every Donkey-Boy Will Offer Himself As
A Protector, But Only The Chiefs Of Tribes Should Be Provided With
Certificates.
During my last visit to Africa, I proposed that English
officers visiting the country should be provided with servants not
protectors, the former, however, to be paid like the latter; all the
people recognised the propriety of the step.
In the following pages occur manifold details concerning the complicated
subject, El Taabanah.
[31] Future travellers would do well either to send before them a trusty
servant with orders to buy cattle; or, what would be better, though a
little more expensive, to take with them from Aden all the animals
required.
[32] The Somal use as camel saddles the mats which compose their huts;
these lying loose upon the animal's back, cause, by slipping backwards and
forwards, the loss of many a precious hour, and in wet weather become half
a load. The more civilised make up of canvass or "gunny bags" stuffed with
hay and provided with cross bars, a rude packsaddle, which is admirably
calculated to gall the animal's back. Future travellers would do well to
purchase camel-saddles at Aden, where they are cheap and well made.
[33] He received four cloths of Cutch canvass, and six others of coarse
American sheeting. At Zayla these articles are double the Aden value,
which would be about thirteen rupees or twenty-six shillings; in the bush
the price is quadrupled.
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