In Arabia, Men Dye With It Their Cotton Shirts, Women
And Children Use It To Stain The Skin A Bright Yellow; Besides The Purpose
Of A Cosmetic, It Also Serves As A Preservative Against Cold.
When Wars is
cheap at Harar, a pound may be bought for a quarter of a dollar.
The Tobes and sashes of Harar are considered equal to the celebrated
cloths of Shoa: hand-woven, they as far surpass, in beauty and durability,
the vapid produce of European manufactories, as the perfect hand of man
excels the finest machinery. On the windward coast, one of these garments
is considered a handsome present for a chief. The Harari Tobe consists of
a double length of eleven cubits by two in breadth, with a border of
bright scarlet, and the average value of a good article, even in the city,
is eight dollars. They are made of the fine long-stapled cotton, which
grows plentifully upon these hills, and are soft as silk, whilst their
warmth admirably adapts them for winter wear. The thread is spun by women
with two wooden pins: the loom is worked by both sexes.
Three caravans leave Harar every year for the Berberah market. The first
starts early in January, laden with coffee, Tobes, Wars, ghee, gums, and
other articles to be bartered for cottons, silks, shawls, and Surat
tobacco. The second sets out in February. The principal caravan, conveying
slaves, mules, and other valuable articles, enters Berberah a few days
before the close of the season: it numbers about 3000 souls, and is
commanded by one of the Amir's principal officers, who enjoys the title of
Ebi or leader. Any or all of these kafilahs might be stopped by spending
four or five hundred dollars amongst the Jibril Abokr tribe, or even by a
sloop of war at the emporium. "He who commands at Berberah, holds the
beard of Harar in his hand," is a saying which I heard even within the
city walls.
The furniture of a house at Harar is simple,--a few skins, and in rare
cases a Persian rug, stools, coarse mats, and Somali pillows, wooden
spoons, and porringers shaped with a hatchet, finished with a knife,
stained red, and brightly polished. The gourd is a conspicuous article;
smoked inside and fitted with a cover of the same material, it serves as
cup, bottle, pipe, and water-skin: a coarse and heavy kind of pottery, of
black or brown clay, is used by some of the citizens.
The inhabitants of Harar live well. The best meat, as in Abyssinia, is
beef: it rather resembled, however, in the dry season when I ate it, the
lean and stringy sirloins of Old England in Hogarth's days. A hundred and
twenty chickens, or sixty-six full-grown fowls, may be purchased for a
dollar, and the citizens do not, like the Somal, consider them carrion.
Goat's flesh is good, and the black-faced Berberah sheep, after the rains,
is, here as elsewhere, delicious.
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