The Cold Had Driven The Nomads From The Hills To The Warm Maritime Plains [34], We Should Therefore Traverse A

Populous region; and, as the End of Time aptly observed, "Man eats you up, the Desert does not." Moreover this

Year the Ayyal Nuh Ismail, a clan of the Habr Awal tribe, is "out," and has been successful against the Eesa, who generally are the better men. They sweep the country in Kaum or Commandos [35], numbering from twenty to two hundred troopers, armed with assegai, dagger, and shield, and carrying a water skin and dried meat for a three days' ride, sufficient to scour the length of the low land. The honest fellows are not so anxious to plunder as to ennoble themselves by taking life: every man hangs to his saddle bow an ostrich [36] feather,--emblem of truth,--and the moment his javelin has drawn blood, he sticks it into his tufty pole with as much satisfaction as we feel when attaching a medal to our shell-jackets. It is by no means necessary to slay the foe in fair combat: Spartan-like, treachery is preferred to stand-up fighting; and you may measure their ideas of honor, by the fact that women are murdered in cold blood, as by the Amazulus, with the hope that the unborn child may prove a male. The hero carries home the trophy of his prowess [37], and his wife, springing from her tent, utters a long shrill scream of joy, a preliminary to boasting of her man's valour, and bitterly taunting the other possessors of _noirs faineants_: the derided ladies abuse their lords with peculiar virulence, and the lords fall into paroxysms of envy, hatred, and malice.

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