The Family Slaves And Their Children By Their Masters, Constantly Speak The Language Of The Country, Whence They Originally Come.

Their writing is in the Mogrebyn character, which is used, as is supposed by Captain Lyon, universally in western Africa, and differs much from that of the east.

The pronunciation is also very different, the kaf being pronounced as a G, and only marked with one nunnation, and F is pointed below; they have no idea of arithmetic, but reckon every thing by dots on the sand, ten in a line; many can hardly tell how much two and two amount to. They expressed great surprise at the Europeans being able to add numbers together without fingering. Though very fond of poetry, they are incapable of composing it. The Arabs, however, invent a few little songs, which the natives have much pleasure in learning, and the women sing some of the negro airs very prettily, while grinding their corn.

The songs of the kadankas (singing girls), who answer to the Egyptian almehs, is Soudanic. Their musical instrument is called rhababe, or erhab. It is an excavated hemisphere, made from the shell of a gourd lime, and covered with leather; to this a long handle is fixed, on which is stretched a string of horse hairs, longitudinally closed, and compact as one cord, about the thickness of a quill. This is played upon with a bow. Captain Lyon says, the women really produced a very pleasing, though a wild melody; their songs were pretty and plaintive, and generally in the Soudan language, which is very musical. What is rather singular, he heard the same song sung by the same woman that Horneman mentions, and she recollected having seen that traveller at the castle.

The lower classes and the slaves, who, in point of colour and appearance, are the same, labour together. The freeman has, however, only one inducement to work, which is hunger; he has no notion of laying by any thing for the advantage of his family, or as a reserve for himself in his old age; but if by any chance he obtains money, he remains idle until it is expended, and then returns unwillingly to work. The females here are allowed greater liberty than those of Tripoli, and are more kindly treated. Though so much better used than those of Barbary, their life is still a state of slavery. A man never ventures to speak of his women; is reproached, if he spends much time in their company, never eats with them; but is waited upon at his meals, and fanned by them while he sleeps. Yet these poor beings, never having known the sweets of liberty, are, in spite of their humiliation, comparatively happy.

The authority of parents over their children is very great; some fathers of the better class do not allow their sons even to eat or sit down in their presence, until they become men; the poorer orders are less strict.

There are no written records of events amongst the Fezzaners, and their traditions are so disfigured, and so strangely mingled with religious and superstitious falsehoods, that no confidence can be placed in them.

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