I had given the Abban orders to be in readiness, my patience being thoroughly exhausted,- -on Sunday, the 26th of November, and determined to walk the whole way, rather than waste another day waiting for cattle. As the case had become hopeless, a vessel was descried standing straight from Tajurrah, and, suddenly as could happen in the Arabian Nights, four fine mules, saddled and bridled, Abyssinian fashion, appeared at the door.*

For the cheapest I paid twenty-three, for the dearest twenty-six dollars, besides a Riyal upon each, under the names of custom dues and carriage. The Hajj had doubtless exaggerated the price, but all were good animals, and the traveller has no right to complain, except when he pays dear for a bad article.

H

CHAP. IV.

THE SOMAL, THEIR ORIGIN AND PECULIARITIES.

BEFORE leaving Zayla, I must not neglect a short description of its inhabitants, and the remarkable Somal races around it.

Eastern Africa, like Arabia, presents a population composed of three markedly distinct races.

1. The Aborigines or Hamites, such as the Negro Sawahili, the Bushmen, Hottentots, and other races, having such physiological peculiarities as the steatopyge, the tablier, and other developments described, in 1815, by the great Cuvier.

2. The almost pure Caucasian of the northern regions, west of Egypt: their immigration comes within the range of comparatively modern history.

3. The half-castes in Eastern Africa are represented principally by the Abyssinians, Gallas, Somals, and Kafirs. The first-named people derive their descent from Menelek, son of Solomon by the Queen of Sheba: it is evident from their features and figures, --too well known to require descrip

tion,—that they are descended from Semitic as well as Hamitic progenitors.* About the origin of the Gallas there is a diversity of opinion. † Some declare them to be Meccan Arabs, who settled on the western coast of the Red Sea at a remote epoch: according to the Abyssinians, however, and there is little to find fault with in their theory, the Gallas are descended from a princess of their nation, who was given in marriage to a slave from the country south of Gurague. She bare seven sons, who became mighty robbers and founders of tribes: their progenitors obtained the name of Gallas, after the river Gala, in Gurague, where they gained a decisive victory our their kinsmen the Abyssins. A variety of ethnologic

* Eusebius declares that the Abyssinians migrated from Asia to Africa whilst the Hebrews were in Egypt (circ. A. M. 2345); and Syncellus places the event about the age of the Judges.

† Moslems, ever fond of philological fable, thus derive the word Galla. When Ullabu, the chief, was summoned by Mohammed to Islamise, the messenger returned to report that "he said no," -Kál lá pronounced Gál lá,- which impious refusal, said the Prophet, should from that time become the name of the race.

Others have derived them from Metcha, Karaiyo, and Tulema, three sons of an Æthiopian Emperor by a female slave. They have, according to some travellers, a prophecy that one day they will march to the east and north, and conquer the inheritance of their Jewish ancestors. Mr. Johnston asserts that the word Galla is "merely another form of Calla, which in the

and physiological reasons, into which space and

The

subject prevent my entering, argue the Kafirs of the Cape to be a northern people, pushed southwards by some, to us, as yet, unknown cause. origin of the Somal is a matter of modern history. "Barbarah" (Berberah), according to the Kamus, is "a well known town in El Maghrib, and a race located between El Zanj — Zanzibar and the Negrotic coast and El Habash †: they are descended from the Himyar chiefs Sanháj (k) and Sumámah (4), and they arrived at the epoch of the conquest of Africa by the

ancient Persian, Sanscrit, Celtic, and their modern derivative languages, under modified, but not changed terms, is expressive of blackness." The Gallas, however, are not a black people.

The Aden stone has been supposed to name the "Berbers," who must have been Gallas from the vicinity of Berberah. A certain amount of doubt still hangs on the interpretation: the Rev. Mr. Forster and Dr. Bird being the principal contrasts.

Rev. Mr. Forster.

"We assailed with cries of hatred and rage the Abyssinians and Berbers.

"We rode forth wrathfully against this refuse of mankind."

Dr. Bird.

"He, the Syrian philosopher in Abadan, Bishop of Cape Aden, who inscribed this in the desert, blesses the institution of the faith."

†This word is generally translated Abyssinia; oriental geographers, however, use it in a more extended sense. The Turks have held possessions in "Habash," in Abyssinia never.

king Afríkús (Scipio Africanus ?)." A few details upon the subject of mutilation and excision prove these to have been the progenitors of the Somal*, who are nothing but a slice of the great Galla nation Islamised and Semiticised by repeated immigrations from Arabia. In the Kamus we also read that Samal (J) is the name of the father of a tribe, so called because he thrust out (, samala) his brother's eye. The Shaykh Jami, a celebrated genealogist, informed me that in A. H. 666 A. D. 1266-7, the Sayyid Yusuf el Baghdadi visited the port of Siyaro near Berberah, then occupied by an infidel magician, who passed

* The same words are repeated in the Infak el Maysur fi Tarikh bilad el Takrur (Appendix to Denham and Clapperton's Travels, No. xii.), again confounding the Berbers and the Somal. Afrikus, according to that author, was a king of Yemen who expelled the Berbers from Syria !

The learned Somal invariably spell their national name. with an initial Sin, and disregard the derivation from Saumal (o), which would allude to the hardihood of the wild people. An intelligent modern traveller derives "Somali " from the Abyssinian "Soumahe " or heathens, and asserts that it corresponds with the Arabic word Kafir or unbeliever, the name by which Edrisi, the Arabian geographer, knew and described the inhabitants of the Affah (Afar) coast, to the east of the Straits of Bab el Mandeb. Such derivation is, however, unadvisable.