Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/314

 was not the Abyssinian fashion; he did not like to do any thing without a short discussion on the matter."

At half past five on the following morning, we left Gibba, and crossing the small river which passes that place, ascended up to the high district of Giralta. In our way through a highly cultivated part of the country, we met with a number of peasants engaged in celebrating a wedding. The bride and bridegroom were seated on a rude kind of throne, formed of turf and shadowed by green boughs, their companions dancing joyously round them in their usual wild and fantastic way. Marriage, in this country, appears, generally speaking, to be a mere civil institution; the priests being rarely called in to sanction the rites. When a man is desirous of marrying a girl, he directly applies to her parents or nearest relatives, and their consent being once obtained, the matter is considered as settled, the girl herself being very seldom consulted upon the question. The next subject to be arranged is the dower which the girl is to bring, consisting of so many wakeas of gold, a certain number of cattle, musquets, or pieces of cloth: and this generally occasions, as in most other countries, very serious difficulty; the husband naturally considering the interest of his wife identified with his own in the bargain which he has to make with her parents or friends. This important point being once adjusted, no farther difficulty occurs: the friends of both parties assemble, the marriage is declared, and, after a day spent in festivity, the bride is carried to the house of her husband, either on his shoulders, or those of his friends; the mother, at parting with her daughter, strenuously enjoining the husband to strict performance of the conjugal rites. If the husband should subsequently find just cause to doubt the integrity of his wife, the union is immediately dissolved, and the girl is sent back to her family in disgrace: on the contrary, if the proof required by the custom of the country can be produced, it is given over on the following day to the mother or nearest female relative of the bride, and is preserved as a testimony in favour of the wife, to be brought forward on any future quarrel with the husband. The wife never changes her name: and the property received in dower is kept apart from the husband's as