Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/485

 SOMALI TRIBES. 897 from pasturage to pasturage in the grassy regions of the interior. The industries, by far the most important of which is the manufacture of matting, are almost entirely in the hands of the women, who are all very laborious. Few of the tribes make any use of the horse, and it seems probable that this animal was not introduced into the country till comparatively recent times. It oven still bears its Arab name of farm. According to Sottiro, every village in the Ogaden territory keeps a park of a few dozen ostriches, which feed apart under the charge of children, and which pass the night in the huts; during the migra- tions they also join the caravan in company with the camels. But they are not allowed to breed in captivity, and the domestic stock is consequently kept up altogether by cupturing the wild birds in the chase, or perhaps taking them when young. Slavery is unknown amongst the northern Somali tribes, who kill but neither buy nor sell their fellow-men. But the case is different in the central and southern regions, where a section of the population is reduced to servitude, and where the slaves themselves are treated with horrible ci-uelty. Nearly all these unhappy wretches have their feet shackled with two rings connected by an iron bar ; they eat nothing but refuse, yet they are compelled daily to drag themselves to the fields and till the land under the broiling sun. Every fault is punished with tortures, and under these circumstances it is not surprising that the slaves frequently seek in a voluntary death relief from their miserable existence. In many districts the Somali warriors are addicted to slave hunting, and the captures made by them serve as the current standard of exchange, the trade value of this " commodity " being estimated at from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty dollars. It also frequently happens that the Somali treat the members of their own family as slaves. " If you despise not wife, child, and servant, you shall yourself be despised," says a* local proverb. According to Burton, the young married man welcomes his bride whip in hand, and begins by giving her a sound thrashing, in order to establish his authority over her from the outset. Neverthe- less, the women move about freely enough in the rural districts. As in other Mohammedan countries, the husband repudiates his wife whenever the whim takes him, and at his death she becomes the inheritance of his surviving brother. Most of the divorced or otherwise disgraced women enter into the service of the caravans as water-carriers. Tribal Groups. — The Rahanuin. Being destitute of all national cohesion, the Somali are divided and subdivided into a multiplicity of rev% or fakidas, that is, tribes and septs, which band together or break into fresh fragments according to the vicissitudes of wars and alliances. Nevertheless, in the midst of all these minute divisions the elistence may be recog- nised of three main ethnical families or tribal groups : the Rahanuin in the south, the liaKiija in the centre, and the Hashiifa in the north. The Ruhanuin or Rahhanwin, who are constantly at war with the Gullas and