Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/123

 lait colour. The Bedouins are fond of raising beauty marks in the shape of ghastly seams, and the thickness of the epidermis favours the size of these stigmates. The male figure is tall and somewhat ungainly. In only one instance I observed an approach to the steatopyge, making the shape to resemble the letter S; but the shoulders are high, the trunk is straight, the thighs fall off, the shin bones bow slightly forwards, and the feet, like the hands, are coarse, large, and flat. Yet with their hair, of a light straw colour, decked with the light waving feather, and their coal-black complexions set off by that most graceful of garments the clean white Tobe [17], the contrasts are decidedly effective. In mind the Somal are peculiar as in body. They are a people of most susceptible character, and withal uncommonly hard to please. They dislike the Arabs, fear and abhor the Turks, have a horror of Franks, and despise all other Asiatics who with them come under the general name of Hindi (Indians). The latter are abused on all occasions for cowardice, and a want of generosity, which has given rise to the following piquant epigram: "Ask not from the Hindi thy want: Impossible that the Hindi can be generous! Had there been one liberal man in El Hind, Allah had raised up a prophet in El Hind!" They have all the levity and instability of the Negro character; light- minded as the Abyssinians,--described by Gobat as constant in nothing but inconstancy,--soft, merry, and affectionate souls, they pass without any apparent transition into a state of fury, when