Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/216

 nutritive, whilst "mutton is disease," is a little cheaper than the sheep. Hides and peltries are usually collected at and exported from Harar; on the coast they are rubbed over with salt, and in this state carried to Aden. Cows' skins fetch a quarter of a dollar, or about one shilling in cloth, and two dollars are the extreme price for the Kurjah or score of goats' skins. The people of the interior have a rude way of tanning ; they macerate the hide, dress, and stain it of a deep calf-skin colour with the bark of a tree called Jirmah, and lastly the leather is softened with the hand. The principal gum is the Adad, or Acacia Arabica: foreign merchants purchase it for about half a dollar per Farasilah of twenty pounds: cow's and sheep's butter may fetch a dollar's worth of cloth for the measure of thirty-two pounds. This great article of commerce is good and pure in the country, whereas at Berberah, the Habr Awal adulterate it, previous to exportation, with melted sheep's tails. The principal wants of the country which we have traversed are coarse cotton cloth, Surat tobacco, beads, and indigo-dyed stuffs for women's coifs. The people would also be grateful for any improvement in their breed of horses, and when at Aden I thought of taking with me some old Arab stallions as presents to chiefs. Fortunately the project fell to the ground: a strange horse of unusual size or beauty, in these regions, would be stolen at the end of the first march.