Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/89

Rh difficult to a stranger. Each dance has its own song and measure, and, contrary to the custom of Al-Islam, the sexes perform together. They begin by clapping the hands and stamping where they stand; to this succeed advancing, retiring, wheeling about, jumping about, and the other peculiarities of the Jim Crow school. The principal measures are those of Ugadayn and Batar; these are again divided and subdivided. I fancy that the description of Dileho, Jibwhayn, and Hobala would be as entertaining and instructive to you, dear L., as Polka, Gavotte, and Mazurka would be to a Somali.

On Friday—our Sunday—a drunken crier goes about the town, threatening the bastinado to all who neglect their five prayers. At half-past eleven a kettle-drum sounds a summons to the Jami or Cathedral. It is an old barn rudely plastered with whitewash; posts or columns of artless masonry support the low roof, and the smallness of the windows, or rather air-holes, renders its dreary length unpleasantly hot. There is no pulpit; the only ornament is a rude representation of the Meccan Mosque, nailed like a pot-house print to the wall; and the sole articles of furniture are ragged mats and old boxes containing tattered chapters of the Koran in greasy bindings. I enter with a servant carrying a prayer carpet, encounter the stare of 300 pairs of eyes, belonging to parallel rows of squatters, recite the customary two-bow prayer in honour of the mosque, placing sword and rosary before me, and then, taking up a Koran, read the Cow Chapter (No. 18) loud and twangingly. At the Zohr or midday hour, the Mu'ezzin inside the mosque, standing before the Khatib, or preacher, repeats the call to prayer, which the congregation, sitting upon their shins and feet, intone after him. This ended, all present stand up, and recite every man for himself a two-bow prayer of Sunnat or Example, concluding with the blessing on the Prophet and the Salam