Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/464

352 country, whatever is its condition, has been impressed by Providence, for wise ends, in the breasts of all nations; from Lapland to the Line, you find it written precisely in the same character.

are twelve villages, or towns, in Dahalac, little different in size from Dobelew; each has a plantation of doom-trees round it, which furnish the only manufacture in the island. The leaves of this tree, when dried, are of a glossy white, which might very easily be mistaken for sattin; of these they make baskets of surprising beauty and neatness, staining part of the leaves with red or black, and working them into figures very artificially. I have known some of these, resembling straw-baskets, continue full of water for twenty-four hours, without one drop coming through. They sell these at Loheia and Jidda, the largest of them for four commesh, or sixpence. This is the employment, or rather amusement of the men who stay at home; for they work but very moderately at it, and all of them indeed take special care, not to prejudice their health by any kind of fatigue from industry.

of the better sort, such as the Shekh and his relations, men privileged to be idle, and never exposed to the sun, are of a brown complexion, not darker than the inhabitants of Loheia. But the common sort employed in fishing, and those who go constantly to sea, are not indeed black, but red, and little darker than the colour of new mohogany. There are, besides, blacks among them, who come from Arkeeko and the Main, but even these, upon marrying, grow less black in a generation. Rh