Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/239

 degree of safety. The goods they carry are coarse Surat blue cloaths, called marowty; also myrrh and fair. This last is the principal and most valuable article.

Galla sometimes marry the Abyssinian women, but the issue of those marriages are incapable of all employment. Their form of marriage is the following: The bridegroom, standing before the parents of the bride, holds grass in his right hand and the dung of a cow in his left. He then says, "May this never enter, nor this ever come out," if he does not do what he promises; "that is, may the grass never enter the cow's mouth to feed it, or may she die before it is discharged. Matrimonial vows, moreover, are very simple; he swears to his bride that he shall give her meat and drink, while living, and bury her when dead.

is allowed among them, but the men are commonly content with one wife. Such, indeed, is their moderation in this respect, that it is the women that solicit the men to increase the number of their wives. The love of their children seems to get a speedy ascendency over passion and pleasure, and is a noble part of the character of these savages that ought not to be forgot. A young woman, having a child or two by her husband, intreats and solicits him that he would take another wife, when she names to him all the beautiful girls of her acquaintance, especially those that she thinks likeliest to have large families. After the husband has made his choice, she goes to the tent of the young woman, and fits behind it in a supplicant posture, till she has excited the attention of the family within. She then, with an audible voice, declares who she is; that she is daughter of such a one; that her husband