RESPECTING DURGO. 155 



that he was appointed my " friend at court," gave 

 into my hand a little piece of parchment, about 

 an inch and a half square upon which was written 

 in the Geez language, " Give to this Gypt, eating 

 and drinking," nothing more, but which constituted 

 me a " holla durgo" that is, master or receiver of 

 rations. "Gypt," the Amharic for Egyptian, is the 

 cognomen generally applied to all white men who 

 visit Abyssinia, they being supposed to come from 

 Egypt.* 



The durgo, or rations, supplied to strangers 

 whilst resident in their country, is a general custom 

 among Abyssinian princes, and is of very great 

 antiquity. It is considered that all persons visiting 

 the kingdom come only as friends of the monarch, 

 who, in the exercise of his hospitality, takes upon 

 himself the whole expense of their sustenance, so 

 that no excuse may be made for intriguing or inter- 

 fering in the ordered state of things, as regards the 

 rule or security of the kingly power. A deviation 



* It is rather a singular circumstance that in England we apply 

 the term Gipsey to the descendants of an outcast people, and that 

 a name of similar origin should designate ourselves among the only 

 remnant of an Egyptian people that have preserved a national inde- 

 pendency in the country whither they had fled. It reminded me of 

 another ethnological fact I had observed in Aden, where the 

 flaxen-haired, light-coloured Jews, so different in appearance from 

 the darker complexioned Arabs among whom they lived, were 

 oppositely contrasted with those dark-eyed, dark-haired descendants 

 of Israel, who have retained these characteristics of an eastern 

 origin, although long resident among the fair-skinned inhabitants of 

 northern Europe. 



