244 NO JEWS IN SHOA 



then demanded. They also carry berberah, or the 

 red cayenne-pepper pods to the daggan, or cold 

 country, where they obtain wheat or other grain in 

 exchange, five times the weight of berberah being 

 given. The quantity of grain given for tobacco 

 depends greatly upon circumstances ; the eye of the 

 seller, and the appetite of the purchaser of the 

 tobacco, determining the rate of exchange. 



Besides these articles, all of which are exposed for 

 sale in the market-place of Aliu Amba, saddle-makers 

 from Ankobar, spear and sword manufacturers from 

 the Tabeeb, or artificers' monasteries, supply it 

 with their wares, and the industrious inhabitants of 

 the latter also bring hoes and plough-irons, and 

 their women and children hawk about the tow r n, 

 with loud cries, coarse earthenware utensils for 

 sale. 



No Hebrew pedlar is to be seen in this, or any 

 other market-place, though a recent traveller of 

 Shoa has asserted such to be the case, and to allow 

 the assertion to pass without denying it at once, 

 might lead to some ethnological error among the 

 naturalists of the human race, w T ho might be spe- 

 culating upon the origin and descent of the true 

 Abyssinian. Such was the ignorance of both the 

 Amhara and the Islam of these people, that scarcely 

 a stranger called upon me, but desired to know if 

 I were not a "Yahude" (Jew). I questioned them 

 in return upon the very subject, and none had even 

 met with one, except some of the travelled slave- 



