26 PECULIAR CUSTOM. 



time supplying us, as is the custom of these people, 

 with two natives for guides, and also as sureties for 

 our safety and freedom from molestation during our 

 walk. 



The appointment of these sureties, or Abbahn, 

 as each calls himself, to every stranger who enters 

 the town, is a singular but very necessary charac- 

 teristic of the social condition of the inhabitants of 

 Berberah, and is deserving of particular notice. 

 Convenience on the one hand and enterprise on the 

 other, have here brought together the Hindoo 

 Banyan, the Mahomedan Arab, and the Pagan 

 Soumaulee ; for even now scarcely one half of this 

 latter people profess the Islam faith. With no gene- 

 rally acknowledged superior, no established law, each 

 inhabitant depends upon his own keen knife, or that 

 of his Abbahn, for personal safety and the security 

 of his property. All are equally ready to resort to 

 a bloody appeal upon the least cause of dispute, so 

 that every day is marked by some fatal quarrel, and 

 every night by some robbery and violent death. 

 Even the murdering Danakil shakes his head when 

 he speaks of the Fair of Berberah, denouncing it as 

 being " shataii, shatan;" whilst the wisest and 

 the best men of every nation or tribe, who are here 

 assembled, speak openly their desire, that some 

 powerful Islam, or even Feringee Government, 

 should take actual possession, both of this port and 

 of Zeila also. Under such circumstances, the 

 foreign merchant, accustomed in his own country 



