OF THE ABBAHN. 27 



to the protection of law, or of some regularly 

 established authority, consents but reluctantly, and 

 then only from the prospect of immense gains, to 

 risk his person among a people so violently bar- 

 barous as are the Adal tribes occupying this portion 

 of Africa, who have lost none of their ancient charac- 

 ter significantly recorded in the Periplus, as being 

 " uncivilized, and under no restraint." To protect 

 himself in some measure the trader has recourse to 

 the system of procuring the constant attendance of 

 one or more of the natives, whose duty it is to guard 

 their employer from molestation. Two-thirds of 

 the Soumaulee population of the town are engaged 

 in this manner. No sooner does a stranger arrive 

 than he is surrounded by natives, each soliciting to 

 be employed as his Abbahn, and are almost as 

 importunate and as troublesome as the hotel-barkers 

 who infest the piers of our watering-places. The 

 important privilege of supplying strangers with 

 Abbahns is monopolized by one tribe living in the 

 neighbourhood of Berberah, called . Raree-good- 

 Hade, but not without considerable opposition from 

 another tribe called Raree-Abdullah, with whom 

 serious conflicts sometimes take place within the 

 town, when all business is suspended for three or 

 four days in consequence. 



Every ship, or bogalow, arriving at the port is 

 boarded, at least a mile from the shore, by a crowd 

 of Soumaulee Abbahns, and on the occasion of the 

 Euphrates approaching Berberah, a number of these 



