1843.] and the Abyssinian Church. 633 



into a most frightful consistency, resembling in appearance and size 

 an ordinary English bee-hive, or the bare shaven head is encircled by 

 a narrow dirty fillet; and their feet, naked and exposed to all seasons 

 and weather, become hard, horny and mis-shapen. 



25. Their only dress consists of a large wide sack chemise, bound 

 round the waist by a thin rag, and a long sheet thrown over the head 

 descending to the heels, which like Ruth's veil is very coarse and strong, 

 and fully capable of containing six measures of wheat. Their orna- 

 ments are large black wooden studs in the ear, which on holidays 

 are replaced by masses of pewter resembling the teething rattles em- 

 ployed in nurseries ; pewter bracelets and anklets, together with a pro- 

 fusion of blue and gold colored beads are worn by all who can 

 afford the outlay, and the dirty toilet is not complete without a stream 

 of rancid butter upon the hair, and the nostrils securely plugged 

 up with lime peel or sweet herbs, leaving the end of this strange 

 nosegay dangling over the wide mouth. They soon ripen and grow 

 old, girls becoming mothers at the early age of twelve; but like the 

 fruit of the medlar, they are rotten before the summer of life has well 

 commenced. 



26. All classes are most pertinacious beggars, every thing seen is 

 demanded ; knives, scissors, beads, cloth, looking glasses and dollars ; 

 the love of acquiring property stifles every sense of shame, and they 

 feel no compunction in asking for the cloak off your back, or of carrying 

 it away, even during a heavy storm of rain ; they even take a pride 

 in this national feeling, and say, that an Abyssinian child will stretch 

 out its hand to receive a present before it be born ; and their tradition 

 hands down as most praiseworthy the conduct of one of their great 

 chiefs, who on his death-bed desired his body to be buried in the 

 track of a caravan, that if possible his spirit in the future state might 

 be in the way of receiving a toll from the passing merchant. 



27. Warm butter mixed with honey and the seeds of the hubbesh, 

 is given to an infant immediately on its birth, and circumcision 

 follows on children of both sexes on the seventh day. The operation, 

 performed generally by an old Galla woman, is exceedingly painful, 

 and is often followed, especially in females, by the most serious conse- 

 quences in some districts. A male child is carried in the hands of 

 men to the Church on the fortieth day, and a female is borne by 



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