ABYSSINIAN FEASTS* 
231 
temporary torrents, occasioned by sudden showers on the mountains ; 
in a word, when a man can say he is safe at home, and the spear 
and shield are hung’ up in the hall ; a number of people of the best 
fashion in the villages, of both sexes, courtiers in the palace or citi- 
zens in the town, meet together to dine, between twelve and one 
o’clock. A long* table is set ip the middle of a large room, and 
benches besides it, for a number of guests who are invited. Tables 
and benches, the Portuguese introduced among them ; but bull hides 
spread upon the ground served them before, as they do in the camp 
and country now. A cow or a bull, one or more, according to the 
number, is brought close to the door, and his feet strongly tied. The skin 
that hangs down under his chin and throat, which 1 think we call the 
dewlap in England, is cut only so deep as to arrive at the fat, of 
which it totally consists; and by the separation of a few small blood- 
vessels, six or seven drops of blood only fall upon the ground. There 
is no stone, bench, or altar, upon which this cruel assassin lays 
the animal’s head in this operation. I should beg his pardon indeed 
for calling him an assassin, as he is not so merciful as to aim at the 
life, but, on the contrary, to keep the beast alive till he is totally eatert 
up. Having satisfied the Mosaical law, according to his conception j 
by pouring these six or seven drops upon the ground, two or more 
of them fall to work on the back of the beast ; and On each side of 
the spine they cut skin-deep ; then putting their fingers between the 
flesh and the skin, they begin to strip the hide of the animal half 
Way down his ribs, and so on to the buttock, cutting the nkin wher- 
ever it hinders them commodiously stripping the poor animal bare. All 
the flesh of the buttocks is then cut off, in solid square pieces, 
without bones or much effusion of blood ; and the prodigious noise 
the animal makes is a signal for the company to sit down to table, 
“There are then laid before every guest, instead of plates, round 
cakes, if 1 may so call them, about twice as big as a pancake, and 
something thicker and tougher. It is unleavened bread, of a sourish 
taste, far from being disagreeable, and very easily digested^ made of 
a grain called teff. It is of different colours, from black to the colour 
of the whitest wheat bread. Three or four of these cakes are gene- 
rally put uppermost, for the food of the person opposite to whose seat 
they are placed. Beneath these are four or five of ordinary bread, 
and of a blackish kind. These serve the master to wipe his fingers 
upon, and afterwards the servant for bread to his dinner. 
“Two or three servants then come, each with a square piece of beef 
in their bare hands, laying it upon the cakes of teff, placed like dishes 
down the table, without cloth or any thing else beneath them. By 
this time all the guests have knives in their hands, and the men have 
the large crooked ones, which they put to all sorts of uses during 
the time of war. The women have small clasped knives, such as the 
worst of the kind made at Birmingham, and sold for a penny each. 
“ The company are so ranged, that one man sits between two wo-^ 
men ; the man, with his long knife, cuts a thin piece, which would be 
thought a good beef-steak in England, while you see the motion of 
the fibres yet perfectly distinct and alive in the flesh. No man in 
Abyssinia, of any fashion whateverj feeds himself, or touches his owii 
