70 
TEFF. 
tion of colour is manifold ; the teff that grows on 
light ground having a moderate degree of moisture, 
but never dry ; the lighter the earth is in which it 
grows, the better and whiter the teff will be ; the 
husk too is thinner. The teff, too, that ripens be- 
fore the heavy rains is usually whiter and finer; 
and a great deal depends upon sifting the husk 
from it, after it is reduced to flour, by bruising or 
breaking it in a stone mill. This is repeated seve- 
ral times with great care, in the finest kind of 
bread, which is found in the houses of all people of 
rank or substance. The manner of making it is by 
taking a broad earthen jar, and having made a lump 
of it with water, they put it into an earthen jar, at 
some distance from the fire, where it remains till it 
begins to ferment or turn sour ; they then bake it 
into cakes of a circular form, and about two feet in 
diameter. It is of a spongy soft quality, and a 
sourish, not disagreeable taste. Two of these cakes 
a day, and a coarse cotton cloth once a year, are the 
wages of a common servant. 
<c At their banquets of raw meat, the flesh, being 
cut in small bits, is wrapped up in pieces of this 
bread, with a proportion of fossil salt, and Cayenne 
pepper. Before the company sits down to eat, a 
number of these cakes, of different qualities, are 
placed one upon the other, in the same manner as 
our plates ; and the principal people, sitting down 
first, eat the white teff ; the second, or coarser sort, 
serves the second-rate people that succeed them ; 
and the third is for the servants. Every man, when 
