CHAPTERXXV.
No prospect of recovery.—Slaughter of the goat.—Manufacture of skin-bags.—The process.—Farming.—The bark employed.—Morocco leather.—Carcase butchers.—Process of cutting up meat.
No prospect of recovery.—Slaughter of the goat.—Manufacture of skin-bags.—The process.—Farming.—The bark employed.—Morocco leather.—Carcase butchers.—Process of cutting up meat.
August 21st.—The termination of the fast of Felsat was hailed with considerable pleasure by the very best of Christians in Shoa, and this happened on the last day of the interval which dates this chapter, for increasing want of space compels me to relinquish the usual diurnal account. As it happened, nothing of importance occurred, except only that I began to find myself gradually getting weaker and weaker, and the symptoms of my illness increasing in violence upon every fresh attack. I attributed this, in a great measure, to the wet season, which was now most decidedly set in, and for the last three or four days especially it had rained without intermission. It was a cheerless time, the moist foggy state of the atmosphere, and the muddy condition of the road, quite prevented me from taking my usual walks, and looking at the dripping state of my thatched roof, or listening to the pattering of the large rain drops against my parchment window, was all the amusement I hadafter I had determined to confine myself more to bed, either to recruit myself after the severe fever paroxysms, or with the hope of averting in some measure the force of their attack by a little careful nursing. I ceased, too, to take any pleasure in the interesting conversations of Ibrahim, or Sheik Tigh, or, in fact, any one from whom previously I had ever been most inquiring respecting every subject of importance or novelty I could think of to ask about. My cup of coffee in the morning, or a drinking hornful of the warmed ale, was the only thing I dare indulge in, for solids of any kind had a great tendency to occasion congestion in the brain, and after eating anything a severe headache was the certain consequence. I took the hint, and gave up the honeyed repast at breakfast and the fricassee at night, and made a point of conciliating as much as possible that irritable viscus the stomach, that seemed after all to be at the bottom of the evil.
It was a horrible retribution, therefore, for Walderheros to contemplate, and which, no doubt, will have a beneficial effect upon his future conduct as regards the respect due to the institutions of the Church, when, on the morning after the end of the fast, which was to be a day of great rejoicing, I intimated my determination to eat no more flesh meat for at least a week. After all my jests about the folly of fasting, telling my people that during the continuance of such terms of abstinence, I wasa good Mahomedan, and having by my example on more than one occasion, tempted him and the others of my household to indulge in food when they ought to have been observing a stricter discipline—after all this, on the day appointed for rejoicing, to see all appetite taken from me was so evidently a judgment from heaven, that I was strongly recommended to propitiate the Virgin Mary immediately by bestowing the goat, which the Negoos had sent to me at Myolones, upon a church dedicated to the Mother of Christ. So disinterested in fact, was Walderheros, that he went off to procure one of the priests upon the establishment, and who, when he arrived, had I carried out my servant’s intentions, would have walked away with the goat immediately, such was his anxiety for my restoration to the favour of heaven.
I could not be very well angry with Walderheros, and I was too ill either to laugh at, or to endeavour to convert the priest, so I dismissed him with an ahmulah, for his willingness to relieve me of the supposed ban under which I was laid. When he was gone, however, the weather having cleared up a little, I directed my servants to kill the goat, and to ask such of their Christian friends who lived in Aliu Amba to come to the party on the occasion, as I wanted it eaten up, that no temptation should exist to divert me from my resolution not to take any animal food.
The best butcher in the place, Tinta’s misselannee, who had always shown himself ready to render assistance whenever I required some extra hand, could not, of course, be omitted. Gwalior, another servant of Tinta, and a patient of mine, was also called in at the death of the doomed goat, which gallantly showed fight, surrounded, as he was, by a host of hungry enemies, who, besides seeking the satisfaction of revenge for the indiscriminate tuppings and bumpings he had given and occasioned among the party, had had their interest excited by the portions of his venison mutton, that each, in the mind’s eye, already saw hanging up in a mimosa tree that grew in my garden, and which formed the shambles generally on such occasions.
A lot of yelping boys came into the enclosure, and crowded about the butchers aiding the goat in his attempts to get away, by attempting to catch him, and of course running in the way of those who might have been able to do it. A number of women also thronged in as the stir became faster, and who stood around me as a kind of body-guard, for the leaping “diabolus” of a goat sometimes threatened even to make our heads a stepping-stone to fly over the high enclosure. A long lasso at length being thrown ignobly at his feet, the next move he made ensnared him by the leg, and the triumph of his life-hunters was complete. The rope being run around the trunk of the mimosa, the unwilling goat wasdragged, like a victim of Spanish civil war, backwards to his doom, and a prayer of peace being muttered by the clerk, Walderheros, the high priest, the misselannee, cut the throat of their prey, the invocation of the Trinity, like the Islam “ul Allah,” sanctifying the bloody business of depriving an animal of life.
It is singular to observe the pertinacity of custom, and how characteristic of descent particular habits and ceremonies become long after the separation of different nations from their original root. The Arabs, the Amhara, or the Abyssinians, and the Jews, all precede the slaughter of animals for food with some short prayer, which, differing in form, is still the same custom, and which, I think, originated at a period antecedent to their dispersion as different nations into the several countries they now occupy. It has also continued among them, even changed as these nations are in religion and social character, the Hebrew trader, the Arab nomade shepherd, and the Abyssinian agriculturist. Jew, Mahomedan, and Christian, still retain this evidence of a common origin, but which marks an ethnological era posterior, I believe, by many centuries to the more general custom of circumcision common to all these people, and to many other African nations.[10]
Such a goat as had just been killed, fed up to the high condition he was in, could not have been bought in the market for less than ten ahmulahs, two shillings and twopence. The skin alone, however, is supposed to be worth three ahmulahs; and great care is taken not to injure it with the point of the knife, when flaying the carcase. To be of any value, it must be taken off uncut, except around the neck, and in those situations necessary to enable the butchers to draw the legs out of the skin. Also, of course, where the first incision is made to commence theprocess, and which is a circular cut carried around both haunches, not many inches from and having the tail for a centre. The hide is then stripped over the thighs, and two smaller incisions being made around the middle joint of the hind legs, enable them to be drawn out. A stick is now placed to extend these extremities, and by this, for the convenience of the operators, the whole carcase is suspended from the branch of a tree, and by some easy pulls around the body, the skin is gradually withdrawn over the forelegs, which are incised around the knees to admit of their being taken out; after which, the head being removed, the whole business concludes by the skin being pulled inside out over the decollated neck. One of the parties now takes a rough stone and well rubs the inside surface, to divest it of a few fibres of the subcutaneous muscle which are inserted into the skin, and after this operation it is laid aside until the next day; the more interesting business of attending to the meat calling immediate attention.
These entire skins are afterwards made into sacks by the apertures around the neck and legs being secured by a double fold of the skin being sewed upon each other, by means of a slender but very tough thong. These small seams are rendered quite air-tight, and the larger orifice around the haunches being gathered together by the hands, the yet raw skin is distended with air, and the orifice being then tied up, the swollen bag is left in thatstate for a few days until slight putrefaction has commenced, when the application of the rough stone soon divests its surface of the hair. After this has been effected, a deal of labour, during at least one day, is required to soften the distended skin by beating it with heavy sticks, or trampling upon it for hours together, the labourer supporting himself by clinging to the bough of a tree over head, or holding on by the wall of the house. In this manner, whilst the skin is drying, it is prevented from getting stiff, and still further to secure it from this evil condition, it is frequently rubbed with small quantities of butter. When it is supposed that there is no chance of the skin becoming hard and easily broken, the orifice is opened, the air escapes, and a very soft flaccid leather bag is produced, but which, for several days after, affords an amusement to the owner, when otherwise unemployed, by well rubbing it all over with his hands.
Almost all the produce of the fields is conveyed to the market in such sacks as these—cotton, grain, and the Berberah pepper. It is even the only moneybag employed to carry home the salt returns for the different wares that have been sold. None other could have been employed by Joseph’s brethren when they loaded their asses and went down into Egypt; for none are more naturally the resources of a shepherd people, or better adapted by their form and size for the little useful animal which seems to have been as universally employed bythe Jews as by the Amhara of the present day. By a species of gratitude, sincere as it is deserved,hiyah, the word signifyingass, is used by the latter people as another designation for friend; and I well remember the mistake of a learner of that language who went into a great rage by being accosted “hiyah” by an Amhara friend.
The skins of sheep and of small goats are made into parchment by being more particularly divested of the fleshy fibres with the rough stone, and then, after the hairs have been removed by putrefaction, simply drying in the sun. For this purpose, it is stretched in a favourable situation, a few inches from the ground, by a number of small wooden pegs, which are inserted into small apertures made in the edge of the skin, and it is thus prevented from becoming corrugated during the process of drying.
In the same manner, the larger hides of cows and oxen are dried, most frequently before putrefaction has produced any effect upon the hairs, and which, of course, then remain. This is the general seat for visitors during the day, and their bed at night, unless a tanned hide (nit, as it is termed) can be procured, and which is considered softer and more suitable for a respected guest.
Thenit, or leather, is tanned by being made into a kind of trough, which contains an infusion of the bark of thekantuffaacacia. This trough is formed by a skin being loosely extended upon fourstick supports, which elevate it about a foot from the ground. The kantuffa bark, after being well pounded in a mortar, is strewed over the surface, and the hollow is then filled with cold water, and in the course of a few days a strong red infusion is made, with which the whole surface of the skin is frequently washed, and when evaporation has reduced its contents to a sloppy paste, the sticks are withdrawn, the ends folded in, and with the contained mass, the skin then undergoes the usual fatiguing process of treading, until the evidences of the nit being properly prepared are satisfactory.
The bark of thekantuffareminded me of that of the red mimosa of Adal, which produced an astringent gum, something likekino, but not, I considered, so powerful a drug. This tree, however, was pointed out to me as being that with the bark of which the Dankalli tan their affaleetahs, or small water-skins, carried by travellers; for the larger ones are prepared with the hair left on, by simply drying in the hot sun, after having been distended with air, to expose them fully to its influence. It is very probable that the celebrated Morocco leather, derives its bright red colour from the bark employed in tanning being obtained either from the kantuffa or the Adal tree, for both these trees give a very red colour to the skins that are prepared with their bark. From this I am inclined to believe, that among other articles of commerce that might be advantageously drawn from the Barbarstates in the north of Africa, a good tanning bark could be obtained in considerable quantities, and at a very reasonable rate.
Walderheros and the misselannee proceeded to carve the flayed carcase, not in any systematic manner, as I could observe, but directed chiefly in the size of the lumps of meat that were cut off by the character of the individual to whom they were severally assigned: thus, Tinta got a noble haunch forwarded to him, whilst, on the other hand, thematrabier, or axe, was called in to aid in dividing the other into three portions, for as many minor acquaintances of my servants. In the same manner, a certain number of ribs were counted for Gwalior, but the mother of Goodaloo got a great many more of the opposite side, and in this irregular manner, after a very busy scene of some two or three hours, except the portions which Walderheros had retained for himself, the whole of the goat had disappeared by degrees through the wicket of the inclosure, for the rain that was now commencing prevented the party from holding the festival in the garden, and I was a great deal too ill to have it celebrated within my own house.
FOOTNOTES:[10]A singular fact connected with this custom of making a short prayer, whilst slaughtering the victim, I gathered from a note in a recent edition of “Sale’s Koran.” It appears that by a decision of those learned in the law, which is laid down in that book, animals killed by the Jews may be partaken of by Mahomedans. A representation to the Cadi of Cairo having been made, that nearly all the butchers of that city were followers of the law of Moses, they were about to be suspended from that employment, when their Chief Rabbi proved to the satisfaction of their Moslem judges, that the Koran bids Mahomedans not to refuse food which has been sanctified to the one true God, which was always done by those who professed the faith of Abraham and the law of Moses, when killing animals for food. This circumstance, and also the disrespect shown by the Whaabbees to the tomb of the Prophet, and the temple at Mecca, demonstrate to my satisfaction that education alone is required to show to the Mahomedans, the absurdity of the false hopes with which their Prophet has surrounded the worship of the only one God, and of the inapplicability of his laws to improve or humanize mankind. I could point out, if this were a proper place, proofs without end, of the liberality and extreme toleration of learned and enlightened Mahomedans, and we ought not to attribute the bigotry of ignorance, alike fierce and cruel in Christian, Mahomedan, and Jew, to theirreligious belief, which on examination will be found to have been originally very similar amongst all these denominations, and that the greatest differences appear to be in the several codes of social laws adopted by each.
[10]A singular fact connected with this custom of making a short prayer, whilst slaughtering the victim, I gathered from a note in a recent edition of “Sale’s Koran.” It appears that by a decision of those learned in the law, which is laid down in that book, animals killed by the Jews may be partaken of by Mahomedans. A representation to the Cadi of Cairo having been made, that nearly all the butchers of that city were followers of the law of Moses, they were about to be suspended from that employment, when their Chief Rabbi proved to the satisfaction of their Moslem judges, that the Koran bids Mahomedans not to refuse food which has been sanctified to the one true God, which was always done by those who professed the faith of Abraham and the law of Moses, when killing animals for food. This circumstance, and also the disrespect shown by the Whaabbees to the tomb of the Prophet, and the temple at Mecca, demonstrate to my satisfaction that education alone is required to show to the Mahomedans, the absurdity of the false hopes with which their Prophet has surrounded the worship of the only one God, and of the inapplicability of his laws to improve or humanize mankind. I could point out, if this were a proper place, proofs without end, of the liberality and extreme toleration of learned and enlightened Mahomedans, and we ought not to attribute the bigotry of ignorance, alike fierce and cruel in Christian, Mahomedan, and Jew, to theirreligious belief, which on examination will be found to have been originally very similar amongst all these denominations, and that the greatest differences appear to be in the several codes of social laws adopted by each.