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HOME > Classical Novels > The Highlands of Ethiopia > Volume One—Chapter Forty Two.
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Volume One—Chapter Forty Two.
The Weekly Market.

Surrounded by the myrmidons who collect the royal dues, Ayto Kálama Work was every Friday morning to be seen seated beneath the scanty shelter of an ancient acacia, which throws its withered arms over the centre of the market-place. On this day alone are purchases to be made, and the inhabitants of the adjacent villages pouring from all quarters to lay in their weekly supplies, a scene of unusual bustle and confusion animates this otherwise most quiet and uninteresting location.

Shortly after daybreak, wares of every description are displayed under the canopy of heaven, and crowds of both sexes flocking to the stall of the vendor, the din of human voices is presently at its height. Honey, cotton, grain, and other articles of consumption, the produce of the estate of the Amhára farmer, are exposed for sale or barter. The Dankáli merchant exhibits his gay assortment of beads, metals, coloured thread, and glass ware. The wild Galla squats beside the produce of his flocks, and the Moslem trader from the interior displays ostrich feathers, or some other article of curiosity from the distant tribe. Bales of cotton cloth, and bags of coffee from Cáffa and Enárea, are strewed in every direction. Horses and mules in numbers are shown off among the crowd to increase the turmoil; nor is even the wandering Hebrew wanting to complete the scene of traffic, haggling, and barter, which continues, without intermission, until a late hour in the afternoon, when the village relapses again into its wonted six days of quiet and repose.

Swathed and folded in dirty cotton cloth, behold in the cultivator of the soil the original of the Egyptian mummy. Greasy and offensive in person and in habits, he moves cringingly to pay his tax to the governor of the fair, who sits in conscious dignity upon a stone; and prostrating himself with shoulders bared among the mud, the serf hands forth the measure of grain from the leathern scrip, or scoops out the prescribed meed of butter from the jar—the vassal token of permission enjoyed to earn his bread by the unceasing hand of labour. No spark of intelligence illumines his dull features; not a trace of independence can be discovered in his slouching gait; and the cumbrous robe with which he is invested would indeed seem far better adapted for the quiet resting-place in the tomb, than for the bustling avocations of stirring life.

Here swaggers a valiant gun-man of the king’s matchlock guard. The jealousy of the monarch forbids the removal of the primitive weapon from the royal presence, but the white herkoom feather floats in all the pride of blood over clotted tufts moist with the beloved grease; and the dark scowl and the lowering brow betoken the reckless cruelty which stains the character of the band. But the man is a poor slave, and his degraded state has entirely destroyed the few traits of humanity which might have smiled upon his nativity.

The surly Ada?el brushes past in insolent indifference to examine the female slaves in the wicker hut of the rover from the south. His murderous creese ensures from the bystanders a high respect, which frequent disasters in the low country has riveted on the heart of the Amhára; and men turn in wonder to gaze upon the mortal who entertaineth not a slavish adoration for the great monarch of Shoa.

Squatted beside his foreign wares and glittering beads, see the wily huckster of Hurrur, with his turban and blue-checked kilt. His dealings, it is true, are of no very extensive amount, and salt, not silver, is the medium of exchange; but there is still room for the exercise of his knavery. The countenance both of buyer and seller exhibits an anxious and business-like expression, and the same noise and confusion prevails regarding an extra twopence-halfpenny, as if the transaction involved a shower of golden guineas.

The Christian women flit through the busy fair with eggs and poultry, and other produce of the farm. Their ill-favoured features are not improved either by the eradication of the eyebrow, or by the bare shaven crown dripping with rancid butter; and the dirty persons of all are invariably shrouded in yet dirtier habiliments, from the tall masculine damsel of sixteen summers, to the decrepit and wrinkled hag who in cracked notes proclaims ever and anon, “amole alliche bir,” “salt to sell for silver.”

The free and stately mien of the oriental female, and the light graceful garment of the east, are alike wanting. The heavy load is tied as upon the back of the pack-horse, and the bent and broken figure of the Amhára dame is debarred by the severe law of the despot from the decoration of finery or costly ornament. A huge bee-hive-shaped wig, elaborately curled and frosted, and massive pewter buttons thrust through the lobe of the ear, constitute her only pride; and nature, alas! has too often withheld even the smallest portion of those feminine attractions which in other climes form the charm of her sex.

The inhabitants of Argóbba or Efát, under the control of the sinister eye of the Wulásma, are followers of the false Prophet, and speak a distinct language. Little difference, however, is observable in the external appearance of the males from that of the Amhára subject of the empire; and it is not until the removal of the muffling cloth that the rosary of bright-spotted beads is displayed in lieu of the dark blue emblem of Christianity worn throughout Ethiopia. The women, on the other hand, are at once recognisable, no less by their Arab gypsy features, than by their long braided tresses streaming ever the shoulder, the ample smock of red cloth, dyed purple with accumulated lard, and the nunlike hood of the same material, buttoned close under the chin.

Fairer, more slender, and better favoured than their coarse Christian sisters of the more alpine regions, they are still scarcely less greasy and unattractive. Loaded with amulets and beads, their belief is proclaimed by the oft-repeated exclamation, “Hamdu-lillah!” “Praise be unto Allah!”—............
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