as supposed, "produce a friendly
feeling on the part of Somali," and facilitate Burton's egress from
Harar, should he ever, as was by no means certain, enter alive that
dangerous and avoided city. Sir James Outram, then Political Resident at
Aden, called the expedition a tempting of Providence, and tried hard to
stop it, but in vain. Burton left Aden for Zeila on October 29th,
taking with him a managing man called "The Hammal," a long, lean Aden
policeman, nicknamed "Long Gulad" and a suave but rascally Moslem priest
dubbed "The End of Time." [151] They landed on October 31st, and found
Zeila a town of white-washed houses and minaretted mosques, surrounded
by a low brown wall with round towers. Burton, who called himself
a Moslem merchant, spent three weeks buying camels and mules and
interviewing guides, while he kept up his reputation for piety with the
customary devotions. According to his wont, he carefully studied the
customs of the people. "One of the peculiar charms," he says, of the
Somali girls, is "a soft, low and plaintive voice," and he notices
that "in muscular strength and endurance the women of the Somal are far
superior to their lords." The country teems with poets, who praise the
persons of the belles very much in the style of Canticles, declaring
prettily, for example, that their legs are as straight as the "Libi
Tree," and that their hips swell out "like boiled rice." The marriage
ceremonies, he tells us, are conducted with feasting, music and
flogging. On first entering the nuptial hut the bridegroom draws forth
his horsewhip and inflicts chastisement upon his bride, with the view
of taming any lurking propensity to shrewishness. As it is no uncommon
event to take four wives at once, this horsewhipping is naturally
rather exhausting for the husband. Burton considered polygamy to be
indispensable in countries like Somaliland, "where children are the
principal wealth;" but he saw less necessity for it "among highly
civilised races where the sexes are nearly equal, and where reproduction
becomes a minor duty." However, he would have been glad to see polygamy
allowed even in England, "if only to get rid of all the old maids,"
a class that he regarded with unbounded pity. He longed "to see these
poor, cankered, angular ladies transformed into cheerful, amiable wives
with something really to live for." "Man," it was a favourite saying
with him, "is by nature polygamic, whereas woman, as a rule, is
monogamic