In personal appearance the race is not unprepossessing. The crinal hair is
hard and wiry, growing, like that of a half-caste West Indian, in stiff
ringlets which sprout in tufts from the scalp, and, attaining a moderate
length, which they rarely surpass, bang down. A few elders, savans, and
the wealthy, who can afford the luxury of a turban, shave the head. More
generally, each filament is duly picked out with the comb or a wooden
scratcher like a knitting-needle, and the mass made to resemble a child's
"pudding," an old bob-wig, a mop, a counsellor's peruke, or an old-
fashioned coachman's wig,--there are a hundred ways of dressing the head.
The Bedouins, true specimens of the "greasy African race," wear locks
dripping with rancid butter, and accuse their citizen brethren of being
more like birds than men. The colouring matter of the hair, naturally a
bluish-black, is removed by a mixture of quicklime and water, or in the
desert by a _lessive_ of ashes [15]: this makes it a dull yellowish-white,
which is converted into red permanently by henna, temporarily by ochreish
earth kneaded with water. The ridiculous Somali peruke of crimsoned
sheepskin,--almost as barbarous an article as the Welsh,--is apparently a
foreign invention: I rarely saw one in the low country, although the hill
tribes about Harar sometimes wear a black or white "scratch-wig." The head
is rather long than round, and generally of the amiable variety, it is
gracefully put on the shoulders, belongs equally to Africa and Arabia, and
would be exceedingly weak but for the beauty of the brow. As far as the
mouth, the face, with the exception of high cheek-bones, is good; the
contour of the forehead ennobles it; the eyes are large and well-formed,
and the upper features are frequently handsome and expressive. The jaw,
however, is almost invariably prognathous and African; the broad, turned-
out lips betray approximation to the Negro; and the chin projects to the
detriment of the facial angle. The beard is represented by a few tufts; it
is rare to see anything equal to even the Arab development: the long and