Havildar or sergeant in the Aden police, and was entertained for me by
Lieut. Dansey, an officer who unfortunately was not "confirmed" in a
political appointment at Aden. The Hammal is a bull-necked, round-headed
fellow of lymphatic temperament, with a lamp-black skin, regular features,
and a pulpy figure,--two rarities amongst his countrymen, who compare him
to a Banyan. An orphan in early youth, and becoming, to use his own
phrase, sick of milk, he ran away from his tribe, the Habr Gerhajis, and
engaged himself as a coaltrimmer with the slaves on board an Indian war-
steamer. After rising in rank to the command of the crew, he became
servant and interpreter to travellers, visited distant lands--Egypt and
Calcutta--and finally settled as a Feringhee policeman. He cannot read or
write, but he has all the knowledge to be acquired by fifteen or twenty
years, hard "knocking about:" he can make a long speech, and, although he
never prays, a longer prayer; he is an excellent mimic, and delights his
auditors by imitations and descriptions of Indian ceremony, Egyptian
dancing, Arab vehemence, Persian abuse, European vivacity, and Turkish
insolence. With prodigious inventiveness, and a habit of perpetual
intrigue, acquired in his travels, he might be called a "knowing" man, but
for the truly Somali weakness of showing in his countenance all that
passes through his mind. This people can hide nothing: the blank eye, the
contracting brow, the opening nostril and the tremulous lip, betray,
despite themselves, their innermost thoughts.

The second servant, whom I bring before you is Guled, another policeman at
Aden. He is a youth of good family, belonging to the Ismail Arrah, the
royal clan of the great Habr Gerhajis tribe. His father was a man of
property, and his brethren near Berberah, are wealthy Bedouins: yet he ran
away from his native country when seven or eight years old, and became a
servant in the house of a butter merchant at Mocha. Thence he went to
Aden, where he began with private service, and ended his career in the