Ethiopia (Pipalo)

Ethiopia has four cities. The other places are all villages which are constantly at fighting with each other.

The people are heathens and not Muslim, and eat the meat and milk of camels and with baked cakes.

The land produces many camels and sheep and is rich in:

• putchuck
• liquid storax gum
• myrrh
• very thick tortoise shell which is in great demand overseas

Other products are:

• ambergris
• big elephants’ tusks
• big rhinoceros horns

There are elephants’ tusks which’ weigh over 100 catties, and rhinoceros horns of over 10.

It also has giraffes (tsula)

The country brings forth also the which measures from the ground to wings and can There is fly, (so-called) «camel-crane» its crown from but not to any great height» also (in this country) a wild resembles a camel in shape, an ox in size,

of a yellow colour. Its fore head is high up and 20 a kind of mule with brown, white and body. These animals wander about the mountain they are a variety of the camel wilds; 15 has an inch thick®. also (in this country) black stripes around

animal called isu-la (^5. and ,B|£ six to seven feet. It legs are five feet long, its hind legs only three feet. Its turned upwards. Its skin {^ who (^ ^"^ ;^ ^|j ^ j^). The inhab- are great huntsmen, hunt these animals with 25 poisoned arrows'.

26. Yemen (Wupa)

Yemen is on the sea-coast and a land road leads to the Arabs.

The king has a dark brown complexion and wears a turban and a jacket. He is a Muslim and follows the Arab life.

27. Somali (Chungli)

The Somalis go bareheaded and barefooted. They wrap themselves in cotton stuffs.

Only the ministers and king’s courtiers wear jackets.

The king lives in a brick house covered with glazed tiles. The people live in huts made of palm leaves and covered with grass-thatched roofs.

Their eat baked flour cakes, sheep’s and camel’s milk. They have many cattle, sheep and camels.

This is the only Arab country that makes frankincense.

There have many sorcerers who change themselves into birds, beasts, or aquatic animals to terrorize the ignorant people.

If some of them in trading with some foreign ship have a quarrel, the sorcerers pronounce a charm over the ship, so that it can neither go forward nor backward, and they only release the ship when it has settled the dispute.

The government has formally forbidden this practice.

Every year, countless numbers of birds of passage alight in the desert parts of this country.

When the sun rises, they suddenly disappear. The people catch them with nets and eat them. They are remarkably savoury.

They are in season till the end of spring, summer comes, they
but, as soon as disappear, to come back the following year.

When a Somali diesdies, and they are about to bury him in his coffin, his kinsfolk from near and far to condole. Each person has a sword in his hand, goes in and asks the mourners the cause of the person’s death. If he was killed by the hand of man, each one says, we revenge him on the murderer with these swords.

Should the mourners reply that he was not killed by any one, but that he came to his end by the will Heaven, they throw away their swords and break into violent wailing.

Every year there are driven on the coast a great many dead fish 200 feet long and 20 feet wide.

and eyes, from which they get a single fish). in lamps. 25 They mix this oil fish, much is It is not at sea in this it) and fish it this tortoise-shell it rafters, the it — for the liaste *.

There is a mountain which forms the boundary of Ethiopia (Pipalo). It has 4,000 li around it and is mostly uninhabited.

and ambergris. suddenly appears in lumps catties in weight, driven on the shore make also country M’hich forms the U around known whence ambergris comes; of from three to five or ten it |JL() make it make mortars with vertebrae to procured from wind. The people of the country across off thousand and from the waters (around -Qr), as three hundred odd tong (from ribs of these fish to (or island,

It is four uninhabited. Dragon’s-blood through the body. The with lime to caulk their boats, and use backbones for door leaves, and they cut a mountain feet but they cut out their brains, marrow, often as oil, The poor people use the There 30 and twenty feet in length people do not eat the flesh of these by the to divide it up, or ships run sea and fish it up.