It was brown bread with a
vengeance. On the mountain we might buy eggs and fowls; but as the
first were generally bad when sold to us, we soon got disgusted
with them; and though we put up with the fowls as a change of diet,
their toughness and leanness would have made them rejected everywhere
else. Being the rainy reason, we had great difficulty in purchasing
a little honey. Wild coffee was now and then obtainable; but it
made, in the absence of sugar, and with or without smoky milk, such
a bitter, nauseous compound, that, after a while, I and others
preferred doing without it. Such was then the amount of "luxuries"
we had to depend on during our long captivity,--coarse, vitreous-looking,
badly-baked bread; the ever-returning dish of skinny, tough mutton,
the veteran cock, smoked butter, and bitter coffee. Tea, sugar,
wine, fish, vegetables, &c., were not, either for love or money,
to be obtained anywhere. The coarseness and uniformity of our food,
however, was as nothing compared with our dread of being starved
to death; for even the few and inferior articles I have mentioned
would fail us when our money was expended.
I was very badly off for clothes. Before leaving Debra Tabor, I was
told to leave everything behind in the charge of the Gaffat people,
and only take with me the few things I required for the road.
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