An animal collector in Abyssinia

January
1927

Harer itself is the centre of the coffee market. Abyssinia is no doubt the native land of the coffee tree (Coffea arabica). Enormous groves of coffee are concentrated in the southern parts of the country. The ripe fruits are zealously collected by the inhabitants and brought to Harer. Considerable plantations of a kind of coffee with very large leaves and very large fruits are concentrated around Harer. The wild coffee surpasses the cultivated one and differs from it with respect to the content of caffeine.

Mine was not the only expedition. The famous Hagenbeck, owner of the well-known zoological garden in Hamburg, ^[1] had sent a whole shipload of expeditions to capture animals in East Africa for his zoological garden and for sale in Europe. Harer was chosen as the base for the expedition of the Hamburg garden. Thousands of birds, many species of monkey and varieties of antelopes were collected by the hunters from Hamburg. The collection of monkeys was especially fine. Hundreds of baboons and monk’s hood marmosets ^[2] in addition to wild geese of different colours, red and green, ^[3] were triumphantly herded into large cages, waiting to be loaded aboard a steamer.

Various groups of people make contact with each other in the district of Harer. Somalians occupy mainly the lowland savannah. The dominance of the Amharan population, the real Abyssinians, starts really at Harer. The Somalians have some Mongolian traits, especially noticeable in the form of slanting eyes, high and wide cheekbones and coarse hair. The Amharans are as a rule of an Aryan or Semitic type with curly hair and dark skin colour. They walk around in white pants, are usually barefoot and wrap themselves in white sheets, which serve both as garments and as covers at night. The Somalians differ sharply from the Amharans in both language and religion. They are as a rule Moslems; the Amharans confess to a peculiar Christian creed [the Coptic], close to the Greek Orthodox one.

1. This must have been Carl Hagenbeck’s son; Hagenbeck died in 1913. [↩]
2. Very strange. Literally, these could be capuchin marmosets, except that marmosets are endemic to the New World. Maybe they were black and white colobus monkeys? Hard to know where the error arose. [↩]
3. ??? [↩]

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