No one of these superiors can be elected until time has conferred on him forty years of experience. However, in their savage calculation, the killing of an enemy is considered as equivalent to a year's experience; and, therefore, any noble becomes eligible for supreme command whenever, between years of age and enemies slain, he shall have made up the number of forty. The Galla are almost all mounted on horses, which, from constant practice, they of course manage with great dexterity. In passing rivers they dismount, and grasp the tails of their horses, which in this way tow them across. The amount of assistance they thus receive does not exceed a few ounces; whereas, by remaining mounted, they would subject animals badly adapted for swimming, and scarcely able to support themselves, to the extra burden of the whole of that part of their body which is above the water. Their arms consist of a shield made of bull's hide, and a long lance sharpened at the end, and then hardened by fire.
The attack of these wild people is very much dreaded by the Abyssinians; for, besides their cruelty, they utter, in charging, such a shrill, barbarous, frantic howl, that the Abyssinian horses are said to tremble with fear, in which their riders very readily participate.
When they march into the country of an enemy, they carry with them small balls about as big as pigeon's eggs, composed of a particular sort of bean, pulverized and mixed with butter; and it is affirmed that, by eating one of these boluses, a Galla soldier can, in health and spirits, endure a whole day's fatigue.
Both sexes are rather below the middle size, but they are remarkably light and agile. The women are generally very prolific; and the sun which shines on the infant's birth seldom sets before the mother has resumed her occupations: such is the healthy state of savage life! The dress, or, rather, undress of some of the tribes of the Galla, present a costume which, although curious, has not yet reached our fashionable world. Round their persons they wind as ornaments the entrails of oxen, which also hang in festoons or necklaces from their throats. Their bodies are anointed with grease, poured so copiously on their heads that it melts, and, like our pomatum, is continually dropping on their shoulders, over which is thrown a piece of goatskin. Like the Abyssinians, they eat raw meat; but Pierce, the English sailor, describes a Galla who drank blood warm from the neck of the cow, and still, from an odd refinement, refused to eat the flesh of the animal until it had been broiled.