The Life and Adventures of Bruce, the African TravellerHead, Francis Bond, Sir
History
The Life and Adventures of Bruce, the African Traveller
Head, Francis Bond, Sir
Bruce, James, 1730-1794; Ethiopia -- Description and travel
The little kingdom of Abyssinia, thus possessing within itself districts
of such various climates, is inhabited by people of races and
complexions as different as the soil and altitudes which they
respectively occupy. In Abyssinia, royalty sits perched on the tops of
the highest mountains; the great bulk of the community enjoy themselves
on the sides of the hills, or in the wide, healthy plains; and in the
hot, feverish, putrid atmosphere of the low woods, we meet that
wretched, unfortunate being, the black, woolly-headed negro, who there,
as in other regions of the world, finds his fellow-creature, pagan as
well as Christian, a more cruel, cunning, relentless enemy than the
savage beasts of the field.
THE SHANGALLA.
The Shangalla of Abyssinia, the ancient Cushites or Ethiopians, occupy a
low, flat, sultry country, with a dark, rich soil, on an average about
forty miles broad. They are pagans, black, naked, and inveterate enemies
of the Abyssinian government. During the first half of the year, the
Shangalla live under the friendly shade of their own trees, the lower
branches of which they bend downward and fix into the ground, thus
forming a verdant tent, which they cover on the outside with the skins
of animals. For food and amusement they hunt the elephant, rhinoceros,
hippopotamus, and those other large animals which either inhabit their
woody territory, or are found wallowing in the sultry pools which it
encloses; and hence it follows, that where the forest is the broadest,
the jungle the thickest, and the stagnant ponds the largest, there the
tribes of the Shangalla are the most numerous and formidable. In those
parts of the country where the large animals do not abound, the
Shangalla subsists on buffaloes, deer, boars, lions, and even serpents:
in places where there is little wood, whole tribes of them eat the
crocodile, fish, locusts, lizards, and ostriches; and thus they are
still the rhizophagi, elephantophagi, acridophagi, struthiophagi,
agriophagi, &c., which Ptolemy, in his account of the Ethiopians, has so
accurately described.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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