“Half undressed as I was, by loss of my sash, and throwing my shoes off” (as he had been directed to do in order to conform to a superstitious usage of the natives), “I ran down the hill towards the little island of green sods, which was about two hundred yards distant; the whole side of the hill was thick grown with flowers, the large bulbous roots[93] of which appearing above the surface of the ground, and their skins coming off upon treading upon them, occasioned me two very severe falls before I reached the brink of the marsh. I after this came to the altar of green turf, which was in form of an altar apparently the work of art, and I stood in rapture over the principal fountain, which rises in the middle of it.”[94] Bruce talked with “the Shum, the priest of the river, whose title was Kefla Abai, or ‘Servant of the river.’ He was a man of about seventy. The honourable charge which he possessed had been in his family, he conceived, from the beginning of the world; and as he was the happy father of eighty-four children, it appeared that his race was likely to flow as long as the Nile itself. He had a long white beard; round his body was wrapped a skin, which was fastened by a broad belt. Over this he wore a cloak, the hood of which covered his head, his legs were bare, but he wore sandals, which he threw off as soon as he approached the bog from which the Nile” (Abai) “rises—a mark of respect which Bruce and his attendants were also required to perform.” The Shum very obligingly presented his comely and sprightly daughter Irepone, aged sixteen, to the Scottish traveller as housekeeper. Bruce says that at this time the people of the place called the Spirit of the River “The Everlasting God, Light of the World, Eye of the World, God of Peace, Saviour and Father of the Universe.” He asked the Shum if he had ever seen the Spirit, and the old man answered without hesitation, “Yes, very frequently.”[95] The Abai mentioned above is the main tributary of the Blue Nile, but a glance at the map will show that Lake Tsana receives many other rivers, and the surrounding mountains, of course, add the volume of innumerable torrents and small streams to its waters in the rainy season. For practical purposes the source of the Blue Nile is the lake fed by all the affluents which collectively determine the amount of the discharge into the river.