To return, however, to Karissa and the Galla people, their ancient history is no less interesting, nor will it prove less important when we possess fuller information respecting the religion they profess. It is such a field for conjecture that I decline to enter upon the subject, except to note that they worship a limited number of principal deities, but recognising also a numerous host of demigods, whose influence upon man and his affairs are exerted most malevolently, and who can only be propitiated by sacrifices and entreaties. _Waak_, however, appears to be the supreme god who made the world and every inferior deity. Waak has no visible representative, but is everywhere, and exists in everything. He is the limit of all knowledge; for “_Waak segallo_” (God knows) invariably expresses ignorance of a fact, and the best definition of him I could get from the most informed Galla I ever conversed with upon the subject was, that he was the “unknown God.” Waak is, I think, the only deity proper to the Galla people, although long intercourse with the Gongas has made them acquainted with a mythology which would show, had I only space to enter into the subject, a most extraordinary connexion with that of the ancient Egyptians. They have also derived some knowledge of one or two of the principal saints _worshipped_ by the Greek Church, and according to their situation with respect to the Christians of Abyssinia or the Pagans of Zingero, so is their religion modified by the errors or absurdities of their neighbours, and which is another reason why I suspect that originally the unknown god Waak, was alone the object of pure Galla worship. It is singular that very ancient travellers, Cosmas Indicopleustes, for example, surround the then known world by a _terra incognita_ which is inscribed as Wak-wak; whilst Edrisi, the old Arabian geographer, makes this the name also by which he describes the present Galla countries, and which d’Lisle, by an interesting Gascon provincialism, as it aids me in my interpretation, makes this word Bake-bake, and places it to the south of Abyssinia, I have been led therefore to believe that the worship of the most ancient god of India, which European nations in the classic ages adopted under the name of Bacchus, was supposed to characterize the inhabitants of the regions that were so designated, and hence the reason of describing unknown countries as lands of _Wak-wak_. If so, and _Waak_ can be by future travellers identified by other particulars with the Bacchus of the ancients, it will be a most important corroboration of the origin of the Galla with an Asiatic people who invaded Africa at a very early period. It is not one volume that would exhaust this subject; nor is it one journey that can give a traveller a just right to impose his opinions upon his readers. The dissipation of a deal of obscurity respecting the earlier history of man, and, in fact, of his original nature, and of his primeval