The worship of the Gongas, which has continued to the present time, is the adoration of the river that flows through their country, as being part of the sacred Nile. The Abi, or Nile of Bruce, is worshipped by the modern Adjows, whilst the Gibbee, or Abiah, is the object of a similar devotion among the Pagan Gongas of Zingero, and of Kuffah. We are enabled from our knowledge of the former river to presume, that its singular course determined in the first instance, a reverence, which, when the increasing encroachments of foreign foes had made this river a convenient defence to the pressed Gongas, was soon elevated to the character of a protecting deity. That its singular course should have thus attracted attention arises, I believe, from the circumstance of its encircling an extensive province, and going around it, as the sun was supposed to revolve around the earth. The zodiac, or track of the sun through the heavens, was typified by the form of a serpent, and this I have always understood to have been the source of that serpent-worship which characterized so many of the earlier and more civilized nations of the earth. In no country, was this idolatry more prevalent than upon the plateau of Abyssinia, and _Arwè_, the great serpent, it will be recollected figures considerably in the earlier history of the Amhara, who appear to have in some measure adopted the religion of the Gongas, when they took possession of the countries upon the left hand of their _father_, their _king_, their _sun_, by all of which names, it is usual, even at the present day, to designate the river Abi. The great serpents of classic mythological history, the Hydra, the Python, and others unnamed, destroyed by Apollo and Hercules, all allude evidently to the worship of the serpent in Africa being superseded by that of the sun. The relation of these gods to that luminary is generally admitted, and _Hiero Calla_, fortunately for my derivation of the word _Galla_, the sun of the _blacks_, is the interpretative analysis of the name of Hercules. In the modern Dankalli language no other word is used for sun but _Hiero_, and it enters into the name of several names of places; Hyhilloo, the scene of the celebrated battle between the forces of Lohitu and the Muditu, is translated by the Dankalli to mean the hill of the sun. The head of a sculptured Hercules is invariably portraited with the frizzly hair of the Dankalli, whilst antiquarian ethnologists will be interested to observe the persistance of national character preserved in the flowing locks and ample beard usually given to Jupiter, his European counterpart.