Procopius[240] mentions that two pillars were standing in his time on the coast of Mauritania, opposite to Gibraltar, upon which were inscriptions in the Phœnician tongue: “We are Canaanites, flying from the face of Joshua, the son of Nun, the _robber_:” A character they naturally gave him from the ferocity and violence of his manners. Now, if what these inscriptions contain is true, it is much more credible, that the different nations, emigrating at that time, should seek their safety near hand among their friends, rather than go to an immense distance to Mauritania, to risk a precarious reception among strangers, and perhaps that country not yet inhabited. Upon viewing the several countries in which these nations have their settlements, it seems evident they were made by mutual consent, and in peace; they are not separated from each other by chains of mountains, or large and rapid rivers, but generally by small brooks, dry the greatest part of the year; by hillocks, or small mounds of earth, or imaginary lines traced to the top of some mountain at a distance; these boundaries have never been disputed or altered, but remain upon the old tradition to this day. These have all different languages, as we see from scripture all the petty states of Palestine had, but they have no letters, or written character, but the Geez, the character of the Cushite shepherd by whom they were first invented and used, as we shall see hereafter. I may add in further proof of their origin, that the curse[241] of Canaan seems to have followed them, they have obtained no principality, but served the kings of the Agaazi or Shepherds, have been hewers of wood and drawers of water, and so they still continue. [Illustration: Geez] [Illustration: Amhara] [Illustration: Falasha] [Illustration: Damot Agow] [Illustration: Tcheratz Agow] [Illustration: Gafat] [Illustration: Galla] The first and most considerable of these nations settled in a province called _Amhara_; it was, at first coming, as little known as the others; but, upon a revolution in the country, the king fled to that province, and there the court staid many years, so that the Geez, or language of the Shepherds, was dropt, and retained only in writing, and as a dead language; the sacred scriptures being in that language only, saved the Geez from going totally into disuse. The second were the Agows of Damot, one of the southern provinces of Abyssinia, where they are settled immediately upon the sources of the Nile. The third are the Agows of Lasta, or Tcheratz Agow, from Tchera, their principal habitation; theirs too is a separate language; they are Troglodytes that live in caverns, and seem to pay nearly the same worship to the Siris, or Tacazzè, that those of Damot pay to the Nile.