Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 3 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773Bruce, James
History
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 3 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773
Bruce, James
Egypt -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- History; Natural history -- Ethiopia; Nile River
Ten minutes before nine o’clock we pitched our tent on a small plain
called Dippebaha, on the top of the mountain, above a hundred yards
from a spring, which scarcely was abundant enough to supply us with
water, in quality as indifferent as it was scanty. The plain bore
strong marks of the excessive heat of the sun, being full of cracks and
chasms, and the grass burnt to powder. There are three small villages
so near each other that they may be said to compose one. Near them is
the church of St George, on the top of a small hill to the eastward,
surrounded with large trees.
Since passing the Tacazzé we had been in a very wild country, left so,
for what I know, by nature, at least now lately rendered more so by
being the theatre of civil war. The whole was one wilderness without
inhabitants, unless at Addergey. The plain of Dippebaha had nothing of
this appearance; it was full of grass, and interspersed with flowering
shrubs, jessamin, and roses, several kinds of which were beautiful, but
only one fragrant. The air was very fresh and pleasant; and a great
number of people, passing to and fro, animated the scene.
We met this day several monks and nuns of Waldubba, I should say
_pairs_, for they were two and two together. They said they had been at
the market of Dobarké on the side of Lamalmon, just above Dippebaha.
Both men and women, but especially the latter, had large burdens of
provisions on their shoulders, bought that day, as they said, at
Dobarkè, which shewed me they did not wholly depend upon the herbs of
Waldubba for their support. The women were stout and young, and did
not seem, by their complexion, to have been long in the mortifications
of Waldubba. I rather thought that they had the appearance of healthy
mountaineers, and were, in all probability, part of the provisions
bought for the convent; and, by the sample, one would think the monks
had the first choice of the market, which was but fit, and is a custom
observed likewise in Catholic countries. The men seemed very miserable,
and ill-clothed, but had a great air of ferocity and pride in their
faces. They are distinguished only from the laity by a yellow cowl, or
cap, on their head. The cloth they wear round them is likewise yellow,
but in winter they wear skins dyed of the same colour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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