On the north, a black, woolly-headed nation, called the Shangalla, already often mentioned, bounds Abyssinia, and serves like a string to the bow made by these nations of Galla. Who they are we know perfectly, being the Cushite Troglodytes of Sofala, Saba, Axum and Meroë; shut up, as I have already mentioned, in those caves, the first habitations of their more polished ancestors. Neither do these circumcise, though they immediately bordered upon Egypt, while the Cushite, adjoining to the peninsula of Africa certainly did. As then so many nations contiguous to Egypt never received circumcision from it, it seems an invincible argument, that this was no endemial rite or custom among the Egyptians, and I have before observed, that it was of no use to this nation, as the reasons mentioned by Philo, and the rest, of cleanliness and climate, are absolute dreams, and now, exploded; and that they are so is plain, because, otherwise, the nations more to the southward would have adopted it, as they have universally done another custom, which I shall presently speak of. Circumcision, then, having no natural cause or advantage, being in itself repugnant to man’s nature, and extremely painful, if not dangerous, it could never originate in man’s mind wantonly and out of free-will. It might have done so indeed from imitation, but with Abraham it had a cause, as God was to make his private family in a few years numerous, like the sands of the sea. This mark, which separated them from all the world, was an easy way to shew whether the promise was fulfilled or not. They were going to take possession of a land where circumcision was not known, and this shewed them their enemy distinct from their own people. And it would be the grossest absurdity to send Samson to bring, as tokens of the slain, so many foreskins or prepuces of the Philistines, if, as Herodotus says, the Philistines had cut off their prepuces a thousand years before. I must here take notice that this custom, filthy and barbarous as it is, has been adopted by the Abyssinians of Tigrè, who have always been circumcised, from a knowledge that the nations about them were not circumcised at all. It is true they do not content themselves with the foreskin, and I doubt very much if this was not the case with the Jews likewise. On the contrary, in place of the foreskin they cut the whole away, scrotum and all, and bring this to their superiors, as a token they have killed an enemy.