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
An antelope, surprised by the torrent, and I believe hurt by it, was
forced over into the peninsula where we were, seemingly in great
distress. As soon as my companions saw there was no further danger from
the river, they surrounded this innocent comrade in misfortune, and put
him to death with very little trouble to themselves. The acquisition
was not great; it was lean, had a musky taste, and was worse meat than
the goat we had bought from the Shiho. The torrent, though now very
sensibly diminished, still preserved a current till next morning.
Between Hamhammou and Shillokeeb we first saw the dung of elephants,
full of pretty thick pieces of indigested branches. We likewise, in
many places, saw the tracks thro’ which they had passed; some trees
were thrown down from the roots, some broken in the middle, and
branches half-eaten strewed on the ground.
Hamhammou is a mountain of black stones, almost calcined by the
violent heat of the sun. This is the boundary of the district; Samhar,
inhabited by the Shiho from Hamhammou to Taranta, is called Hadassa; it
belongs to the Hazorta.
This nation, though not so numerous as the Shiho, are yet their
neighbours, live in constant defiance of the Naybe, and are of a colour
much resembling new copper; but are inferior to the Shiho in size,
though very agile. All their substance is in cattle; yet they kill none
of them, but live entirely upon milk. They, too, want also an original
word for bread in their language, for the same reason, I suppose, as
the Shiho. They have been generally successful against the Naybe, and
live either in caves, or in cabannes, like cages, just large enough to
hold two persons, and covered with an ox’s hide. Some of the better
sort of women have copper bracelets upon their arms, beads in their
hair, and a tanned hide wrapt about their shoulders.
The nights are cold here--even in summer, and do not allow the
inhabitants to go naked as upon the rest of the coast; however, the
children of the Shiho, whom we met first, were all naked.
The 18th, at half past five in the morning, we left our station on
the side of the green hill at Hamhammou: for some time our road lay
through a plain so thick set with acacia-trees that our hands and faces
were all torn and bloody with the strokes of their thorny branches. We
then resumed our ancient road in the bed of the torrent, now nearly
dry, over stones which the rain of the preceding night had made very
slippery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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