Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 4 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773Bruce, James
History
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 4 (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
Jibbel Attesh and Habharras, W. and by N. between 50 and 60
miles.
Sennaar, W. and by N. as far as we could guess about 70 miles.
Guangue River, from 14 to 16 miles due east.
Derkin, E. N. E. about 27 miles.
At Garigana, several of our caravan, with their asses and loading
of salt, left us, either afraid of entering Teawa, or because their
friends dwelt at Jibbel Isriff, where the clan of Jehaina were then
encamped, being afraid of the Arabs Daveina, who, the preceding year,
had destroyed all the crops and villages that belonged to them, or
rather reaped them for their own advantage. The whole tribe of Jehaina
is greatly their inferiors in all respects, and as by assembling upon
Jibbel Isriff, a low though very rugged ridge of hills, abounding in
water, where the pits in which they hide their grain were, and where,
too, they had deposited the principal of their effects, they had given
this pledge of mutual assistance to the inhabitants of Teawa in case
of an attack from those great destroyers the Daveina.
The Daveina being Arabs, who constantly live in tents, bear a mortal
enmity to all who inhabit villages, and, as occasion offered, had
destroyed, starved, and laid waste the greatest part of Atbara. They
had been outlawed by the government of Sennaar for having joined
Yasous II. upon the expedition against that kingdom. They had ever
since been well-received by the Abyssinians, lived independent, and
in perpetual defiance of the government of Sennaar. They had often
threatened Teawa, but had given the Shekh of Beyla an assurance of
friendship ever since Yasine had married a daughter of that Shekh.
The strength of Teawa was about 25 horse, of which about ten were
armed with coats of mail. They had about a dozen of firelocks, very
contemptible from the order in which they were kept, and still more
so from the hands that bore them. The rest of the inhabitants might
amount to twelve hundred men, naked, miserable, and despicable Arabs,
like the rest of those that live in villages, who are much inferior in
courage to the Arabs that dwell in tents: weak as its state was, it
was the seat of government, and as such a certain degree of reverence
attended it. Fidele, the Shekh of Atbara, was reputed by his own
people a man of courage; this had been doubted at Sennaar. Welled
Hassan, his father, had been employed by Nasser the son, late king of
Sennaar, in the murder of his father and sovereign Baady, which he had
perpetrated, as I have already mentioned. Such was the state of Teawa.
Its consequence was only to remain till the Daveina should resolve to
attack it, when its corn-fields being burnt and destroyed in a night
by a multitude of horsemen, the bones of its inhabitants scattered
upon the earth, would be all its remains, like those of the miserable
village of Garigana.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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