Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/44

 Some of the Monjou said, that they had been three months from home, others two, and another thought it might be accomplished in one and a half, allowing for days of rest. Now if we take the period even of two months, and reckon the progress made at fifteen miles per day, it gives on a rough calculation nine hundred miles only, which falls very short of the centre of the continent; moreover, I conceive the Monjou country to be situated in a north-easterly direction from Mosambique. They told me themselves that they were acquainted with other traders called Eveezi and Maravi, who had travelled far enough inland to see large waters, white people, (this must be taken comparatively) and horses. It is singular that the Monjou entertain a peculiar dread of the latter, running away at the appraoach of one of them, as from a wild beast. The Monjou are negroes of the ugliest description, having high cheek bones, thick lips, small knots of woolly hair, like pepper-corns on their heads, and skins of a deep shining black. Their arms consist of bows and arrows, and very short spears with iron shafts. Their bows are of the simplest construction, being plain, strong, and formed of one stick; their arrows long, barbed and poisoned. Each man, besides his bow and quiver, caries a small apparatus for lighting a fire, which consists simply of two pieces of a particular kind of dark-coloured wood, one of which is flat, and the other rounded like a pencil. The latter held erect on the centre of the former is rubbed briskly between the palms of the hands till it excite a flame, which it does not require more than a minute to effect. A mode of producing fire similar to this is mentioned by Mr. Bruce, to have been practised by a tribe of Nuba, which he met with in the neighbourhood of Sennaar (Vol. vi. p. 345.) His whole description of the tribe accords so nearly with the character of the Monjou, that, as they are said to come from the mountains Dyre and Tegla, it may not be impossible that some remote connection once subsisted between them. To amuse us in the evening the slaves were assembled, and, according to the usual practice for keeping them in health, permitted to dance. The men first