Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/496

384 and seasons, were what necessarily employed the part of the colony established at Sofala most to the southward.

very nature of the Cushites commerce, the collecting of gold, the gathering and preparing his spices, necessarily fixed him perpetually at home; but his profit lay in the dispersing of these spices through the continent, otherwise his mines, and the trade produced by the possession of them, were to him of little avail.

was absolutely necessary to the Cushite, and Providence had provided him one in a nation which were his neighbours. These were in most respects different, as they had long hair, European features, very dusky and dark complexion, but nothing like the black-moor or negro; they lived in plains, having moveable huts or habitations, attended their numerous cattle, and wandered from the necessities and particular circumstances of their country. These people were in the Hebrew called Phut, and, in all other languages, Shepherds; they are so still, for they still exist; they subsist by the same occupation, never had another, and therefore cannot be mistaken; they are called Balous, Bagla, Belowee, Berberi, Barabra, Zilla and Habab * which all signify but one thing, namely that of Shepherd. From their place of habitation, the territory has been called Barbaria by the Greeks and Romans, from Berber, in the original signifying shepherd. The authors that speak of the Shepherds seem to know little of those of the Tbebaid, and still

less


 * It is very probable, some of these words signified different degrees among them, as we shall see in the sequel.