Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/502

390 upon almost every elephant and rhinoceros that I have seen, and attribute them to this cause.

the inhabitants of the sea-coast of Melinda, down to Cape Gardefan, to Saba, and the south coast of the Red Sea, are obliged to put themselves in motion, and remove to the next sand in the beginning of the rainy season, to prevent all their stock of cattle from being destroyed. This is not a partial emigration; the inhabitants of all the countries from the mountains of Abyssinia northward, to the confluence of the Nile and Astaboras, are once a-year obliged to change their abode, and seek protection in the sands of Beja; nor is there any alternative, or means of avoiding this, though a hostile band Was in their way, capable of spoiling them of half their substance; and this is now actually the case, as we shall see when we come to speak of Sennaar.

all those that have written upon these countries, the prophet Isaiah alone has given an account of this animal, and the manner of its operation. Isa. vii. ch. 18. and 19. ver. " And it shall come to pass, in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt," — "And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate vallies *, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes."

mountains that I have already spoken of, as running through the country of the Shepherds, divide the seasons

by


 * That is, they shall cut off from the cattle their usual retreat to the desert, by taking possession of those places, and meeting them there where ordinarily they never come, and which therefore re the refuge of the cattle.