Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/522

402 they introduced in the worship of the Nile, is a further proof that they came from Canaan, where they imbibed materialism in place of the pure Sabean worship of the Shepherds, then the only religion of this part of Africa.

The fourth is a nation bordering upon the southern banks of the Nile near Damot. It calls itself Gafat, which signifies oppressed by violence,torn, expelled, or chaced away by force. If we were to follow the idea arising merely from this name, we might be led to imagine, that these were part of the tribes torn from Solomon's son and successor, Rehoboam. This, however, we cannot do consistent with the faith to be kept by a historian with his reader. The evidence of the people themselves, and the tradition of the country, deny they ever were Jews, or ever concerned with that colony, brought with Menilek and the queen of Saba, which established the Jewish hierarchy. They declare, that they are now Pagans, and ever were so; that they are partakers with their neighbours the Agows in the worship of the river Nile, the extent or particulars of which I cannot pretend to explain. — The fifth is a tribe, which, if we were to pay any attention to similarity of names, we should be apt to imagine we had found here in Africa a part of that great Gaulish nation so widely extended in Europe and Asia. A comparison of their languages, with what we know exists of the former, cannot but be very curious. — These are the Galla, the most considerable of these nations, specimens of whose language I have cited. This word, in their own language, signifies Shepherd* ; they say that for- merly


 * These people likewise call themselves Agaazi, or Agagi, they have over-run the kingdom of Congo south of the Line, and on the Atlantic Ocean, as the Galla have done that part of the kingdom of Add and Abyssinia, on the Eastern, or Indian Ocean. Purch. lib. ii. chap. 4. Sect. 8.