Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/121

Rh, or caravans; Dengui, a stone, or rock; Angueah, a tree of that name; Anzo, a crocodile; and, at the same time, all these are names of Abyssinian rivers.

was at Benin, another Negro country, that the king again received a confirmation of the existence of a Christian prince, who was said to inhabit the heart of Africa to the south-east of this state. The people of Benin reported him to be a prince exceedingly powerful; that his name was Ogané, and his kingdom about 250 leagues to the eastward. They added, that the kings of Benin received from him a brass cross and a staff as their investiture. It should seem that this Ogané is but a corruption of Jan, or Janhoi, which title the eastern Christians had given to the king of Abyssinia. But it is very difficult to account for the knowledge of Abyssinia in the kingdom of Benin, not only on account of the distance, but likewise, because several of the most savage nations of the world, the Galla and Shangalla, occupy the intervening space.

court of Abyssinia, as we shall see afterwards, did, indeed, then reside in Shoa, the south-east extremity of the kingdom, and, by its power and influence, probably might have pushed its dominion through these barbarians, down to the neighbourhood of Benin on the western ocean. But all this I must confess to be a simple conjecture of mine, of which, in the country itself, I never found the smallest confirmation.

(prince of Shoa) being at court, on a visit to the king at Gondar, in the years 1770 and 1771, and the strictest friendship subsisting between us, every endeavour