Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/242

 young in court, when their fathers fled, after the murder of the late king their master, were better Christians and better soldiers than any Abyssinians we had.

is not a matter of small curiosity to know what is their food, that is so easy of carriage as to enable them to traverse immense deserts, that they may, without warning, fall upon the towns and villages in the cultivated country of Abyssinia. This is nothing but coffee roasted, till it can be pulverised, and then mixed with butter to a consistency that will suffer it to be rolled up in balls, and put in a leather bag. A ball of this composition, between the circumference of a shilling and half-a-crown, about the size of a billiard-ball, keeps them, they say, in strength and spirits during a whole day's fatigue, better than a loaf of bread, or a meal of meat. Its name in Arabia and Abyssinia is Buri, but I apprehend its true name is Caffe, from Caffa the south province of Narea, whence it is first said to have come; it is, white in the bean. The coffee-tree is the wood of the country, produced spontaneously everywhere in great abundance, from Caffa to the banks of the Nile.

much for this remarkable nation, whose language is perfectly different from any in Abyssinia, and is the same throughout all the tribes, with very little variation of dialect. This is a nation that has conquered some of the finest provinces of Abyssinia, and of whose inroads we shall hereafter have occasion to speak continually; and it is very difficult to fay how far they might not have accomplished the conquest of the whole, had not providence interposed in a manner little expected, but more efficacious than a thousand armies, and all the inventions of man.