Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/35

Rh this can be truly said; but certainly it never was less true than when said of Abyssinians. There is scarce a monk in any lonely monastery, (such as those in the hot and unwholesome valley of Waldubba), not a hermit of the many upon the mountains, not an old priest who has lived any time sequestered from society, that does not pretend to possess charms offensive and defensive, and several methods by which he can, at will, look into futurity. The Moors are all, to a man, persuaded of this: their arms and necks are loaded with amulets against witchcraft. Their women are believed to have all the mischievous powers of fascination; and both sexes a hundred secrets of divination. The Falasha are addicted to this in still a greater degree, if possible. It is always believed by every individual Abyssinian, that the number of hyænas the smell of carrion brings into the city of Gondar every night, are the Falasha from the neighbouring mountains, transformed by the effect and for the purposes of inchantment. Even the Galla, a barbarous and stranger nation, hostile to the Abyssinians, and differing in language and religion, still agree with them in a hearty belief of the possibility of practising witchcraft, so as to occasion sickness and death at a very great distance, to blast the harvests, poison the waters, and render people incapable of propagating their species.

, king of Hadea, had one of these conjurers, who, by his knowledge of futurity, was famous among all the Mahometans of the low country. The king of Hadea himself had gone no further than to determine to rebel; but whether he was to go up to fight with Amda Sion in Shoa, or whether greater success would attend his expecting him in Hadea, this was thought a doubt wholly