Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/578

562 and a new one is made in its place, till the same circumstance again happens; and one of these bows, that which its master liked best, is buried with him in the hopes of its rising again materially with his body, when he shall be endowed with a greater degree of strength, without fear of death, or being subjected to pain, with a capacity to enjoy in excess every human pleasure. There is nothing, however, spiritual in this resurrection, nor what concerns the soul, but it is wholly corporeal and material; although some writers have plumed themselves upon their fancied discovery of what they call the savages belief of the immortality of the soul.

I take leave of this subject, I must again explain, from what I have already said, a difficult passage in classical history. Herodotus says, that, in the country we have been just now describing, there was a nation called Macrobii, which was certainly not the real name of the Shangalla, but one the Greeks had given them, from a supposed circumstance of their being remarkable long livers, as that name imports. These were the western Shangalla, situated below Guba and Nuba, the gold country, on both sides of the Nile north of Fazuclo.

Guba and the Nuba, and various black nations that inhabits the foot of that large chain of mountains called Dyre and Tegla, are those in whole countries the finest gold is found, which is washed from the mountains in the time of