Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/579

Rh violent rains, and lodged in holes, and roots of trees and grass, by the torrents, and there picked up by the natives; it is called Tibbar, or, corruptly, gold-dust. The greatest part finds its way to Sennaar by the different merchants. Pagan and Mahometan, from Fazuclo and Sudan. The Agows and Gibbertis also bring a small quantity of it to Gondar, mostly debased by alloy; but there is no gold in Abyssinia, nor even in Nubia, west of Tchelga, among the Shangalla themselves.

marched from Egypt expressly with a view of conquering the gold country, and sent messengers before him to the king, or chief of it, requiring his immediate submission. I omit romantic and fabulous circumstances; but the answer of the king of Macrobii to Cambyses was, Take this bow, and till you can bring me a man that can bend it, you are not to talk to us of submission. The bow was accordingly carried back with the defiance, but none of the Persian army could bend it. Yet it was their own weapon with which they practised from their infancy; and we are not to think, had it been possible to bend this bow, but that some of their numerous archers would have done it, for there is no such disproportion in the strength of men. But it was a bow which had lost its elastic force from the circumstance above mentioned, and had been long given up as impossible to be bent by the Macrobii themselves, and was now taken down from the tree where it had probably some time hung, and grown so much the less flexible, and intended to be buried, as these bows are, in the grave with their master, who is to use it, after his resurrection, in another world, where he is to be endowed with strength