Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/374

350 is an usage frequent, and still retained among the Jews, though positively prohibited by the law: "Thou shalt not cut thy face for the sake of, or on account of the dead . As soon as a near relation dies in Abyssinia, a brother or parent, cousin german or lover, every woman in that relation, with the nail of her little finger, which she leaves long on purpose, cuts the skin of both her temples, about the size of a sixpence; and therefore you see either a wound or a scar in every fair face in Abyssinia; and in the dry season, when the camp is out, from the loss of friends they seldom have liberty to heal till peace and the army return with the rains.

Abyssinians, like the ancient Egyptians, their first colony, in computing their time, have continued the use of the solar year. Diodorus Siculus says, "They do not reckon their time by the moon, but according to the sun; that thirty days constitute their month, to which they add five days and the fourth part of a day, and this completes their year.

five days were, by the Egyptians, called Nici, and, by the Greeks, Epagomeni, which signifies, days added, or superinduced, to complete a sum. The Abyssinians add five days, which they call Quagomi, a corruption from the Greek Epagomeni, to the month of August, which is their Nahaassé. Every fourth year they add a sixth day. They begin the year, like all the eastern nations, with the 29th or 30th day of August, that is the kalends of September, the 29th of August being the first of their month Mascaram.