Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/571

 THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 5+7

which comes here feldom more frequently than once in fif-" ■ teen or twenty years ; that when one of thefe houfes is taint- ed with the difeafe, their neighbours, who know it will infedl the whole colony, furround it in the night, and fet fire to it, which is confumed in a minute, whilfl the unfortunate people belonging to it (who would endea- vour to efcape) are unmercifully thruft back with lan- ces and forks into the flames by the hands of their own neighbours and relations, without an inftance of one ever being fuffered to furvive. This to us will appear a barba- rity fcarcely credible : it would be quite otherwife if we faw the fituation of the country under that dreadful vifita- tion of the fmall-pox ; the plague has nothing in it fo ter- rible.

The river Kelti has excellent fiih, though the Abyflinians care not for food of this kind ; the better people eat fome fpecies in the time of Lent, but the generality of the com- mon fort are deterred by pailages of fcripture, and distinc- tions in the Mofaic law, concerning fuch animals as are clean and unclean, ill understood ; they are, befides, exceed- ingly lazy, and know nothing of nets ; neither have they the ingenuity we fee in other favages of making hooks or lines : in all the time I {laid, I never faw one Abyffinian .fiiher engaged in the employment in any river or lake.

At Keiti begins the territory of Aroofli : it is in fact the fouthmoft divifion of Maitfha, on the weft-fide of the Nile : it is not inhabited, however, by Galla, but by Abyflini- ans, a kindred of the Agow. When therefore we palled the river Kelti, we entered into the territory of Arooffi -bounded on the north by that river, as it is -on the fouth

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