Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/584

 £ 6o travels to discover

and of little efteem, owing to the lupine flowers on which the bees feed, and of which a great quantity covers the whole face of the country; this gives a bitternefs to the greateft part of the honey, and occafions, as they believe, vertigo's, or diz- zinefles, to thofe that eat it : the fame would happen with the Agows, did they not take care to eradicate the lupines throughout their whole country.

All this little territory of Aroofli is by much the mofl pleafant that we had feen in Abyflinia, perhaps it is equal to any thing the eaft can produce ; the whole is finely (haded with acacia- trees, I mean the acacia vera, or the Egyptian thorn, the tree which, in the fultry parts of Africa, produces the gum-arabic. Thefe trees grow feldom above fifteen or fixteen feet high, then flatten and fpread wide at the top, and touch each other, while the trunks are farafunder, and under a vertical fun, leave you, many miles together, a free fpace to walk in a cool, delicious fhade. There is fcarce any tree but this in Maitfha ; all Guanguera and Wainade- ga are full of them ; but in thefe lad-mentioned places, near the capital, where the country grows narrower, being confined between the lake and the mountains, thefe trees are more in the way of the march of armies, and are thinner, as being conftantly cut down for fuel, and never replanted, or fuffered to replace themfelves, which the) o- therwife would do, and cover the whole face of the coun- try, as once apparently they did. The ground below tbofe trees, all throughout Aroofli, is thick covered with lupines, almoft to the exclusion of every other flower ; wild oars alfo grow up here fpontaneoufly to a prodigious height and (ize, capable often of concealing both the horfe and his rider, and fome of the italks being little lefs than an inch i « in