Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/71

Rh tially engaged Achmer, his uncle the Naybe would have cut our throats. I heard two girls, professors hired for such occasions, sing alternately verse for verse in reply to each other, in the most agreeable and melodious manner I ever heard in my life. This gave me great hopes that, in Abyssinia, I should find music in a state of perfection little expected in Europe. Upon inquiry into particulars I was miserably disappointed, by being told these musicians were all strangers from Azab, the myrrh country, where all the people were natural musicians, and sung in a better stile than that I had heard; but that nothing of this kind was known in Abyssinia, a mountainous, barbarous country, without instrument, and without song; and that it was the same here in Atbara; a miserable truth, which I afterwards completely verified. These singers were Cushites, not Shepherds.

, made myself master of two or three of these alternate songs upon the guitar, the wretched instrument of that country; and was surprised to find the words in a language equally strange to Masuah and Abyssinia. I had frequent interviews with these musicians in the evening; they were perfectly black and woolly-headed. Being slaves, they spoke both Arabic and Tigrè, but could sing in neither; and, from every possible inquiry, I found every thing, allied to counterpoint, was unknown among them. I have sometimes endeavoured to recover fragments of these songs, which I once perfectly knew from memory only, but unfortunately I committed none of them to writing. Sorrow and various misfortunes, that every day marked my stay in the barbarous country to which I was then going, and the necessary part I, much against my will, was for self-preser-