Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/91

Rh is a mountain of black stones, almost calcined by the violent heat of the sun. This is the boundary of the district; Samhar, inhabited by the Shiho from Hamhammou to Taranta, is called Hadassa; it belongs to the Hazorta.

nation, though not so numerous as the Shiho, are yet their neighbours, live in constant defiance of the Naybe, and are of a colour much resembling new copper; but are inferior to the Shiho in size, though very agile. All their substance is in cattle; yet they kill none of them, but live entirely upon milk. They, too, want also an original word for bread in their language, for the same reason, I suppose, as the Shiho. They have been generally successful against the Naybe, and live either in caves, or in cabannes, like cages, just large enough to hold two persons, and covered with an ox's hide. Some of the better sort of women have copper bracelets upon their arms, beads in their hair, and a tanned hide wrapt about their shoulders.

nights are cold here—even in summer, and do not allow the inhabitants to go naked as upon the rest of the coast; however, the children of the Shiho, whom we met first, were all naked.

18th, at half past five in the morning, we left our station on the side of the green hill at Hamhammou: for some time our road lay through a plain so thick set with acacia-trees that our hands and faces were all torn and bloody with the strokes of their thorny branches. We then resumed our ancient road in the bed of the torrent, now near-