Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/350

 322 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

liere is called Gilmaber, from Gilma, a fmall village a mile and a half diftant to the fouthward. Gilmaber is about a mile and a half long, full of tall canes. From the time we left Tokoor river, we had been followed by a lion, or rather preceded by one, for it was generally a fmall gun- fliot before us ; and wherever it came to a bare fpot, it would fit down and grumble as if it meant to difpute the way with us. Our beails trembled, and were all covered with fwcat, and could fcarcely be kept on the road. As there feemed to be but one remedy for this difficulty, I took along Turkifh rifled gun, and crawling under a bank as near as poffible, Ihot it in the body, fo that it fell from the bank on the road before us, quite dead, and even with- out mufcular motion. It proved to be a large lionefs. All the people in this country eat the flefh of lions ; as I have feen fome tribes* in Barbary do likewife. We left the.lion- €fs to the inhabitants of the neighbouring village, fls;in and all ; for we were fo tired with this day's journey, that we could not be at the pains of fkinning her,

A FEW minutes after this we pafled the river Gilma, twice, which runs to the northward. At half paft nine we joined Dabda road, and a few minutes after crofTed the Quartuc- ca, a fmall river running north..

The country here becomes more open, for the thick woods have fmall plains between them. In the entrance of a wood we found a man that had been murdered, and that very lately, as the wild beafts had not yet begun

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 * Welled Sidi Boogannini at Hydra. See Shaw's Travels,