Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/355

Rh the king's demand being lessened, many people have left it, and are gone to Tcherkin.

I several times, in the course of this work, taken notice of a black nation called Shangalla, who surround all the N. N. W. and N. E. of Abyssinia, by a belt scarcely sixty miles broad. This is called by the Abyssinians, Kolla, or the Hot Country, which is likewise one of their names for hell. Two gaps, or spaces, made for the sake of commerce, in this belt, the one at Tchelga, the other at Ras el Feel, have been settled and possessed by strangers, to keep these Shangalla in awe; and here the custom-houses were placed, for the mutual interest of both kingdoms, before all intercourse was interrupted by the impolitic expedition of Yasous against Sennaar. Ras el Feel divides this nation of woolly-headed blacks into two, the one west below Kuara, and bordering on Fazuclo (part of the kingdom of Sennaar) as also on the country of Agows. These are the Shangalla that traffic in gold, which they find in the earth, where torrents have fallen from the mountains; for there is no such thing as mines in any part of their country nor any way of collecting gold but this; nor is there any gold found in Abyssinia, however confidently this has been advanced; neither is there gold brought into that kingdom from any other quarter but this which we are now speaking of; notwithstanding all the misrepresentations of the missionaries to make the attempts to subdue this kingdom appear more lucrative and less ridiculous to European princes. The other nation, on the frontiers of Kuara, has Ras el Feel on the east, about three days journey from the Cacamoot. The natives are called Gan