The inference that is to be derived from this fact, of the Shankalli being found in the immediate neighbourhood of a very light complexioned people, is, that the high table land of Abyssinia suddenly slopes, on its south and west sides, from the elevation of ten or twelve thousand feet, to a low country of less than three thousand feet high, a scarp of perhaps thirty miles only intervening between the two very differently situated countries.
I take it for granted the reader is aware that the light yellow-coloured people of Enarea and Zingero attest, by their skin, the elevation I have assumed for these southern Abyssinian kingdoms. It is, I think, undeniable that the table-land increases in elevation to the south, for all travellers agree that the complexion of the inhabitants becomes fairer as they increase in distance from Shoa in that direction; and I need not observe the contrary would naturally be expected as we approach nearer to the equator. Several people I have seen, however, who came from within five degrees of the line, and were much lighter coloured than the generality of Spaniards. This would not be the case with a people living only upon a mountain ridge, even if the delicate frames of the yellow Zingero people attested, by a different character, the hardy life of a mountaineer. There must be, therefore, I should suppose, a considerable continuity of surface to seclude a large family of man from the otherwise unavoidable intercourse with the darker skinned inhabitants of the low land, and to have enabled a very ancient people to continue unchanged their fair complexion nearly in the centre of a continent of blacks.
These are the principal reasons which have led me to contend for the tabular character of Abyssinia to the south, instead of, as modern travellers invariably represent it, as being divided through its extent by an anticlinal axis, which divides the waters that flow to the north-west and to the Nile, from those which, on the contrary, proceed to the south-east and to the Indian Ocean. This impression, and Tellez’s apparently positive statement that the Zibbee flows to the southward, I am afraid, however will still be proof against my arguments, and until some enterprizing traveller visits the countries of Enarea and Zingero, and decides by actual observation, my readers may still amuse themselves by forming opinions upon this debatable subject. For their assistance I have, therefore, recorded the results of my observations, and the information I received in a country scarcely one hundred miles from these interesting and remote localities.
The Gibbee, or Zibbee, by Ibrahim’s account, rose in Enarea, where its sources were called Somma, which, in the Gonga language signifies, “head.” At this place, annually, many superstitious practices are observed, the last remains, I expect, of the ancient river worship that was once general throughout the whole of Abyssinia. The Agows of Northern Abyssinia, who are of Gonga origin, still profess to worship the Abi, although no traveller has yet given us any account of their ceremonies; the more to be regretted, as it would throw considerable light upon the ancient customs of an early state of society, when Abyssinia was the centre of all civilization in the world.
After flowing some distance to the south and east, the Gibbee was represented to me as taking a course similar to that of the Abi around Gojam, nearly encircling the kingdom of Zingero, which is separated from Gurague by this very stream, then a large river, and still flowing to the south. After passing westward between Zingero and Kuffah, the Gibbee then takes the name of Ankor from the principal province of Zingero which borders upon it, and in which the King resides; it then bends towards the north and west, passing to the south of Enarea, where it is called Durr, and receives a large river, the Omo, coming from Kuffah. From several reasons I believe the Omo to be the main branch, and the Durr merely another name for it; however, as some large stream does join the Gibbee from the south, I have so designated in my map one which I have laid down as coming from that direction. After the Gibbee has passed Enarea, it flows to the west of Limmoo, where it is best known as the Abiah, the common Galla name of the large river which, in that situation, breaks from the table-land, and then proceeds towards the north some distance through the country of the Shankalli before it receives, in the neighbourhood of Fazuglo, the waters of the Abi, which drains northern Abyssinia. After the junction of these two, the name Gibbee then re-assumes in part its most ancient name Assa-arogue, the original of Assareek, meaning in Amharic the old Assa, or red river, so called from flowing through the country of the red people, in contradistinction to that portion of the Nile supposed to flow from a country of the whites: hence, the name of Ab-Addo, the principal western branch of the Bahr ul Abiad, which, as in Arabic, signifies “the river of the whites.”
Gibbee, the modern form of Zibbee, lends its name to assist in unravelling the mystery of its course, for I derive it from the word Azzabe, or Assabi; the origin of the Assabinus, whom Latin authors represent to have been the Jupiter of the Ethiopians, by which is meant, I presume, the principal god of the people. If it be admitted that its name and that of the Zibbee are the same, there can be but little doubt of their streams being one, and that the latter is the early course of the former. Strange rumours reach the ears of travellers in Abyssinia, of human sacrifices being still practised by the Pagan inhabitants of Zingero, whilst even in the Christian kingdom of Enarea it is not unusual for slave Kafilahs, on crossing the Gibbee, to propitiate the god of that river by immolating the most beautiful of the virgin slaves in its waters. A similar custom was formerly practised in Egypt; for an Arab geographer, quoted by Mr. Cooley, either in his Notes to “Larcher’s Herodotus,” or “The Negroland of the Arabs,” records this circumstance. This coincidence of an inhuman practice seems also to point to a connexion between the sacred character of the Gibbee and that of the Nile. Another ceremony also, in which, on the election of a king, the inhabitants of Zingero collect upon the banks of the Gibbee, until upon some one’s head a bee should rest, who is immediately proclaimed to be the sovereign, I have some idea was the reason of that little insect being made the hieroglyphical representative of king or chief among the ancient Egyptians, and perhaps at one period of their history a similar custom prevailed among them.
The Gibbee is at the present time a holy river, as was the Assabi among the Ethiopians, and which was also the original of the Egyptian god, Serapis. This latter supposition is confirmed by the fact that, in some parts of its course, the Abi of Northern Abyssinia at the present day is similarly worshipped, and that its sources, in the time of the Portuguese missionaries, were actually the scene of Pagan sacrifices. The ancient Apis I consider to have been no other; for the Grecian terminal being rejected, the identity of the two names Abi and Api is manifest, whilst that of Assabi and Serapi is equally evident.
That the river Gibbee cannot be the earlier tributary of the Gochob of Dr. Beke, is proved by what we are told by Major Harris, of a river so called, entering the sea at Jubah. If this be the case there can no longer be any doubt of the identity of the Gochob with the Whabbee, and which I feel more assured of, from the information I have received, compared with the accounts sent to the Geographical Society of Paris, by M. d’Abbadie, from Berberah, on the Soumaulee coast, respecting the entrance of the Whabbee into the sea at Jubah.
Nor is this idea at all affected by the discoveries of Lieut. Christopher on the coast near Brava, respecting a river said to be the Whabbee, which runs parallel to the sea-coast in that situation for more than one hundred miles, and then terminates in a fresh-water lake, some short distance inland; for this may be the northern arm of a delta-formed termination of the river, which has been prevented from reaching the sea in that situation, by the strong marine current known to exist along that coast, to the south-west. This has occasioned the silting up of this entrance of the river, so that it is only in very high seasons indeed of flood, that the fluvatile water bursts through, or overflows the barrier, and escapes to the sea. The mouths of several other African rivers present similar phenomena. The discovery of the Haines branch of the delta of the Whabbee proves, in fact, the correctness of all native accounts, who represent a large branch as leaving the main trunk of the Whabbee at Ganana, and terminating in a lake of fresh water, not far distant from Brava, and which intercepted river is supposed to resemble “a tail,” and hence the name, “Ganana.” All informants agree, however, that the principal stream, still called the Whabbee, proceeds to Jubah, so that unless the Gochob is admitted to be that river, some other embouchure must be procured for the latter.
Denying, in this manner, the connexion of the Gibbee with the Gochob of Dr. Beke, for every Abyssinian informant states positively that the Gibbee does not go to the Whabbee, and which, as far as I can judge, appears to be the original of the Gochob, there is but one other river flowing to the south, which the Gibbee can be supposed to join. This is the Kalli, which empties itself into the Indian Ocean by many mouths, about three degrees south of the equator, the principal of which appears to be that of Lamoo. No traveller gives any account of this river, though certainly it is a most important one in connexion with our future intercourse with the high land of Abyssinia. It is, as its name, Kalli, implies, a river of the black people, as the Assabi, or Zebee, of the table land above belongs exclusively to the country of a red race. The Portuguese name, Killimancy, is merely the addition of a word, signifying river in the Shankalli language, to the original Arian term, Kalli. The sources of this river are upon the southern scarp of the Abyssinian table land, in the same manner as the tributaries of the Hawash arise upon the eastern border. The two principal branches of the Kalli, I was told, enclose or receive in the bifurcation, the termination of the table land to the south.