The first and most considerable of these nations settled in a province called Amhara; it was, at first coming, as little known as the others; but, upon a revolution in the country, the king fled to that province, and there the court staid many years, so that the Geez, or language of the Shepherds, was dropt, and retained only in writing, and as a dead language; the sacred scriptures being in that language only, saved the Geez from going totally into disuse. The second were the Agows of Damot, one of the southern provinces of Abyssinia, where they are settled immediately upon the sources of the Nile. The third are the Agows of Lasta, or Tcheratz Agow, from Tchera, their principal habitation; theirs too is a separate language; they are Troglodytes that live in caverns, and seem to pay nearly the same worship to the Siris, or Tacazzè, that those of Damot pay to the Nile.
I take the old names of these two last-mentioned nations, to be sunk in the circumstances of this their new settlement, and to be a compound of two words Ag-oha, the Shepherds of the River, and I also imagine, that the idolatry they introduced in the worship of the Nile, is a further, proof that they came from Canaan, where they imbibed materialism in place of the pure Sabean worship of the Shepherds, then the only religion of this part of Africa.
The fourth is a nation bordering upon the southern banks of the Nile near Damot. It calls itself Gafat, which signifies oppressed by violence, torn, expelled, or chaced away by force. If we were to follow the idea arising merely from this name, we might be led to imagine, that these were part of the tribes torn from Solomon’s son and successor, Rehoboam. This, however, we cannot do confident with the faith to be kept by a historian with his reader. The evidence of the people themselves, and the tradition of the country, deny they ever were Jews, or ever concerned with that colony, brought with Menilek and the queen of Saba, which established the Jewish hierarchy. They declare, that they are now Pagans, and ever were so; that they are partakers with their neighbours the Agows in the worship of the river Nile, the extent or particulars of which I cannot pretend to explain.—The fifth is a tribe, which, if we were to pay any attention to similarity of names, we should be apt to imagine we had found here in Africa a part of that great Gaulish nation so widely extended in Europe and Asia. A comparison of their languages, with what we know exists of the former, cannot but be very curious.—These are the Galla, the most considerable of these nations, specimens of whose language I have cited. This word, in their own language, signifies Shepherd[242]; they say that formerly they lived on the borders of the southern rains, within the southern tropic; and that, like these in Atbara, they were carriers between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, and supplied the interior part of the peninsula with Indian commodities.
The history of this trade is unknown; it must have been little less ancient, and nearly as extensive, as the trade to Egypt and Arabia. It probably suffered diminution, when the mines of Sofala were given up, soon after the discovery of the new world. The Portuguese found it still flourishing, when they made their first conquests upon that coast; and they carry it on still in an obscure manner, but in the same tract to their settlements near Cape Negro on the western ocean. From these settlements would be the proper place to begin to explore the interior parts of the peninsula, on both sides of the southern tropic, as protection and assistance could probably be got through the whole course of it, and very little skill in language would be necessary.
When no employment was found for this multitude of men and cattle, they left their homes, and proceeding northward, they found themselves involved near the Line, in rainy, cold, and cloudy weather, where they scarcely ever saw the sun. Impatient of such a climate, they advanced still farther, till about the year 1537, they appeared in great numbers in the province of Bali, abandoning the care of camels for the breeding of horses. At present they are all cavalry. I avoid to say more of them in this place, as I shall be obliged to make frequent mention of them in the course of my narrative.
The Falasha, too, are a people of Abyssinia, having a particular language of their own; a specimen of which I have also published, as the history of the people seems to be curious. I do not, however, mean to say of them, more than of the Galla, that this was any part of those nations who fled from Palestine on the invasion of Joshua. For they are now, and ever were, Jews, and have traditions of their own as to their origin, and what reduced them to the present state of separation, as we shall see hereafter, when I come to speak of the translation of the holy scripture.
In order to gratify such as are curious in the study and history of language, I, with great pains and difficulty, got the whole book of the Canticles translated into each of these languages, by priests esteemed the most versant in the language of each nation. As this barbarous polyglot is of too large a size to print, I have contented myself with copying six verses of the first chapter in each language; but the whole book is at the service of any person of learning that will bestow his time in studying it, and, for this purpose, I left it in the British Museum, under the direction of Sir Joseph Banks, and the Bishop of Carlisle.
These Convenæ, as we have observed, were called Habesh, a number of distinct nations meeting in one place. Scripture has given them a name, which, though it has been ill translated, is precisely Convenæ, both in the Ethiopic and Hebrew. Our English translation calls them the mingled people[243], whereas it should be the separate nations, who, though met and settled together, did not mingle, which is strictly Convenæ. The inhabitants then who possessed Abyssinia, from its southern boundary to the tropic of Cancer, or frontiers of Egypt, were the Cushites, or polished people, living in towns, first Troglodytes, having their habitations in caves. The next were the Shepherds; after these were the nations who, as we apprehend, came from Palestine—Amhara, Agow of Damot, Agow of Tchera, and Gafat.
Interpreters, much less acquainted with the historical circumstances of these countries than the prophets, have, either from ignorance or inattention, occasioned an obscurity which otherwise did not arise from the text. All these people are alluded to in scripture by descriptions that cannot be mistaken. If they have occasioned doubts or difficulties, they are all to be laid at the door of the translators, chiefly the Septuagint. When Moses returned with his wife Zipporah, daughter of the sovereign of the Shepherds of Midian, carriers of the India trade from Saba into Palestine, and established near their principal mart Edom, in Idumea or Arabia, Aaron, and Miriam his sister, quarrelled with Moses, because he had married one who was, as the translator says, an Ethiopian[244]. There is no sense in this cause; Moses was a fugitive when he married Zipporah; she was a noble-woman, daughter of the priest of Midian, head of a people. She likewise, as it would seem, was a Jewess[245], and more attentive, at that time, to the preservation of the precepts of the law, than Moses was himself; no exception, then, could lie against Zipporah, as she was surely, in every view, Moses’s superior. But if the translator had rendered it, that Aaron and Miriam had quarrelled with Moses, because he had married a negro, or black-moor, the reproach was evident; whatever intrinsic merit Zipporah might have been found to have possessed afterwards, she must have appeared before the people, at first sight, as a strange woman, or Gentile, whom it was prohibited to marry. Besides, the innate deformity of the complexion, negroes were, at all times, rather coveted for companions of men of luxury or pleasure, than sought after for wives of sober legislators, and governors of a people.
The next instance I shall give is, Zerah of Gerar[246], who came out to fight Asa king of Israel with an army of a million of men, and three hundred chariots, whilst both the quarrel and the decision are represented as immediate.