"Breathes the warm odor which the girgir bears,"
The girgir, or the geshe el aube, a species of flowering grass. Piercing, fragrant, and grateful in its odor, it operates not unlike a mild stimulant, when respired for any length of time, and is found chiefly near the borders of small streams and in the vicinage of the Tassada.—Lyn. Gui. and Soud.
"Where browse the fecho and the dun-gazelle."
Among the wild animals are prodigious numbers of the vari-colored species of the gazelle, the bohur sassa, fecho, and madoqua. They are extremely numerous in the provinces depopulated by war and slavery, enjoying the wild oats of the deserted hamlets without fear of molestation from a returning population.—Notes on Central Africa.
"And wiser than Athenas' wisest schools,
Nor led by zealots, nor scholastic rules,
Gazed at the stars which stud yon tender blue,
And hoped and deemed the cheat of death untrue."
Though Socrates and Plato, particularly the former, are generally admitted by writers of authority, among whom, indeed, are Polycarpe, Chrysotom, and Eusebius, to have in a manner suspected rather than believed, the immortality of the soul; yet we have no evidence of their ever having, by the finest process of ratiocination, so thoroughly convinced themselves as to introduce it generally as a tenable thesis on the portico. A beautiful thread of implicit belief and fervent hope, of after life, assimilating to the hunting-ground of our own American Indians, and though sensuous still, a step far in advance of the black void of ancient philosophy, has always run through the higher mythologies of the Negro. So notorious, indeed, was the fact among early Christians, that that ubiquitous riddle, "Prestor John," was, by believers, regarded as having a locale in Central Africa; while Henry of Portugal actually despatched two ambassadors, Corvilla and Payvan, to a rumored Christian court, south of the Sahara.—Edin. Encyc. Early Chris. His. Port.