276 Di' Beke on the Languages of 



I was once gravely informed by an Abessinian slave-mer- 

 chant of the market of Baso in Godjam, that beyond Kaffa 

 there is a country, the male inhabitants of which are all dogs, 

 and the females are women ; and that the dogs go out to tend 

 the cattle, while the women occupy themselves with domestic 

 affairs. It was of little avail to inquire how it came to pass 

 that the progeny of this strange union should be canine on 

 the male side, and human on the female. That my informant 

 did not know : the other he did know ; though he honestly 

 admitted that he had not been so far as to have seen it him- 

 self. This story I consider to have originated in the fact, 

 that beyond Kaffa there is truly a " Dog" country, just as, 

 adjoining to Djimma there is a " Monkey" country ; that is 

 to say, in Wordtta there is a place or district named Ushd* 

 which word in Amharic means " dog," in the same way that 

 Zendjero means " monkey." As is usual in such cases, the 

 story was afterwards invented to account for the name.j 



* See my map in Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc, vol. xiii. 



I" According to M. Werne {ExpeditUm zur Entdcckung dcr Quellen des Weissen 

 Nil, p. 325), a fable prevails among the natives of the valley of the White River, 

 respecting a race of cannibals, having heads lil-e dogs and going on all-fours, who 

 are said to inhabit the mountains of Logaya, to the east of Bari. The following 

 reasonable explanation of this monstrous story was, however, given to that 

 traveller by Lakono, the intelligent king of the giant race of IJari. He stated 

 that, "in reality, these wicked people have heads like those of other human 

 beings ; only they keep in all their teeth. [It has been remarked (p. 273, note) that 

 the negro inhabitants of the valley of the Nile extract the incisors, in order 

 that they may not resemble wild beasts] ; and when they come to eat up others, 

 they creep in on all-fours." On this M. Werne himself remarks, that " most 

 likely the simple meaning of this is, that these alleged cannibals do not engage 

 in open war with their neighbours, but sneak in among them like dogs, and 

 carry away individuals, whom perhaps they may devour." 



For myself, I question much the existence of cannibalism among these moun- 

 taineers, whom the mere fact of their not extracting their teeth jiroves to be of 

 less barbarous habits than the natives of the low country. 



From the earliest times cannibalism has been said to prevail among the inha- 

 bitants of Africa. It is only necessary to allude to the A'/S/Wej avb^M'iroipdyoi 

 of Ptolemy, and to the Nyam-Nyam, Lem-Lem, Dum-a-Dum, &c., of the Arabian 

 geograjihers and of the modern Arabs. But stories of this kind require in- 

 disputable evidence to establish their truth ; and there is no doubt that they 

 often originate in ignorance, if not in interested motives, on the part of their 

 promulgators. 



