6% TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



along with them, defcendingfrom the tops of the high moun- 

 tains of Habefli, with their flocks to pafture, on the plains, 

 below near the fea, upon grafs that grows up in the months 

 of Odober and November, when they have already confu- 

 med what grew in the oppofite feafon on the other fide of 

 the mountains. 



This change of domicil gives them a propenfity to thie- 

 ving and violence, though otherwife a cowardly tribe. It- 

 is a proverb in Abyffinia, " Beware of men that drink tw& 

 " waters," meaning thefe, and all the tribes of Shepherds, 

 who Ave re in fearch of pafture, and who have lain under 

 the fame imputation from the remotefl antiquity. 



The Shiho were once very numerous ; but, like all thefe 

 nations having communication with Mafuah, have fuffered 

 much by the ravages of the fmall-pox. The Shiho are the 

 blacked of the tribes bordering upon: the Red Sea. They 

 were all clothed ; their women in coarfe cotton fhifts reach- 

 ing down to their ancles, girt about the middle with a lea- 

 ther belt, and having very large fleeves ; the men in fhort 

 cotton breeches reaching to the middle of their thighs, and 

 a goat's fkin crofs their ihoulders. They have neither tents 

 nor cottages, but either live in caves in the mountains under 

 trees, or in fmall conical huts built with a thick grafs like 

 reeds. 



This party confifted of about fifty men, and, I fuppofei 

 not more than thirty women ; from which it feemed pro- 

 bable the Shiho , are Monogam, as afterwards, indeed, I 

 knew them to be. Each of them had a lance in his hand, 

 ajid a knife at the girdle which kept up the breeches. They 



had 



