THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 125 



the whole country, and live in the fiflures of the earth. To 

 kill thefe, they fet fire to their ftraw, the only ufe they 

 make of it. 



The cattle roam at difcretion through the mountains. 

 The herdfmen fet fire to the grafs, bent, and brufliwood, 

 before the rains, and an amazing verdure immediately fol- 

 lows. As the mountains are very fteep and broken, goats 

 are chiefly the flocks that graze upon them. 



The province of Tigre is all mountainous; and it has 

 been faid, without any foundation in truth, that the Pyre- 

 nees, Alps, and Apennines, are but mole-hills compared to 

 them. I believe, however, that one of the Pyrenees above 

 St John Pied de Port, is much higher than Lamalmon; and" 

 that the mountain of St Bernard, one of the Alps, is full as 

 high as Taranta, or rather higher. It is not the extreme 

 height of the mountains in Abyffinia that occafions fur- 

 prife, but the number of them, and the extraordinary forms 

 they prefent to the eye. Some of them are flat, thin, and 

 fquare, in fhape of a hearth-ftone, or flab, that fcarce would 

 feemto have bafe fufficient torefift the action of the winds. 

 Some are like pyramids, others like obeliflis or prifms, an& 

 fome, the moll extraordinary of all the reft, pyramids pitch- 

 ed upon their points, with their bafe uppermoft, which, if 

 it was poflible, as it is not, they could have been fo formed 

 in the beginning, would be flrong objections to our recei- 

 ved: ideas of gravity. 



They tan hides to great perfection in Tigre, but for one 

 purpofe only. They take off the hair with the juice of two 

 plants, a fpecies of folanum,,and the juice of the kol-quall p 



v. iii. q^ both. 



