i 5 6 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



mountains of Samen. We obferved no villages this day 

 from Maifbinni to Dagafhaha ; nor did we difcern, in the 

 face of the country, any figns of culture or marks of great 

 population. We were, indeed, upon the frontiers of two 

 provinces which had for many years been at war. 



On the 26th, at fix o'clock in the morning, we left Daga- 

 fhaha. Our road was through a plain and level country, 

 but, to appearance, defolated and uninhabited, being over- 

 grown with high bent grafs and bufhes, as alfo deftitute 

 of water. We paned the folitary village Adega, three miles 

 on our left, the only one we had feen. At eight o'clock 

 we came to the brink of a prodigious valley, in the bottom 

 of which runs the Tacazze, next to the Nile the largeft ri- 

 ver in Upper Abyilinia. It rifes in Angot (at leaf! its princi- 

 pal branch) in a plain champain country, about 200 miles 

 S. E. of Gondar, near a fpot called Souami Midre. It has 

 three fpring heads, or fources, like the Nile ; near it is the 

 fmall village Gourri *i 



Angot is now in poneflioii of the Galla,. whofe chief, 

 Guangoul, is the head of the weftern Galla, once the moil 

 formidable invader of Abyflinia. The other branch of the 

 Tacazze rifes in the frontiers of Begemder, near Dabuco ; 

 whence, running between Gouliou, Lafla, and Beleiiln, it 

 joins with the Angot branch, and becomes the boundary 

 between Tigre and the other great diviiion of the country 

 called Amhara. This divifion arifes from language only, 

 for the Tacazze pailes nowhere near the province of Am- 

 hara ; only all to the call of the Tacazze is, in this generaL 

 way of dividing the country, called Tigre, and all to the 



weftward, 

 — _ — -- * — ^ 



* It fignifies coliL 



