*96 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



that was given to man, the moft frequently noted, infilled, 

 upon, and prohibited. I have faid, in the courfe of the nar- 

 rative of my journey from Mafuah, that, a fmall diftance 

 from Axum, I overtook on the way three travellers, who 

 feemed to be foldiers, driving a cow before them. They halt- 

 ed at a brook, threw down the beaft, and one of them cut a 

 pretty large collop of flefh from its buttocks, after which they 

 drove the cow gently on as before. A violent outer) was raifed. 

 in England at hearing this circumftance, which they did not 

 hefitate to pronounce impoj/iblc, when the manners and cuf- 

 (oras of Abyffinia were to them utterly unknown. The Je- 

 fuits, eftablifhed in Abyflinia for above a hundred years, 

 had told them of that people eating, what they call raw 

 meat, in every page, and yet they were ignorant of this. 

 Poncet, too, had done the fame, but Poncet they had not read; 

 and if any writer upon Ethiopia had omitted to mention it, 

 it was becaufe it was one of thofe fads too notorious to be 

 repeated to fwell a volume. 



It muft be from prejudice alone we condemn the eating 

 of raw nefh ; no precept, divine or human, that I know, for- 

 bids it ; and if it is true, as later travellers have discovered, 

 that there are nations ignorant of the ufc of fire, any law 

 againfl eating raw flefh could never have been intended by 

 •God as obligatory' upon mankind in general. At any rate, 

 it is certainly not clearly known, whether the eating raw 

 flefh was not an earlier and more general practice than by 

 preparing it with fire ; I think it was. 



Many wife and learned men have doubted whether it 

 was at firft permitted to man to eat animal food at all. I 

 do not pretend to give any opinion upon the fubject, but 



2 many 



