734 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



extravagantly fond ; if he does not eat, ill-fortune is near at 

 Land. 



Nanna Georgis, chief of the Agows of Banja, a man of 

 the greateft confideration at Gondar, both with the king and 

 Ras Michael, and my particular friend, as I had kept him in 

 my houfe, and attended him in his ficknefs, after the cam- 

 paign of 1 769, confefTed to me his appreheniions that it e 

 fiiould die, becaufe the ferpent did not eat upon his leavi g 

 his houfe to come to Gondar. He was, indeed, very ill of 

 the low country fever, and very much alarmed; but he re- 

 covered, and returned home, by Ras Michael's order, to ga- 

 ther the Agows together againit Waragna Fafil ; which he 

 did, and foon after, he and other feven chiefs of the Agows 

 were flain at the battle of Banja; fo here the ferpent's warn- 

 ing was verified by a fecond trial, though it failed in the 

 firft. 



Before an invafion of the Galla, or an inroad of the ene- 

 my, they fay thefe ferpents difappear, and are nowhere to 

 be found. Fafil, the fagacious and cunning governor of 

 ihe country, was, as it was faid, greatly addicted to this 

 fpecies of divination, in fo much as never to mount his 

 horfe, or go from home, if an animal of this kind, which he 

 had in his keeping, refufed to cat. 



I* 



The Shum's name was Kefla Abay, or Servant of the ri- 

 ver ; he was a man about ieventy, not very lean, but infirm, 

 •fully as much fo as might have been expected from that 

 age. He conceived that he might have had eighty-four or 

 eighty-five children. That honourable charge which he 

 pollelfed had been in his family from the beginning of the 

 2 world, 



