THE ORIGIN OF ITS NAME. 119 



name Assa-arogue, the original of Assareek, meaning 

 in Amharic the old Assa, or red river, so called 

 from flowing through the country of the red people, 

 in contradistinction to that portion of the Nile 

 supposed to flow from a country of the whites: 

 hence, the name of Ab-Addo, the principal western 

 branch of the Bahr ul Abiad, which, as in Arabic, 

 signifies "the river of the whites." 



Gibbee, the modern form of Zibbee, lends its 

 name to assist in unravelling the mystery of its 

 course, for I derive it from the word Azzabe, or 

 Assabi; the origin of the Assabinus, whom Latin 

 authors represent to have been the Jupiter of the 

 Ethiopians, by which is meant, I presume, the 

 principal god of the people. If it be admitted that 

 its name and that of the Zibbee are the same, there 

 can be but little doubt of their streams being one, 

 and that the latter is the early course of the former. 

 Strange rumours reach the ears of travellers in 

 Abyssinia, of human sacrifices being still practised 

 by the Pagan inhabitants of Zingero, whilst even 

 in the Christian kingdom of Enarea it is not 

 unusual for slave Kafllahs, on crossing the Gibbee, 

 to propitiate the god of that river by immolating 

 the most beautiful of the virgin slaves in its waters. 

 A similar custom was formerly practised in Egypt ; 

 for an Arab geographer, quoted by Mr. Cooley, 

 either in his Notes to "Larcher's Herodotus," or 

 " The Negroland of the Arabs," records this cir- 

 cumstance. This coincidence of an inhuman prac- 



