THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 137 
author, his prefent teftimony will not weigh much, from 
whatever hand this performance may have come. 
M. pe MonrTesquiev, among all his other talents a moft 
excellent and accurate geographer, obferves, that man-eat- 
ers were firft mentioned when the fouthern parts of the eaft 
coaft of the peninfula of Africa came to be unknown. Travel- 
lers of Jerome Lobo’s caft, delighting in the marvellous, aid 
placedthefe unfociable people beyond the pxgmontory of - 
Praffum, becaufe nobody, at that time, did pafs, ‘he promon- 
tory of Praffum. 
AzovE 1200 years, thefe people were unknown, till 
Vafques de Gama difcovered their coaft, and called them the 
civil or kind nation. By fome lucky revolution in that long 
- period, when they were left to themfelves, they feem moft 
unaccountably to have changed both their diet and their 
manners. The Portuguefe conquered them, built towns a- 
mong them, and, if they met with confpiracies and treachery, 
thefe all originated in a mixture of Moors fromSpain and Por- 
tugal, Europeans that had fettled among them, and not a- 
mong the natives themfelves. No man-eaters appeared till af- 
ter the difcovery of the Cape of Good Hope, when that of the 
new world, which followed it, made the Portuguefe abandon 
their fettlements in the old ; and this coaft came as unknown 
to them as it had been to the Romans, when they traded on- 
ly toRaptum and Praflum, and made Anthropophagi of all 
the reft. One would be almoft tempted to believe that Je- 
rome Lobo was a man-eater himfelf, and had taught this 
cuftom to thefe favages. They had it not before his coming; 
they have never had it fince; and it muft have been with 
fome finifter intention like this, that a ftranger would vo- 
Mors lik. S luntarily 
