t56 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 
mountains of Samen. We obferved no villages this day 
from Maifbinnito 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 paffed 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 Tacazzé, next to the Nile the largeft ri- 
ver in Upper Abyflinia. It rifes in Angot (at leaft 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 {pring heads, or fources, like the Nile; near it is the: 
{mall village Gourri * 
ANcoT is now. in poffeffion of the Galla, whofe chief,. 
Guangoul, is the head of the weftern Galla, once the moft 
formidable invader of Abyflinia. The other branch of the 
Tacazzé rifes in the frontiers of Begemder, near Dabuco;. 
whence, running between Gouliou, Lafta, and Beleffen, it 
joins with the Angot branch, and becomes the boundary 
between Tigré and the other great divifion of the country 
ealled Amhara. This divifion arifes from language only, 
for the Tacazzé paffes nowhere near the province of Am- 
hara; only all to the eaft of the Tacazze is, in this general: 
way of dividing the country, called Tigré, and all to the: 
weitward,, 
* Tt fignifies cold, 
