296 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 
that was given to man, the moft frequently noted, infifled 
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 onas before. A violent outcry was raifed 
in England at hearing this circumftance, which they did not 
hefitate to pronounce impofible, when the manners and cuf- 
toms of Abyflinia 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 facts too notorious to be 
repeated to fwell a volume, 
Ir mutt be from prejudice alone we condemn the eating 
of raw flefh ; no precept, divine or human, that I know, for- 
bids it; and if it is true, as later travellers have difcovered, 
that there are nations ignorant of the ufe of fire, any law _ 
againft 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 fubje&, but 
: 2 many 
