large collop of flesh from its buttocks, after which they drove the cow gently on as before. A violent outcry was raised in England at hearing this circumftance, which they did not hesitate to pronounce impossible, when the manners and cuftoms of Abyffinia were to them utterly unknown. The Jefuits, established in Abyffinia 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.

It must be from prejudice alone we condenin the eating of raw flesh; no precept, divine or human, forbids it; and if it be true, as later travellers have discovered, that there are nations ignorant of the ufe of fire, any law against eating raw flesh 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 flesh was not an earlier and more general practice than by preparing it with fire; many wife and learned men have doubted, whether it was at first permitted to man to eat animal food at all. God, the author of life, and the best judge of what was proper to maintain it, gave this regimen to our first parents" Behold, I have given you every herb bearing feed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding feed: to you it fhall be for meat." And though, immediately after, he mentions both beasts and fowls, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, he does not fay that he has defigned any of these as meant for man. the contrary, he seems to have intended the vegetable creation as food for both man and beast-" And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is lifé, I have given every green herb for meat and it was fo." After the flood, when mankind began to repoffefs the earth, God gave Noah a much more extensive permiffion :" Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things."

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Saul's army, after a battle, New, that is, fell voracioufly upon the cattle they had taken, and threw them upon the ground to cut off their flesh, and eat them raw, fo that the army, was defiled by eating blood, or living animals. To

prévent

prevent this, Saul caused to be rolled to him a great stone, and ordered thofe that killed their oxen to cut their throats upon that stone. This was the only lawful way of killing animals for food; the tying of the ox and throwing it upon the ground was not permitted as equivalent. The Ifraelites did probably in that cafe, as the Abyffinians do at this day; they cut a part of its throat, fo that blood might be seen upon the ground, but nothing mortal to the animal followed from that wound. But, after laying his head upon a large stone, and cutting his throat, the blood fell from on high, or was poured on the ground like water, and fufficient evidence appeared the creature was dead, before it was attempted to eat it. We have seen that the Abyffinians came from Paleftine a very few years after this; and we are not to doubt, that they then carried with them this, with many other Jewish customs, which they have continued to this day.

Confistent with the plan of this work, which is to describe the manners of the several nations through which Mr. Bruce paffed, good and bad, as he observed them, he says, he cannot avoid giving fome account of this Polyphemus banquet, as far as decency will permit him; it is part of the hiftory of a barbarous people; and Mr. Bruce fays, however he might wish it, he cannot decline it.

In the capital, where one is safe from surprise at all times, or in the country or villages, when the rains have become fo conftant that the valleys will not bear a horse to pass them, or that men cannot venture far from home, through fear of being furrounded and swept away by temporary torrents, occafioned by fudden showers on the mountains; in a word, when a man can fay he is fafe at home, and the spear and fhield is hung up in the hall, a number of people of the best fashion in the villages, of both fexes, courtiers in the palace, or citizens in the town, meet together to dine between twelve and one o'clock. A long table is fet in the middle of a large room, and benches beside it for a number of guests who are invited. Tables and benches the Portuguese introduced amongst them; but bull hides, spread upon the ground, ferved them before, as they now do in the camp and country. A cow or bull, one or more, as the company is numerous, is brought close to W 2

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the door, and his feet strongly tied. The skin that hangs down under his chin and throat, is cut only so deep as to arrive at the fat, of which it totally confifts, and, by the feparation of a few fmall blood-veffels, fix or feven drops of blood only fall upon the ground. They have no stone, bench, nor altar upon which these cruel affaffins lay the animal's head in this operation. Mr. Bruce begs his pardon indeed for calling him an affaffin, as he is not fo merciful as to aim at the life, but, on the contrary, to keep the beast alive till he be nearly eaten up. Having fatisfied the Mofaical law, according to his conception, by pouring these fix or seven drops upon the ground, two or more of them fall to work; the back of the beast, and on each fide of the spine, they cut fkin deep; then putting their fingers between the flesh and the skin, they begin to ftrip the hide of the animal half way down his ribs, and fo on to the buttock, cutting the fkir wherever it hinders them commodioufly to ftrip the poor animal bare. All the flesh on the buttocks is then cut off, and in folid, fquare pieces, without bones, or much effufion of blood; and the prodigious noise the animal makes, is a fignal for the company to fit down to table.

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There are then laid before every gueft, instead of plates, round cakes, if they may be so called, about twice as big as a pan cake, and something thicker and tougher. It is unleavened bread of a fourish taste, far from being difagreeable, and very easily digefted, made of a grain called teff. It is of different colours, from black to the colour of the whiteft wheat bread. Three or four of these cakes are generally put uppermoft, for the food of the person oppofite to whose feat they are placed. Beneath thefe are four or five of ordinary bread, and of a blackifh kind. Thefe ferve the mafter to wipe his fingers upon, and afterwards the fervant for bread to his dinner. Two or three fervants then come each with a fquare piece of beeef in their bare hands, laying it upon the cakes of teff, placed like difhes down the table, without cloth or any thing else beneath them. By this time all the guests have knives in their hands, and their men have the large crooked ones, which they put to all forts of ufes during the time of war. The women have small clafped knives, fuch as the worst of the kind made at Birmingham, fold for a penny

penny each. The company are so ranged, that one man fits between two women; the man with his long knife cuts a thin piece, which would be thought a good beef-steak in England, while you fee the motion of the fibres yet perfectly distinct, and alive in the flesh. No man in Abyffinia, of any fashion whatever, feeds himself, or touches his own meat. The women take the steak and cut it length-ways like strings, about the thickness of a little finger, then cross-ways into square pieces, fomething smaller than dice. This they lay upon a piece of the teff bread, strongly powdered with black pepper, or Cayenne pepper, and foffile falt; they then wrap it up in teff bread like a cartridge.

In the mean time, the man having put up his knife, with、 each hand refting upon his neighbour's knee, his body stooping, his head low and forward, and mouth open very like an idiot, he turns to the one whose cartridge is first ready, who stuffs the whole of it into his mouth, which is fo full that he is in constant danger of being choaked. This is a mark of grandeur. The greater the man would feem to be, the larger piece he takes in his mouth; and the more noife he makes in chewing it, the more polite he is thought to be. They have indeed, a proverb that fays, Beggars and thieves only eat fmall pieces or without making a noife." Having dispatched this morfel, which he does very expeditiously, his next female neighbour holds forth another cartridge, which goes the fame way, and fo on till he is fatisfied. He never drinks till he has finished eating; and before he begins, in gratitude to the fair one that fed him, he makes up two small rolls of the fame kind and form; each of his neighbours open their mouths at the fame time, while with each hand he puts their portion into their mouths. He then falls to drinking out of a large handsome horn; the ladies eat till they are fatisfied, and then all drink together. A great deal of mirth and joke goes round, 'very feldom with any mixture of acrimony or ill humour.

During all this time, the unfortunate victim at the door is bleeding indeed, but bleeding little. As long as they can cut off the flesh from his bones, they do not meddle with the thighs, or the parts where the great arteries are. At last, they

fall

fall upon the thighs likewife; and foon after, the animal bleeding to death, becomes so tough, that the cannibals, who have the reft of it to eat, find very hard work to feparate the flesh from the bones with their teeth like dogs.

In the mean time, those within are very much elevated; love lights all its fires, and every thing is permitted with abfolute freedom. There is no coynefs, no delays, no need of appointments or retirement, to gratify their wishes; there are no rooms but one, in which they facrifice both to Bacchus and to Venus.

Although we read from the Jefuits a great deal about marriage and polygamy, yet there is nothing which may be averred more truly, than that there is no fuch thing as marriage in Abyffinia, unless that which is contracted by mutual confent, without other form, fubfifting only till diffolved by diffent of one or other, and to be renewed or repeated as often as it is agreeable to both parties, who, when they please, cohab it together again as man and wife, after having been divorced, had children by others, or whether they have been married, or had children with others or not. Mr. Bruce remembers to have once been at Kofcam in presence of the Iteghe, when in the circle, there was a woman of great quality, and seven men who had all been her husbands, none of whom was the happy spouse at that time.

Upon feparation they divide the children. The eldest son falls to the mother's first choice, and the eldest daughter to the father. If there be but one daughter, and all the reft fons, fhe is affigned to the father. If there be but one fon, and all the reft daughters, he is the right of the mother. If the numbers are unequal after the first election, the reft are divided by lot. There is no such distinction as legitimate and illegitimate children, from the king to the beggar; for supposing any one of their marriages valid, all the iffue of the reft muft be adulterous bastards.

Ras Michael one day afked Mr. Bruce, before Abba Salama, (the Acab Saat) whether such things as these promiscuous marriages and divorces were permitted and practised in his country? He excused himself till he was no longer able;

and,