one, and so the wonder with them ceased. But it was not so with the king: it made the most favourable and lasting impression upon his mindl; nor did I ever after see, in his countenance, any marks either of doubt or diffidence, but always, on the contrary, the most decisive proofs of friendship, confidence, and attention, and the most implicit belief of every thing I advanced upon any subject from my own knowledge. IT is here I Singular Customs in Abyssinia propose to take notice of an unnatural custom which prevails univerfally in Abyssinia, and which in early ages seems to have been common to the whole world. I did not think that any person of moderate knowledge in profane learning could have been ignorant of this remarkable custom among the nations of the east. But what still more furprised me, and is the least pardonable part of the whole, was the ignorance of part of the law of God, the earliest that was given to man, the most frequently noted, infifted upon, and prohibited. I have faid, in the course of the narrative of my journey from Mafuah, that, a small distance from Axum, I overtook on the way three travellers, who seemed to be foldiers, driving a cow before them. They halted at a brook, threw down the beaft, and one of 'them cut a pretty *Jarge 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 circumstance, which they did not hefitate to pronounce impoffible, when the manners and customs of Abylinia were to them utterly unknown The Jefuits, established in Abysinia for a bove 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 because it was one of those facts too notorious to be repeated to swell a volume. It must be from prejudice alone we condemn the eating of raw flesh; no precept, divine, or human, that I know, forbids it; and if it is true, as later travellers have discovered, that there are nations ignorant of the use 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; I think it was. Many wife and learned men have doubted whether it was at first permitted to man to eat animal food at all. I do not pretend to give any opinion upon the subject, but many topics have been maintained fuccefsfully upon much more flender grounds. God, the author of life, and the best judge of what was proper to maintain it, gave this regimen to our first * From the fame, parents "Behold, i have given you every "herb bearing feed, which is upon "the face of all the earth, and evethe fruit of ry tree, in the which is " a tree yielding feed: to you it shall "be for meat." And though, immediately after, he mentions both beafts and fowls, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, he does not fay that he has designed any of thefe as meat for man. On the contrary, he seems to have intended the vegetable creation as food for both man and beaft And to every beast of "the earth and to every fowl of the " air, and to every thing that creep"eth upon the earth, wherein there " is life, 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 extenfive permiffion"Every moving thing that liveth "shall be meat for you; even as the "green herb have I given you al " things." As the criterion of judging of their aptitude for food was declared to be their moving and having life, a dan per appeared of misinterpretation, and that these creatures should be used living; a thing which God by no means intended, and therefore, immediately after, it is faid, " But flesh "with the life thereof, which is the "blood thereof, shall you not eat;" or, as it is rendered by the best interpreters, Flesh, or members, torn from living animals having the blood in them, thou shalt not eat.' We fee then, by this prohibition, that this abuse of eating living meat, or part of animals while yet alive, was known in the days of Noah, and forbidden after being fo known, and it is precisely what is practised in Abyslinia to this day. This law, then, was prior to that of Mofes, but it came from the fame legillator. It was given to Noah, and confequently obligatory upon the whole world. Mofes, however, infifts upon it throughout his VOL. XII. No. 67. whole law; which not only shews that this abute was common, but that it was deeply rooted in, and interwo ven with, the manners of the Heb rews. He positively prohibits it four times in one chapter in Deuteronomy, and thrice in one of the chapters of Leviticus" Thou shalt not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, thou shalt pour it upon the earth "like water." the bar Although the many instances of God's tenderness to the brute crea tion, that conftantly occur in the Mofaical precepts, and are a very beautiful part of them, and though barity of the custom itselt might rea sonably lead us to think that huma nity alone was a fufficient motive for the prohibition of eating animals a live, yet nothing can be more certain than that greater confequences were annexed to the indu ging in this crime One of than what was apprehended from a mere depravity of manners. the molt learned and sensible men that ever wrote upon the facred fcriptures observes, that God, in forbidding this practice, uses more fevere ceruicas tion, and more threatening lanquage, than against any other fin, excepting idolatry, with which it is constantly joined. God declares, "I will fet my face against him that eateth "blood, in the fame manner as I will against him that facrificeth his fon "to Moloch; I will fet my face a"gainst him that eateth flesh wh blood, till I cut him off from the We have an inftance in the life of Saul that thews the propenfity of the Israelites to this crime. Saul's army, after a battle, few, that is, fell vora cioufly upon the cattle they had tai ken, and threw them upon the ground to cut off their flefh, and eat them raw, so that the army was defiled by eating blood, or living animal, To prevent this, Saul caufed roll to him a great ftone, and ordered those that killed their oxen to cut their throats иров upon that stone. This was the only la wful 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 do the Abysfinians at this day; they cut a part of its throat, so that blood may be feen 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 sufficient evidence appeared the creature was dead before it was attempted to eat it. We have seen that the Abysfinians came from Palestine 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. The author I last quoted says, that it is plain, from all the books of the eaftern nations, that their motive for eating flesh with the life, or limbs of living animals cut off with the blood, was from motives of religion, and for the purposes of idolatry, and so it probably had been among the Jews; for one of the reasons given in Leviticus for the prohibition of eating blood, or living flesh, is, that the people may no longer offer sacrifices to devils, after whom they have gone a-whoring. If the reader chooses to be further informed how very common this practice was, he need only read the Halacoth Gedaloth, or its translation, where the whole chapter is taken up with instances of this kind. That this practice likewise prevailed in Europe, as well as in Afia and Africa, may be collected from various authors. The Greeks had their bloody feasts and facrifices where they are living flesh; these were called Omophagia. Arnobius says, "Let us pass over the horrid scenes presented at the Bacchanalian feast, wherein, with a counterfeited fury, though with a truly depraved heart, you twine a number of ferpents around you, and, pretending to be pof sessed with some god, or fpirit, you tear to pieces with bloody mouths the bowels of living goats, which cry all the time from the torture they suffer." From all this it appears, that the prac tice of the Abyslinians eating live animals at this day, was very far from being new, or, what was nonfenfically said, impoffible. And I fhall only further observe, that those of my readers that wish to indulge a fpirit of criticism upon the great variety of customs, men, and manners, related in this hiftory, or have those cri ticisms attended to, should furnish themselves with a more decent stock of reading than, in this instance, they feem to have poffefsed; or, when another example occurs of that kind, which they call impoffible, that they would take the truth of it upon my word, and believe what they are not sufficiently qualified to investigate. Consistent with the plan of this work, which is to describe the manners of the several nations through which I passed, good and bad, as I observed them, I cannot avoid giving some account of this Polyphemus banquet, as far as decency will permit me; it is part of the history of a barbarous people; whatever I might wish, I 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 so 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 fudder showers on the mountains; in a word, when a man can fay he is safe at home, and the spear and shield is hung up in the hall, a number of people of the best fashion in the villages, of both sexes, courtiers in the palace, or citizens in the town, meet torether ther to dine between twelve and one clock. A long table is set in the middle of a large room, and benches beside it for a number of guests who are in vited. Tables and benches the Portugueze introduced amongst them; but bull hides, spread upon the ground, ferved them before, as they do in the camp and country now. A cow or bull, one or more, as the company is numerous, is brought close to the door, and his feet strongly tied. The skin that hangs down under his chin and throat, which I think we call the dew-lap in England, is cut only so deep as to arrive at the fat, of which it totally confifts, and, by the separation of a few small blood-vessels, fix or seven 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. I should beg his pardon indeed for calling him an affaflin, as he is not so merciful as to aim at the life, but, on the contrary, to keep the beaft alive till he be totally eat 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; on the back of the beast, and on each fide of the spine they cut skin-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 so on to the buttock, cutting the skin wherever it hinders them commodiously to ftrip the poor animal bare. All the flesh on the buttocks is cut off then, and in folid, square pieces, without bones, or much effusion of blood; and the prodigious noise the animal makes is a fignal for the company to Iit down to table. There are then laid before every guest, instead of plates, round cakes, if I may so call them, about twice as big as a pan-cake, and fomething Whicker and tougher. It is unleaven ed bread of a fourish taste, far from being difagreeable, and very easily di. gested, made of a grain called teff. It is of different colours, from black to the colour of the whitest wheat-bread, Three or four of these cakes are generally put uppermoft, for the food of the perfon opposite to whose seat they are placed. Beneath these are four or five of ordinary bread, and of a blackish kind. These serve the maf ter to wipe his fingers upon; and af terwards the servant, for bread to his dinner, Two or three fervants then come, each with a square piece of beef in their bare hands, laying it upon the cakes of teff, placed like dishes 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 large crooked ones, which they put to all forts of uses during the time of the war. The women have small clasped knives, fuch as the worst of the kind made at Birmingham, fold for a 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 stake in England, while you fee the motion of the fibres yet perfectly distinct, and alive in the flesh, No man in Abyssinia, of any fashion whatever, feeds himself, or touches his own meat. The women take the stake and cut it length-ways like strings, about the thickness of your little finger, then crossways into square pieces, something smaller than dice. This they lay upon a piece of the teff bread, strongly powdered with black pepper, or Cayenne pepper, and foffil-falt, they them wrap it up in the 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 ** xt an idiot, turns to the one whose cartriage is first ready, who stuffs the whole of it into his mouth, which is fo full that he is in constant danger of being choked. This is a mark of grandeur. Thegreater the man would feem to be, the larger piece he takes in his mouta; and the more noise he makes in chewing it, the more polite he is thought to be. Thy, have indeed, a proverb that says, Beggars and thieves only eat small "pieces, or without making a noife" Having dispatched this morfel, which he does very expeditiously, his next femal neighbour holds forth another cartridge, which goes the same way, and fo on till he is fatisfied. He never drinks till he has finished eating; and, before he bgins, in gratitude to the fair ones 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 band he pats their portion into their mouths. He then falls to drinking out of a large handsome horn; the Jabes eat till they are fat sfied, and then al drink together, "Vive la Joye et la Jeunesse!" A great deal of mirth and joke goes round, very feldom with any mixture of acrimony or ill humour. All this time, the unfortunate victim at the door is bleeding indeed, bu bleeding little. As long as they can cut off the Besh from his bones, they do not meddie with the thighs, of the parts where the great arteries are. At Lift they fall upon the thighs likewife; and foon after the animal, bleeding to death, becomes so tough that the canibal, who have the rest of it to eat, find very hard work to separate the flesh from the : bones with their teeth like dogs. In the mean time, those withia are very much elevated; love lights all its fires, and every thing is permitted with abfolute freedom. There is no coynef, no d lays, 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. The two men nearest the vacuum a pair have made on the bench by leaving their feats, hold up their upper garment like a skreen before the two that have left the bench; and, if we may judge by found, they seem to think it as great a shame to make love in filence as to eat. Replaced in their feats again, the company drink the happy couple's health; and their xample is followed at different ends | of the table, as each couple is difpofed. All this passes without remark or scandal, not a licentious word is uttered, no the most distant joke upon the tranfaction. 1 These lad es are, for the most part, women of family and character, and they and ther gallants are recipro. cally d stinguisled by the name Wordage, which answers to what in Italy they call Cicisbey; and, indled, I bieve that the ware itself, as well as the practice, is Hebrew; fchuus chis beiim, finifies attendants or comparions of the bride, or bride's man, as we call at in England. The only difference is, that in Europe the intimacy and attendance continues during the marriage, while, among the Jews, it was permitted only the few days of the marriage ceremony. The a version to Judaism, in the ladies of Europe, has probably led them to the prolongation of the term. : |