734 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER
extravagantly fond ; if he does not eat, ill-fortune is near at Land.
Nanna Georgis, chief of the Agows of Banja, a man of the greateft confideration at Gondar, both with the king and Ras Michael, and my particular friend, as I had kept him in my houfe, and attended him in his ficknefs, after the cam- paign of 1 769, confefTed to me his appreheniions that it e fiiould die, becaufe the ferpent did not eat upon his leavi g his houfe to come to Gondar. He was, indeed, very ill of the low country fever, and very much alarmed; but he re- covered, and returned home, by Ras Michael's order, to ga- ther the Agows together againit Waragna Fafil ; which he did, and foon after, he and other feven chiefs of the Agows were flain at the battle of Banja; fo here the ferpent's warn- ing was verified by a fecond trial, though it failed in the firft.
Before an invafion of the Galla, or an inroad of the ene- my, they fay thefe ferpents difappear, and are nowhere to be found. Fafil, the fagacious and cunning governor of ihe country, was, as it was faid, greatly addicted to this fpecies of divination, in fo much as never to mount his horfe, or go from home, if an animal of this kind, which he had in his keeping, refufed to cat.
I*
The Shum's name was Kefla Abay, or Servant of the ri- ver ; he was a man about ieventy, not very lean, but infirm, •fully as much fo as might have been expected from that age. He conceived that he might have had eighty-four or eighty-five children. That honourable charge which he pollelfed had been in his family from the beginning of the 2 world,
