The power of the Shepherds was greatly augmented after the building of Carthage, as the extensive carriage of that commercial city fell into the hands of the bim, Lubim, or Libyan peasants. In those early ages, the want of navigation was supplied by immense multi tudes of camels; and we find that, even before the days of Joseph, the Ishmaelite merchants, with the help of these animals, traded to Palestine and Syria, front the southern extremity of the Arabian peninsula. The Shepherds, though in general the friends and allies of the Egyptians, were sometimes their most formidable enemies. They were united, indeed, by mutual interest ; hut no cordial amity could be expected between two nations, whose manners and religion were so much at variance. The cow, which the Egyptians worshipped, the Shepherds slaughtered for food ; and, while the idolatry of the former converted into objects of adoration the most unclean animals, and the vilest reptiles, the latter paid their purer and more rational homage only to the luminaries of heaven.
But besides the Cushites and Shepherds, Abyssinia is inhabited by nations of a fairer complexion, tuho, though of various names, are all comprehended under the general denomination ol Habbes.h, signifying a num ber of distinct people, assembled by accident in one place. The chronicle of Axon', the most ancient his tory of this country, whose authority, next to that ol the Holy Scriptures, is held most sacred by the Abyssinians, gives the Following account of the original settlement of these 'various nations. Abyssinia, according to this his tory, was never inhabited till 1308 years before the birth of Christ. Two hundred years after that period, it was laid waste by a flood, which so deformed and altered the face ol the country, that it received the name of Oure Midra, a country laid waste ; or, as it is expressed by Isaiah (xviii. 2) a land which the water8 or food8 had spoiled. About 1400 years ',clove the nativity, it was peopled by a variety of nations, speaking different lan guages, who settled unmolested in the high lands of Tigr6, among the Agaazi or Shepherds, with whom they were in friendship. The most considerable of these nations settled in the province of Amhara, origi nally as little known as any of the recent establishments ; but upon a revolution which took place in the country, the king fled thither with his court, and remained so long, that the Geez, or language of the Shepherds, was dropt, and would have become totally obsolete, had not the sacred writings been translated into that dialect. The nation second in consequence, was the Agows of Damot, a province in the south of Abyssinia, where they are settled immediately upon the sources of the Abay. The next arc the Agows of Lasta, called like wise Tcheratz Agow, from 'Thera, their principal re sidence ; these people live in caverns, and seem to worship the Tacazze with the same degree of venera tion which the Agows of Damot pay to the Abay, or Abyssinian Nile. There is still another of these nations, named Gafat, who dwell near Damot, on the southern banks of the Abay ; and who, according to their own declaration, ever have been Pagans, as they now are. Thus, the different nations who possessed Abyssinia, were the Cushites, the Shepherds, Amhara, Agow of Damot, Agow of Tchcra, and Gafat. In conformity with the Axum chronicle, which mentions that the four last of these nations had emigrated from Palestine, Mr Bruce contends that they were Canaanites, who escaped from the cruelty of the Israelites, when they took pos session of the promised land. His theory is contrary to
probability, and unsupported by facts. It rests chiefly on the coincidence between the period of the invasion of Canaan, and the entrance of these strangers into Ethiopia; and on the testimony of Procopius, a ho men tions that, in his time, two pillars were standing on the coast of Mauritania, which bore this inscription in the Phoenician language : " We are Canaanites. flying from the lace of Joshua the son of Nun, the robber." Were the first of these arguments admitted, it would not be difficult to indentify the negroes imported to our West Indian colonies front the coast of Guinea, with the ad venturers who emigrate, at the same period, to the American continents,, from the Highlands of Scotland ; and, as the authenticity of the inscriptions mentioned by Procopius is much disputed, they cannot fairly be ad duced in proof of any historical fact. Mr Bruce's opinion, that the Ethiopians spoke the original language, and were the first inventors of writing, must be as cribed to the same fondness for theory, by which he seems to have been too frequently misled. It is pertain, t r, that they were, in alw lent times, a learned and ray ilized people ; how they tame to be degraded into their present state of barbarity, is a phenomenon as un accountable and striking, as the degeneracy of their neighbours, the Egyptians.
According to an extravagant fiction, the Ethiopians, ilto possessed the country of Thebais, made an irrup tion into Lower Egypt, while the Jewish legislator re sided in that country ; penetrated as far as Memphis ; and, having defeated the Egyptians, threatened the kingdom with total destruction. By the advice of the oracles, Moses was intrusted with the command of the Egyptian forces, and immediately prepared to invade the enemy's country. Instead of marching along the banks of the Nile, where the Ethiopians were ready to oppose him, he led his army through some of the in terior countries, which were much infested with serpents. To protect his Wien from these dangerous animals, he carried along with him a number of panniers, formed of the papyrus, which he filled with the birds named ibis, and, as soon as he approached the tract where the rep tiles abounded, he let out a sufficient number of these birds, which, by destroying the serpents, cleared the way for his army. The Ethiopians, thus surprised in their own country, where they had no dread of invasion, were easily defeated in the field, and took refuge in their capital Meroc, a city rendered almost impregna ble by three rivers flowing round it, the Astapus, the Astaboras, and the Nile. The daughter of the Ethiopian monarch became enamoured of Moses, whom she had seen from the walls ; and offered, on condition of his swearing to marry her, to open the city to the assailants. Moses complied ; hut stained the glory of his conquest by his cruelty towards the inhabitants. He plundered their city, put many of them to the sword, ravaged the whole country, and dismantled their places of strength. He then returned in triumph to Egypt, after having been absent for ten years on this expedition.