Mr Bruce, in opposition to almost every account that has been published of Abyssinia, maintains, that there arc few serpents in that country. In Upper Abyssinia he saw none of any kind, and no remarkable varieties even in the low country, excepting the large snake call ed boa, which is often above twenty feet in length, and as thick as an ordinary man's thigh. His chief residence is by the grassy stagnant pools of rivers. He is an ani mal of prey, and feeds upon antelopes and deer, which, as he has no canine teeth, he swallows in whole pieces, alter having broken the bones, and drawn them out into a length to be more easily managed. There is likewise a species of horned viper called cerastes, which is gene rally about 13 or 14 inches long. It has sixteen small immoveable teeth, and in the upper jaw two canine teeth, hollow, crooked, and finely polished. Its poison, con sidering its size, is very copious, and is contained in a bag under its canine teeth ; when these are taken out, an operation very easily performed, the viper bites without any fatal consequence. Its horns are about three-twelfths of an inch long, and its body. where thickest, about ten twelfths. It moves with great rapidity, and in all direc tions. When inclined to surprise any person who is too fin' from it, it creeps with its side towards him, and its head averted, till, judging its distance, it turns round, and springs on him.
Mr Bruce vouches, from his own observation, for the reality of the incantation of serpents. At Cairo he saw a man take a cerastes, with his naked hand, from a num ber of others at the bottom of a tub, put it in his breast, twist.it about his neck, and last of all eat it with as little repugnance as if it had been a stock of celery. All the black people of Sennaar are perfectly armed against the bite of either scorpion or viper. They take them with out scruple in their hands, and toss them to one another like balls, without irritating them so much as to bite. The creature, however lively before, when seized by one of these barbarians, always appeared languid and feeble, frequently shut his eyes, and never turned his mouth towards the arm of the person that held him ; yet, when a chicken was made to flutter before him, his seeming indifference left him ; he bit it with great signs of rage, and the chicken died almost instantly. These people pretend to possess a natural exemption from the noxious power of serpents ; and, by certain medicines, can com municate this exemption to others. The Arabs acquire it from their infancy, by chewing a certain root, and washing themselves with an infusion of certain plants in water. Though the drugs were given to Mr Bruce, and he several times fortified himself for the experiment, his resolution always failed him at the moment of trial.
So much for the natural history of Abyssinia, which we have detailed the more minutely, because the facts it pest:nits, while they are not uninteresting to the general reader, are calculated to give the naturalist the most correct idea of the peculiarities of climate and country .
If the external features of this extensi‘e region are singular and striking—the character and manners of its inhabitants are still inure so. The picture is indeed mortifying and disgusting ; of all the people in the world, the Abyssinians are perhaps the most barbarous and depraved. The thirst of revenge, inflamed by per petual hostilities, and by personal and national injuries, has frequently impelled the savage to torture and devour the body of his captive enemy. We sicken with horror at the recital, and cannot easily be reconciled to the idea, that we partake of the same nature w ith the mon strous cannibal. But what shall we think of a people, who, without the irritation of war, or the animosity of revenge, seem habitually to delight in cruelties scarce less enormous, and whose daily banquets arc disgraced by the protracted torture of the unhappy animal, which is destined to be the victim of their mmatural luxury ? Mr Bruce, who was frequently compelled to be pre sent at these horrid festivals, has given a very lively description of one of them, which we shall transcribe in his own words. " A long table is set in the middle of a large room, and benches beside it for a number of guests who are invited. 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 dewlap in England, is cut only so deep as to arrive at the fat, of which it totally consists, and by the separation of a few small blood vessels, six or seven drops of blood only fall to the ground. They have no stone, bench, nor altar, upon which these cruel assassins lay the animal's head in this operation. I should beg his pardon indeed Ib• calling him an assassin, as he is not so merciful as to aim at the life, but on the contrary, to keep the beast alive till he be totally eaten up. Having satisfied the .Mosaical law, according to his conception, by pouring these six or seven drops upon the ground, two or more of them fall to work ; on the back of the beast, and on each side of the spine, they cut skin deep ; then putting their lingers between the flesh and the skin, they begin to strip the hide of the animal half way clown his ribs, and so on to the buttock, cutting the skin wherever it hinders them commodiously to strip the poor animal bare. All the flesh on the buttocks is cut off then, and in solid square pieces without bones, or much effusion of blood ; and the prodigious noise the animal makes, is a signal for the company to sit down to table.