This Province Is Inhabited By A Nation Of The
Agaus, Who Call, But Only Call, Themselves Christians, For By Daily
Intermarriages They Have Allied Themselves To The Pagan Agaus, And
Adopted All Their Customs And Ceremonies.
These two nations are
very numerous, fierce, and unconquerable, inhabiting a country full
of mountains, which are covered with woods, and hollowed by nature
into vast caverns, many of which are capable of containing several
numerous families, and hundreds of cows.
To these recesses the
Agaus betake themselves when they are driven out of the plain, where
it is almost impossible to find them, and certain ruin to pursue
them. This people increases extremely, every man being allowed so
many wives as he hath hundreds of cows, and it is seldom that the
hundreds are required to be complete.
In the eastern part of this kingdom, on the declivity of a mountain,
whose descent is so easy that it seems a beautiful plain, is that
source of the Nile which has been sought after at so much expense of
labour, and about which such variety of conjectures hath been formed
without success. This spring, or rather these two springs, are two
holes, each about two feet diameter, a stone's cast distant from
each other; the one is but about five feet and a half in depth - at
least we could not get our plummet farther, perhaps because it was
stopped by roots, for the whole place is full of trees; of the
other, which is somewhat less, with a line of ten feet we could find
no bottom, and were assured by the inhabitants that none ever had
been found.
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