ripoli and
Barca,--were conquered and almost exterminated by the Nasamones, who
possessed their land; but that a remnant fled to some distant region. It
is not improbable that the present inhabitants of Sennaar, on the south
of Egypt, may be the lineal descendants of these same Psylli; for, since
Egypt was densely peopled and highly cultivated, a barbarous tribe could
scarcely have made good their footing there; and as on the other side
was the Great Desert of the Sahra, and on the north the sea, there was
no resource open to them but to creep along the desert edge of Egypt
till they found a thinly-inhabited land sufficiently savage to enable
them to form a settlement. The first region of this character that they
could possibly find would be Nubia; and there it is most interesting to
know that there exists a people at the present time, pretending to the
same powers as the old Psylli. Bruce, whose testimony, at first much
impugned, has come to be received with confidence, avouches that all the
black people in the kingdom of Sennaar, whether Funge or Nuba, are
perfectly armed against the bite of either scorpion or viper. They take
the _Cerastes_--a little asp with two horns, of the most deadly
venom--into their hands at all times, put them into their bosoms, and
throw them at one another as children do balls, without ever irritating
them by this usage so much as to make them bite. One day when the
traveller was sitting with the brother of the prime minister of Sennaar,
a slave of his brought a _Cerastes_, which he had just taken out of a
hole, and was using with every sort of familiarity. Bruce expressed his
suspicion that the teeth had been drawn, but was assured that they were
not, both by the slave and by his master, who, taking the viper from
him, wound it round his arm, and at the traveller's desire, ordered the
servant to accompany him with it to his residence. Here Bruce, to test
the power of the serpent, took a chicken by the neck, and made it
flutter; the seeming indifference of the snake immediately gave place to
eagerness, and he bit the fowl with great signs of anger, which died
almost immediately. Bruce considers that the indifference was only
seeming towards the man,--that it was indeed powerlessness, for he
constantly observed that, however lively the snake was before, yet upon
being seized by any of the blacks, it seemed as if taken with sudden
sickness and feebleness, frequently shut its eyes, and never tur