in not applying in proper time, sometimes by the absence of merchants, who were all Mahometans, constantly engaged in business and in journies, and more especially on the king's retiring to Tigré, after the battle of Limjour, when I was abandoned during the usurpation of the unworthy Socinios. It was then I had recourse to Petros and the Greeks, but more for their convenience than my own, and very seldom from necessity. This opulence enabled me to treat upon equal footing, to do favours as well as to receive them.
Every mountebank-trick was a great accomplishment there, such as making squibs, crackers, and rockets. There was no station in the country to which by these accomplishments I might not have pretended, had I been mad enough to have ever directed my thoughts that way; and I am certain, that in vain I might have solicited leave to return, had not a melancholy despondency, the amor patriæ, seized me, and my health so far declined as apparently to threaten death; but I was not even then permitted to leave Abyssinia till under a very solemn oath I promised to return.
This manner of conducting myself had likewise its disadvantages. The reader will see the times, without their being pointed out to him, in the course of the narrative. It had very near occasioned me to be murdered at Masuah, but it was the means of preserving me at Gondar, by putting me above being insulted or questioned by priests, the fatal rock upon which all other European travellers had split: It would have occasioned my death at Sennaar, had I not been so prudent as to disguise and lay aside the independent car-riage
