in "one of the most honourable seats, saying 'sit down, Yayoubé: God has exalted you above all in this country when he has put it in your power, though but a stranger, to confer charity upon the king of it.'"
This story in itself contains several points that render it extremely suspicious; the most material of which are the disgraceful exposure of the body, a circumstance which the extreme delicacy of the Abyssinians respecting the dead would scarcely have permitted them to allow; and the length of time (two months) which the body is said to have been kept in the church, notwithstanding that it had before lain upwards of seventeen months in the ground without any kind of covering to keep it from putrefaction. These doubts are more than confirmed by the simple statement of the transaction met with in the original memoranda; from which it appears, that when the murderer pointed out the spot where the body lay, "it was found to be shallowly covered with earth;" that "the arm was the first part that presented itself, on which was a kind of cartouche the Abesh wear on their arm to guard them from evil; by this it was known that it was the king, and the body covered, and a tent placed over it to be raised up on the Pascha day, Tuesday 21st;" and, again, in another place, that "at the church-yard they only uncovered the arm, and even the blood-stained cartouche;" and not a word is here mentioned of the exposure of the body, the carpet, or the muslin. Can any thing be more different than these two accounts? The latter too is infinitely more consistent than the former narrative; for it there appears that the Abyssinians, as they would naturally have felt, were shocked at the first circumstance which identified the body, and carefully covered it over, and abstained from disturbing it, as it already had been placed in consecrated ground. The whole chain of additional remarks, therefore, connected with the exposure of the body, and the humanity said to have been displayed on the occasion, may be considered merely as poetical embellishments.
I here beg leave to observe, that the reader who wishes to form a just estimate of the merits and faults of Mr. Bruce should carefully compare the information given in the late appendices with the original publication, and, af-
