Here, as the civil war still raged with unexampled fury, he was during a whole year witness of all those atrocities which ferocious barbarians exercise towards each other when excited by ambition or revenge. At the termination of this period, however, notwithstanding that old law of Abyssinia forbidding strangers to quit the country, which had a thousand times been broken, he obtained the king's permission to depart, though not before he had taken a solemn oath, which he never intended to fulfil, that, after having visited his home and friends, he would return.
Leaving Gondar on the 26th of December, 1771, with a numerous suite of attendants, he proceeded through the northern provinces of Abyssinia, the country of the Shangalla, and crossing the rivers Rabad, Dender, and Nile, arrived on the 29th of April, 1772, at Sennaar, the capital of Nubia. The next morning after his arrival he was summoned into the presence of the king, whom he found in a small apartment in his vast clay-built palace, dressed very meanly, and reposing on a mattress covered with a Persian carpet. He was a "fellow of no mark or likelihood," with a "very plebeian countenance;" but he received the stranger civilly, asked him numerous questions, and furnished him with a very comfortable dinner of camel's flesh. The crowds in the streets, however, were exeedingly insolent; and while they affronted and hooted at him as he passed, he called to mind with horror that, but a few years before, this same mob had murdered a French ambassador with all his attendants.
At this city he was detained by various circumstances until the 8th of September, and during this period was enabled to make numerous inquiries into the history of the country, civil and natural, together with the manners, customs, religions, and character of its inhabitants. But when the day of departure arrived, he proceeded with indescribable pleasure
