Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/250

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The basha's body was carried upon a mule out of the field, and struck a terror into all the Mahometans wherever it paired. It no sooner entered Dobarwa than it was obliged to be carried out at the other end of the town. Sertza Denghel was not one that slumbered upon a victory. He entered Dobarwa sword in hand, putting all the Pagans and Mahometans that fell in his way to death, and, in this manner, pursued them to the frontiers of Masuah, leaving many to die for want of water in that desert.

The king, in honour of this brave action performed by Robel, ordered what follows to be writ in letters of gold, and inserted in the records of the kingdom: "Robel, servant to Sertza Denghel, and son to Menetcheli, slew a Turkish basha on horseback with a common knife."

Sertza Denghel, having thus delivered himself from the most formidable of his enemies, marched through Gojam again into Narea, extirpating, all the way he went, the Galla that obstructed his way to that state. He left an additional number of priests and monks to instruct them in the Christian religion; though there are some historians of this reign who pretend that it was not till this second visit that Narea was converted.

However this may be, victory had everywhere attended his steps, and he was now preparing to chastise the malcontents at Damot, when he was accosted by a priest, famous for his holiness and talent for divination, who warned him not to undertake that war. But the king, expressing his contempt of both the message and messenger, declared his fixed resolution to invade Damot without delay.