Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/589

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THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
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set on fire. But the soldiers, at their first meeting in the palace[1], had shut up the coronation-chamber, and the other royal apartments, and possessed themselves of the kettle-drum by which all proclamations were made at the gate, driving away, and rudely treating the multitude on every side. At last they brought out the drum, though it was yet night, and made this proclamation:—"David, son of our late king Yasous, is our king." The tumult and disorder, nevertheless, still continued; during all which, it was very remarkable no one ever thought of offering an injury to Oustas.

While these things were passing at Gondar, a violent alarm had seized all the princes upon the mountain of Wechnè. They had been treated with severity during Oustas's whole reign. Their revenues had been with-held, or at least not regularly paid, and they had been reduced nearly to perish for want of the necessaries of life. When, therefore, the accounts of Oustas's illness arrived, and that the princi-

  1. There seems here some contradiction which needs explanation. It is said that the palace was burnt before Oustas went to his tent. How then could the soldiers assemble in it afterwards? The palace consists of a number of separate houses at no great distance, but detached from one another with one room in each. That where the coronation is performed is called Anbasa Bet; another, where the king sits in festivals, is called Zeffan Bet; another is called Werk Sacala, the gold-house; another Gimja Bet, or the brocade-house, where the wardrobe and the gold stuffs used for presents, or received as such, are laid. Now, we suppose Oustas in any one of these apartments, say Zeffan Bet, which he left to go to his tent, and it was then burnt; still there remained the coronation-house where the regalia was kept, which the soldiers locked up that it might not be used to crown Fasil, Oustas's son, whom they thought the seven great men they had murdered conspired to place upon the the throne after his father.