The extraordinary manner in which the king employed his time soon made him the object of public censure. Pasquinades began to be circulated throughout the capital; one in particular, a large roll of parchment, intituled, "The expeditions of Yasous the little." The king in reality was a man of short stature. The Ethiopic word Tannush, joined to the king's name Yasous el Tannush, applied both to his stature and actions. So Tallac, the name given to another Yasous, his predecessor, signified great in capacity and atchievement, as well as that he was of a large and masculine person.
These expeditions, though enumerated in a large sheet of parchment, were confined to a very few miles; from Gondar to Kahha, from Kahha to Koscam, from Koscam, to Azazo, from Azazo to Gondar, from Gondar to Koscam, from Koscam to Azazo, and so on. It was a similar piece of ridicule upon his father Philip, as we are informed, that, in the last century, cost Don Carlos, prince of Spain, his life.
This satire nettled Yasous exceedingly; and, to wipe off the imputation of inactivity and want of ambition, he prepared for an expedition against Sennaar. It was not, however, one of those inroads into Atbara upon the Arabs and Shepherds, whom the Funge had conquered and made tributary to them; but was a regular compaign with a royal army, aimed directly at the very vitals of the monarchy of Sennaar, the capital of the Funge, and at the conquest or extirpation of those strangers entirely from Atbara.
We have seen, in the course of our history, that these two kingdoms, Abyssinia and Funge, had been on very bad
