Denghel, all my great friends and the hopes of this country, I for the first time, since my arrival in Abyssinia, abandoned myself to joy.
My constitution was, however, too much weakened to bear any excesses. The day after, when I went home to Emfras, I found myself attacked with a slow fever, and, thinking that it was the prelude of an ague, with which I was often tormented, I fell to taking bark, without any remission, or, where the remission was very obscure, I shut myself up in the house, upon my constant regimen of boiled rice, with abundant draughts of cold water.
I was at this time told that there was a great commotion at Gondar; that a monk of Debra Libanos, a favourite of the Iteghè and of the king too, had excommunicated Abba Salama in a dispute about religion at the Itchegué's house; and, the day after, Hagi Mahomet, one of Ras Michael's tent-makers, who lived in the town below, through which the high road from Gojam passes, came to tell me, that many monks from Gojam had passed through the low town, and expressed themselves very much dissatisfied by hearing that a frank (meaning me) was in the town above. He said that when they came in sixes and sevens at a time, there was no fear; but when they returned altogether (as Michael sometimes made them do) they were like so many madmen; therefore, if I resolved to stay at Emfras, he wished I would order him send me some Mahometan soldiers, who would strictly act as I commanded them.
At the same time I received news that my great friend, Tecla Mariam, and his daughter of the same name, themost
