have brought a moullah along with you. Do you think I shall read all these letters? Why, it would take me a month." And he glared upon me, with his mouth open, so like an idiot, that it was with the utmost difficulty I kept my gravity, only answering, "Just as you please; you know best."
He affected at first not to understand Arabic; spoke by an interpreter in the language of Masuah, which is a dialect of Tigré; but seeing I understood him in this, he spoke Arabic, and spoke it well.
A silence followed this short conversation, and I took the opportunity to give him his present, with which he did not seem displeased, but rather that it was below him to tell me so; for, without saying a word about it, he asked me, where the Abuna of Habesh was? and why he tarried so long? I said, The wars in Upper Egypt had made the roads dangerous; and, it was easy to see, Omar longed much to settle accounts with him.
I took my leave of the Naybe, very little pleased with my reception, and the small account he seemed to make of my letters, or of myself; but heartily satisfied with having sent my dispatches to Janni, now far out of his power.
The inhabitants of Masuah were dying of the small-pox, so that there was fear the living would not be sufficient to bury the dead. The whole island was filled with shrieks and lamentations both night and day. They at last began to throw the bodies into the sea, which deprived us of our great support, fish, of which we had ate some kinds thatwere
