but charged the Ras with every sort of enormity, and upon his refuſal sent him a defiance.
The same evening came an expreſs from Shoa, which most punctually brought the book I so much wiſhed for, containing the lives of the firſt kings that lived at Shoa; a fair and fine copy, wrote upon parchment in a large quarto size, in the pure ancient language of Geez. The author was nearly contemporary with the annals which he writes. I ſhewed it to the king, who till then had never ſeen it, and who only ſaid, I fear, Yagoube, you are carrying home these books only to make your kings laugh at ours. The ſatisfaction I received upon the acquisition of this book was greatly diminiſhed by the loss of the donor, Amha Yasous, who set out the 20th of February, attended with about a hundred men, his own servants, and followed by the regret and the good wiſhes of all that had known him, mine in particular, having been, from the firſt time I ſaw him, very much attached to him.
Before his departure he had two long conferences with the king upon the contents of the dispatches sent by his father from Shoa. The substance he frankly told me was, that he did not intend to meddle with the quarrels of Ras Michael, nor those of Fasil; that they should settle these in their own way; but if either attempted any thing against the king, set up any usurpers, as they had done in the person of Socinios, and continued so far against their allegiance to Tecla Haimanout as to withhold his whole revenue, and not to pay him wherewithal to support his state, that he would consider himself as protector of the royal family of Solamon, as the governors of Shoa had always been. —
