14 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER
or shield, and only two naked servants with him ; did not I tell you what was the meaning of the news ?" Though this was spoken in a language of which it was impossible Am- lac could know a syllable, yet he presently apprehended in part what I would say. " I see, says he, you believe what I told you last night to be false, and invented only to get from you a present : but you shall see ; and if this day we do not meet Welled Aragawi and his soldiers, you are then in the right; it is as you imagine." — " You do me wrong, said I, and have not understood me, for how should you. Those white people believe too well all you told them, and are only apprehensive of your not being able to defend us, being without arms and followers. All I said was, that where you were, armed or unarmed, there was no danger, "--" True, says he, you are now in Maitsha, and not in my coun- try, which is Goutto ; you are now in the worst country in all Abyssinia, where the brother kills his brother for a loaf of bread, of which he has no need: you are in a country of Pagans, or dogs, Galla, and worse than Galla ; if ever you meet an old man here, he is a stranger ; all that are natives die by the lance young; and yet, though these two chieftains I mentioned fight to-day, unarmed as I am, (as you well said) you are in no danger while I am with you. These people of Maitsha, shut up between the Jemma, the Nile, and the lake, have no where but from the Agows to get what they want ; they come to the same market with us here in Goutto ; the fords of the Jemma, they know, are in my hands ; and did they offer an injury to a friend of mine, were it but to whistle as he passed them, they know 1 am not gentle; though not a Galla, they are sensible, one day or other, I should call them to account, though it were in the bed-chamber of their master Fasil."
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