All the people present, most of them veteran soldiers, and consequently inured to blood, appeared shocked and disgusted at this wanton piece of cruelty. For my part, a kind of faintishness, or feebleness, had taken possession of my heart, ever since the execution of the two men on our march about the kantuffa; and this second act of cruelty occasioned such a horror, joined with an absence of mind, that I found myself unable to give an immediate answer, though the king had spoken twice to me.
It was about nine o'clock in the morning when we entered Gondar; every person we met on the street wore the countenance of a condemned malefactor; the Ras went immediately to the palace with the king, who retired, as usual, to a kind of cage or lattice-window, where he always sits unseen when in council. We were then in the council-chamber, and four of the judges seated; none of the governors of provinces were prefent but Ras Michael, and Kasmati Tesfos of Sire. Abba Salama was brought to the foot of the table without irons, at perfect liberty. The accuser for the king (it is a post in this country in no great estimation) began the charge against him with great force and eloquence: he stated, one by one, the crimes committed by him at different periods, the sum of which amounted to prove Salama to be the greatest monster upon earth: among these were various kinds of murder, especially by poison; incest, with every degree collateral and descendant. He concluded this black, horrid list with the charge of high treason, or cursing the king, and absolving his subjects from their allegiance, which he stated as the greatest crime human nature was capable of, as involving in its consequences all sorts of other crimes. Abba Salama,
