3o8 A SPORTING TRIP THROUGH ABYSSINIA chai-. 



conceive. This chamber, indeed, was never perfectly finished from a 

 want of mirrors. 



The king had begun another chamber of equal expense, consisting 

 of plates of ivory with stars of all colours stained in each plate at 

 proper distances. This too was going to ruin ; little had been done 

 in it but the alcove in which he sat. 



Bruce goes on to tell us that the palace had already 

 been much damaged, and many of the mirrors destroyed 

 by fire in the time of Joas (1756- 1769), before he visited 

 the capital. On ist May 1771, in the reign of Tecla 

 Haymanot II., after the defeat of Ras Michael, the great 

 Tigre general, a band of rebel Gallas burst into the 

 palace and the presence - chamber, where the king, 

 attended by Bruce, was seated in an alcove. These 

 barbarous tribesmen, who had never seen a looking- 

 glass before, enraged apparently at beholding their own 

 reflection, and possibly attributing it to magic, began 

 forthwith to slash and demolish the mirrors, without 

 taking any notice of the king and his companions. The 

 crash of the falling glass brought a loyal chieftain and 

 his followers to the spot, who drove the rebels from the 

 chamber and the palace, but were too late to prevent 

 the destruction, of which the signs are still apparent 

 everywhere. 



Going round the pepper-box tower on the west, we 

 followed the wall, as it turns at right angles for 60 

 feet, before again continuing in a higher castellated 

 form for another 130 feet in a westerly direction, where 

 the corner of the enclosure is dominated by a larger 

 round tower. We passed through a doorway in the 

 angle made by the lower wall with the embattled one^ 



