ixxiv INTRODUCTION. 



in not applying in proper time, fometimes by the abfenceof 

 merchants, who were all Mahometans, conftantly engaged 

 in bufinefs and in journies, and more efpecially on the king's 

 retiring to Tigre, after the battle of Limjour, when I was 

 abandoned during the ufurpation of the unworthy Socinios. 

 It was then I had recourie to Petros and the Greeks, but 

 more for their convenience than my own, and very feldom 

 from necefiity. This opulence enabled me to treat upoa 

 equal footing, to do favours as well as to receive them. 



Every mountebank-trick was a great accomplishment 

 there, fuch as making fqmbs, crackers, and rockets. There 

 was no nation in the country to which by thefe accompani- 

 ments I might not have pretended, had I been mad enough 

 to have ever directed my thoughts that way ; a m cer- 



tain, that in vain I might have folkited leave to return, 

 had' not a melancholy defpondency, the amor patria, fe: zd 

 me, and my health fo far declined as apparently to 

 threaten death ; but I was not even then permitted to 

 leave Abyilinia till under a very falemnoath 1 promifed to 

 return. 



This manner of conducting myfelf had likewife its dis- 

 advantages. The reader will fee the times, without their 

 being pointed out to him, in the courfe of the narrative. Is 

 had very near occafioned me to be murdered at Mafuah-, 

 but it was the means of preferving me at Gondar, by putting 

 Bie above being in fulted or quettioned by priefts, the fatal 

 rock upon which all other European travellers had fplit : It 

 would have occafioned my death at Sennaar, had I not been 

 fa prudent as to dilguife and lay afide the independent car- 

 jt ria £ e 



