THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 375 



king, it was likewife from his own hand ; it was always 

 when alone, with a fear expreffed that I fuffered myfelf to 

 he ftrakened rather than afk, and that I did not levy, with 

 fufficient feverity, the money the feveral places allotted to 

 me were bound to pay, which, indeed, was always the cafe. 

 The queen, on the other hand, from whom I received con- 

 ftant donations, never either produced gold herfelf, nor 

 fpoke of it before or after, but fent it by a fervant of hers 

 to a fervant of mine, to employ it for the neceflaries of my 

 family. 



I confess I left the queen very much affected with the 

 difpofition I had found her in, and, if I had been of a tem- 

 per to give credit to prognoftics, and a fafe way bad been 

 opened through Tigre, I lhould at that time, perhaps, have 

 taken the queen's advice, and returned without feeing the 

 fountains of the Nile, in the fame manner that all the tra- 

 vellers of antiquity, who had ever as yet endeavoured to 

 explore them, had been forced to do ; but the prodigious 

 bullle and preparation which I found was daily making in 

 Gondar, and the aflurances everybody gave me that, fafe 

 in the middle of a victorious army, I mould fee, at my lei- 

 sure, that famous fpot, made me refume my former refuta- 

 tions, awakened my ambition, and made me look upon it 

 as a kind of treafon done to my country, in which i'uch 

 efforts were then making for difcoverics, to renounce, now 

 it was in my power, the putting them in poffeiiion of that 

 one which had baffled the courage and perfeverance of the 

 braveft men in all ages. The pleafure, too, of herborifing 

 in an unknown country, fuch as Emfras was, of continuing 

 to do fo in fafety, and the approaching every day to the end 

 of my wiib.es, chafed away all thofe gloomy apprehenfions 



^ b 2 which 



