160 VOLUNTARY SLAVERY. 



" Wombaroitsh" or judges of an inferior kind, who 

 relieve the king of all first hearings of cases, ex- 

 cept in most important ones, and who sit in judg- 

 ment in one of the courts of the palace, decided 

 in favour of the children ; but this decision, on an 

 appeal by the courtier, was negatived by the 

 Negoos himself, without any hearing of those un- 

 fortunates who were most interested. The " Wom- 

 baroitsh" put in a plea, however, founded upon the 

 canons of their Church, and the numerous solicita- 

 tions of the free relations of the bonclpeople, in- 

 duced the Negoos to acknowledge himself to 

 have been in error, and to proclaim that the people 

 alone, whom he had fed and clothed in the time of 

 the famine, were his slaves for life, and that their 

 children for the future must be considered free. 



These circumstances I became acquainted with 

 in consequence of having the daughter of one of 

 these very bondsmen in my service, and who was 

 old enough, at the time of the famine, to recollect 

 the sad miseries that fell upon her own family during 

 its continuance, until her father and two brothers 

 sold themselves for their food, in the manner I have 

 above related, to the future service of the Negoos. 



Among others who addressed the Negoos in 

 favour of the children, whose numbers amounted 

 to scarcely more than five hundred, were the 

 officers of the British Mission, a fact, however, of 

 which I never heard until my arrival in this 

 country, nor is it, I am afraid, very generally 



