280 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER { 
kingdom*, and by Yafous the Great in the other, fo late as 
the beginning of the laft century. 
Tur kings of Abyflinia are above all laws. They are 
fupreme in all caufes ecclefiaftical and civil; the land and - 
perfons of their fubjects are equally their property, and 
every inhabitant of their kingdom is born their flave; if 
he bears a higher rank it is by the king’s gift; for his near- 
eft relations are accounted nothing better. The fame ob- 
tained in Perfia. Ariftotle calls the Perfian generals and 
nobles, flaves of the great king}. Xerxes, reproving Pytheus 
the Lydian when feeking to excufe one of his fons from 
going to war, fays, “You that are my flave, and bound to 
follow me with your wife and all your familyt.”—And Go- 
bryas§ fays to Cyrus, “I deliver myfelf to you, at once your 
companion and your flave.” 
‘Tnrre are feveral kinds of bread in Abyflinia, fome of 
different forts of teff, and fome of tocuffo, which alfo vary 
in quality. The king of Abyffinia eats of wheat bread, 
though not of every wheat, but of that only that grows in 
the province.of Dembea, therefore called the king’s food. It 
was fo with the kings of Perfia, who ate wheat bread, He- 
rodotus fays, but only of a particular kind, as:we learn from 
Strabo ||. 
I nave fhewn, in the courfe of the foregoing hiftory, that 
it always has been, and full is the cuftom of the kings of 
2 Abyflinia 
* Plutarch, in Apothegmat. + De Mundo. + Herod lib. wii. § Kenoph: lib. iv. || Strabo lib. xv. 
