THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 379 
king, it was likewife from his own hand; it was always 
when alone, with a fear expreffed that I fuffered myfelf to 
be ftraitened 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 
{poke 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 conress 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 had been 
opened through Tigré, I fhould 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- 
wvellers of antiquity, who had -ever as yet endeavoured to 
explore them, had been forced to do; but the prodigious 
buftle and preparation which I found was daily making in 
Gondar, and the affurances everybody gave me that, fafe 
in the middle of a victorious army, I fhould fee, at my lei- 
fure, that famous {pot, made me refume my former refolu- 
tions, awakened my ambition, and made me look upon it 
as a kind of treafon done to my country, in which fuch 
efforts were then making for difcoverics, to renounce, now 
at Was in my power, the putting them in pofleffion of that 
sone which had baffled the courage and perfeverance of the 
braveft men in allages. The pleafure, too, of herborifing 
in an unknown country, fuchas Emfras was, of conunuing 
to do fo in fafety, and the approaching every day to the end 
of my wifhes, chafed away all thofe gloomy apprehenfions 
B18) which 
