S4f TRAVELS IN ABYSSINIA. 
and wished to have been sent on a mission tor 
court ; instead of which he was appointed superin- 
tendent of the monasteries in the province of 
Tigre. This charge was rendered peculiarly pain- 
ful by the famine which the inroad of the locusts, 
So unjustly imputed to himself, had occasioned* 
The monastery was besieged by unhappy persons, 
fahom want had driven from their habitations, and 
whose meagre forms, and pale aspect, indicated the 
excess of their misery. The utmost exertions of 
charity were insufficient to prevent many from pe* 
rishing with hunger. 
About this time, a civil dissension arose, in which 
the missionaries were very nearly involved. The 
viceroy of Tigre had married a daughter of the 
emperor ; but that lady, instead of paying any re- 
gard to her conjugal duties, abandoned herself to 
every species of dissoluteness. The viceroy, it 
seems, " was more nice in that matter, than peo- 
ff pie of rank in this country generally are." It 
would seem as if the father thought the nicety 
somewhat superfluous \ though he admits, that it 
requires a considerable degree of patience to en- 
dure such injuries. " The viceroy's virtue," says 
he, " was not proof against this temptation ; he 
"fell into a deep melancholy,'* and made bitter 
complaints to the emperor of the scandalous con- 
duct of his daughter. That monarch, it appears, 
treated the affair very lightly, which more and 
