MASSO WA. 
213 
under the violent delirium which commonly attends the last stage 
of a putrid fever. He had been most injudiciously treated^ and was 
chained, with his face downwards on a couch, so that his body 
was bruised, and his skull almost fractured, by the vain efforts he 
had made to release himself. Soon after Mr. Smith's arrival^ he 
became to a certain degree sensible, asked for Mr. Coffin's gun, 
with which he had seen him shoot a few days before, and on 
seeing it became more composed, eat a few dates which were 
offered him, and begged his surrounding companions to take 
care of the money tied up in his cloth and give it to his master, 
telling them to divide his clothes among themselves." He 
then called for something to drink, but before it could be brought 
expired in a violent convulsion. 
These are the fevers which so often attack strangers who come 
down from the interior, and which produce in the minds of the 
Abyssinians that great dread and horror of the coast which they 
generally entertain. After death the body was carefully washed, 
sewed up in a new sheet, which I had sent for the purpose, and 
decently buried in a spot of ground allotted to the Abyssinians for 
that purpose : so far indeed did the Mahomedans lay aside their 
bigotry on this occasion, that two of the Nayib's own people 
were appointed to superintend the funeral. To secure the 
grave trom the hyyenas a trough was first dug, resembling a 
common grave, on one side of which a kind of shelving vault 
was excavated, which, as soon as the body was deposited in it, 
was closed in with thorny branches and heavy stones, and after- 
wards the first opening was filled with solid earth. The 
Abyssinian priest who came down with the party, recited the 
