342 
CHELICUT. 
printed narrative Mr. Bruce relates, that about the 10th of 
August, Zor Woldo, a Gall a, was taken up, who confessed him- 
self to have been concerned in the murder of the Emperor Joas, 
and that he pointed out the place in the church-yard of St. 
Raphael, where he had been buried with his clothes on : that 
Zor Woldo was carried to execution ; that the body of Joas was 
raised, and exposed in a very indecent manner in the church ; 
that on the following day he went to the church, and gave the 
monk a Persian carpet to lay it on, and a web of coarse muslin to 
cover it ; and that it continued lying in the church till October, 
when, owing to a threat from Has Michael, it was privately 
interred/' After this Mr. Bruce relates in an alFecting way the 
credit he gained throughout the country for the humane part he 
had acted, and that Ozoro Esther one day placed him in one of 
the most honourable seats, saying ' sit down, Yayoube: God has 
exalted you above all in this country when he has put it in your 
power, though but a stranger, to confer charity upon the kingof it."'' 
This story in itself contains several points that render it ex- 
tremely suspicious ; the most material of which are the disgrace^ 
ful exposure of the body, a circumstance which the extreme 
delicacy of the Abyssinian s respecting the dead would scarcely 
have permitted them to allow ; and the length of time (two 
months) which the body is said to have been kept in the 
church, notwithstanding that it had before lain upwards of 
seventeen months in the ground without any kind of covering to 
keep it from putrefaction, These doubts are more than con- 
firmed by the simple statement of the transaction met with in the 
original memoranda ; from which it appears, that when the mur- 
