ANTALOW. 
53 
I then pressed him to send for Hadjee Hamed ; upon which he 
returned back word, that our interpreter did not dare to come, being 
in fear of his Hfe, which he said we had threatened to put an end to. 
This message gave us considerable uneasiness, as it appeared reason- 
able to suppose that so palpable a falsehood could only be invented 
by Hadjee Hamed, for the purpose of counteracting our interest with 
theRas, which he might conceive detrimental to that of the SherifFe 
of Mecca ; or by the Ras, for the purpose of throwing on us the blame 
of his departure, which, on the contrary, was occasioned by the mis- 
conduct of his own impertinent slaves ; and in either case it was 
likely to be the forerunner of much mischief to our views. The only 
circumstance that led us to impute it to Hadjee Hamed was, that 
we before had discovered that he endeavoured to lessen as much as 
possible the value of the presents which we gave to the Ras. 
" The Ras sent in the course of the day a message of enquiry 
after our health, accompanied by a present of oranges, limes and 
dried plantains. Our food was as usual brought to our apartment ; 
it consisted of a fowl in the morning, and a small mutton curry in 
the evening, which, though rather a scanty allowance, put us to no 
real inconvenience, as we had a plentiful supply of good bread and 
maize ; in addition to which we this day received from the Ras, 
about noon, some of his own fine wheaten bread. 
" I was engaged during the morning in penning some of my 
sketches, and Captain Rudland in teaching one of the Ras's prin- 
cipal men how to make a white-wash for the walls of the house, 
from a chalk stone that we found on the hill of Antalow. 
" Mr. Carter got an observation at noon, by which he fixed the 
latitude of this place to be in 12,° 4 8' 30''. The latter part of the 
