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CHAPTER VI. 
O N our arrival at Dixan, we were received with many demon- 
strations of joy by the inhabitants, and their chief, Baharnegash 
Yasous, and very soon after, our former plague, his brother, at the 
head of the chief men of the place, brought us two hundred cakes 
of bread, and a bullock, as a present from the town. This alteration 
of conduct was indeed remarkable, but may be easily accounted 
for, by the impression our favourable reception at Antalow had 
made on the Baharnegash, and the gratitude which I believe he 
really felt for our having used our influence with the Ras so power- 
fully in his favour, that, soon after our departure, he had obtained 
the regular investment of his office as Baharnegash, which he had 
in vain applied for ever since the death of his father. We also de- 
rived some benefit from the information relative to the history of 
Abyssinia, which we had acquired from Bruce and Poncet, and 
which was to the natives a source of perpetual astonishment. 
Bruce's drawings of Gondar, and its vicinity, which we shewed to 
the Baharnegash, tended to raise us, in his opinion, almost beyond 
the level of mortality. We killed two bullocks for our party, one 
of which we bought at the village of Adehadid, for four dollars, 
which, with the five dollars that we had been obliged to send for- 
ward to purchase flour, ghee, and other articles, completely ex- 
hausted our stock, and we should have been now absolutely penny- 
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