MEMOIR OP BRUCE. 
59 
and the use of fumigation, so contrary to the suffo- 
cating system and the cramming with raw beef as 
practised in Abyssinia, was attended with the hap- 
piest results. His patients were at length considered 
out of danger, and by way of fee he received the 
present of a house in the immediate vicinity of the 
palace, where he continued to reside, agreeably to 
the most positive command of Eas Michael, not to 
leave his charge until further orders. The leisure 
thus afforded him he employed in mounting his 
instruments, and making some astronomical and 
meteorological observations. 
On the 8th of March, Bruce proceeded to Azazo 
to meet the Eas, who had arrived with the troops 
at that place. That extraordinary person, feared 
and hated by every individual in Abyssinia, was 
dressed in a coarse dirty cloth, wrapped about him 
like a blanket, with a sort of table-cloth folded 
about his head. He was lean, old, and lame, with 
sore eyes, and sat stooping upon a favourite mule ; 
hut he was too much occupied with military busi- 
ness to enter into discourse with the stranger. He 
bed just gained a victory over the Galla tribes, and 
the first horrid proof of it which he exhibited was 
causing the eyes of twelve of their chiefs, whom he 
had taken prisoners, to he pulled out, and the un- 
fortunate sufferers to he turned sightless into the 
desert, to he devoured at night by the hyrenas. 
Next day, the army, about 30,000 strong, marched 
into the town in triumph ; the Eas took the com- 
mand of the troops at Tigre ; he was bareheaded, 
