On the 7th of February they began to ascend the mountains which skirt the base of Lamalmon; and on the next day commenced the climbing of that mountain itself. Their path was scarcely two feet wide in any part, and wound in a most tortuous direction up the mountain, perpetually on the brink of a precipice. Torrents of water, which in the rainy season roll huge stones and fragments of rock down the steep, had broken up the path in many places, and opened to the travellers a view of the tremendous abyss below, which few persons could look upon without giddiness. Here they were compelled to unload their baggage, and by slow degrees crawl up the hill, carrying it a little at a time on their shoulders round those chasms which intersected the road. The acclivity became steeper, the paths narrower, and the breaches more frequent as they ascended. Scarcely were their mules, though unloaded, able to scramble up, and fell perpetually. To enhance their difficulty and danger, large droves of cattle were descending, which, as they came crowding down the mountain, threatened to push their whole party into the gulf. However, after vast toil they at length succeeded in reaching the small plain near the summit, where both man and beast halted simultaneously, perfectly exhausted with fatigue.
The air on Lamalmon was pleasant and temperate, and their appetite, spirits, and cheerfulness, which the sultry poisonous atmosphere of the Red Sea coasts had put to flight, returned. Next morning they ascended the remainder of the mountain, which was less steep and difficult than the preceding portion, and found that the top, which seemed pointed from below, spread into a large plain, part in pasture, but more bearing grain. It is full of springs, and seems, says Bruce, “to be the great reservoir from whence arise most of the rivers that water this part of Abyssinia. A multitude of streams issue from the very summit in all directions; the springs boil out from the earth in large quantities, capable of turning a mill. They plough, sow, and reap here at all seasons; and the husbandman must blame his own indolence, and not the soil, if he has not three harvests. We saw in one place people busy cutting down wheat; immediately next to it others at the plough, and the adjoining field had green corn in the ear. A little farther it was not an inch above the ground.”
On the 15th of February he arrived at Gondar, when, to his extreme vexation, he found that not only the king and Ras Michael, but almost every other person for whom he had letters, was absent with the army. Petros, the brother of Janni, his Greek friend at Adowa, to whom he had been in an especial manner recommended, had at the news of his coming been terrified by the priests, and fled to Ras Michael for instructions. A friend, however, of one of the Moors, whom Janni had interested in his favour, received him kindly, and conducted him to a house in the Moorish town, where he might, he said, remain safe from the molestations of the priests, until he should receive the protection of the government.
Late in the evening while our traveller was sitting quietly in his apartment reading the book of the prophet Enoch, Ayto Aylo, the queen’s chamberlain, who probably had never before been in the Moorish town, came, accompanied by a number of armed attendants, to visit him. This man, a zealous protector of strangers, and who was desirous, as he said, to end his days in pious seclusion either at Jerusalem or Rome, after a long contest of civilities and a protracted conversation, informed Bruce that the queen-mother, who had heard of his abilities as a physician, was desirous he should undertake the treatment of a young prince then lying ill of the small-pox at the palace of Koscam. On proceeding thither next morning, however, he learned that the patient had been placed under the care of a saint from Waldubba, who had undertaken to cure him by writing certain mystical characters upon a tin-plate with common ink, and then, having washed them off with a medicinal preparation, giving them to the sick man to drink. Upon Bruce’s second visit to the palace he was presented to the queen-mother, who, after some rambling conversation respecting Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, Mount Calvary, &c., demanded of him bluntly whether he were not a Frank, by which they mean a Catholic. The traveller, in reply, swore to her by all the truths in the Bible, which she had then on a table before her, that his religion was more different from that of the Roman Catholics than her own. The old lady appeared to be convinced by his asseverations, and he shortly afterward took his leave. That same evening the prince, as well as his daughter, who had likewise been seized by the contagion, died of the small-pox in spite of the saints of Waldubba; and Bruce had to congratulate himself that these honest jugglers had taken the weight of the odium from his shoulders upon their own, for the patients would very probably have died whether they had been under the care of the monks or of the physician.
However, this natural event was the death-blow to the reputation of the saints. Bruce was required to repair immediately to the palace, and the various members of the royal family, as well as of the family of the Ras, who now fell sick, were placed with unbounded confidence under his care. Policy, as well as humanity, rendered his attentions to his numerous patients incessant; and very fortunately for him only one out of the whole number died. Ozoro Esther, the young and beautiful wife of Ras Michael, both of whose children, the one by a former and the other by her present husband, survived, was unbounded in her gratitude to the man whom she regarded as their preserver; and her friendship, which never knew diminution, may be regarded as one of the most valuable acquisitions our traveller ever made in Abyssinia. As a reward for his services he received a neat and convenient house in the immediate vicinity of the palace.
On the 8th or 9th of March Bruce met Ras Michael at Azazo. The old man was dressed in a coarse dirty cloth, wrapped about him like a blanket, while another like a tablecloth was folded about his head. He was lean, old, and apparently much fatigued. When he had alighted from the mule on which he had been riding, a Greek priest went forward and announced Bruce, who then came up and kissed his hand. “How do you do?” said the Ras; “I hope you are well.” He then pointed to a place where the traveller was to sit down, while a thousand complaints, a thousand orders, came before him from a thousand mouths. The king now passed, and shortly after the traveller and his companions returned to Koscam, very little pleased with the reception they had met with.
Next day the army marched into the town in triumph, the Ras being at the head of the troops of Tigrè. He was bare-headed. Over his shoulder hung a cloak of black velvet ornamented with silver fringe. A boy with a silver wand about five feet and a half in length walked close to his stirrup on his right-hand; and behind him in a body marched all those soldiers who had slain and spoiled an enemy in battle, bearing upon their lances and firelocks small shreds of scarlet cloth, one for every enemy slain.
Behind these came the governors of Amhara and Begunder, wearing, as well as the other governors of provinces, one of the strangest headdresses in the world: a broad fillet bound upon the forehead and tied behind, in the middle of which was a horn, or conical piece of silver, about four inches long and richly gilt. Then followed the king, wearing upon his forehead a fillet of white muslin about four inches broad, which, like that of the provincial governors, was tied behind in a large double knot, and hung down about two feet over his back. Immediately around him were the great officers of state, with such of the young nobility as were without command. The household troops followed. And after these came the military executioners, with a man bearing upon a pole the stuffed skin of a man who had been flayed alive a short time before. This was suspended as a tasteful ornament upon a tree directly opposite the palace, for the solace and amusement of his majesty.
For some days after this triumphal entry, Bruce, though he daily visited his patients at the palace, was utterly neglected, not only by the Ras, but by Ozoro Esther herself, and every person in Gondar, except the Moors, who were never weary of expressing their gratitude for his successful attention to their children. On the 14th, however, he was once more brought into the presence of Ras Michael, at Koscam. Upon entering he saw the old man sitting upon a sofa, with his white hair dressed in many short curls. His face was lean, his eyes quick and vivid. Bruce thought he greatly resembled Buffon in face and person. His great capacity was clearly discernible in his countenance. Every look conveyed a sentiment, and he seemed to have no occasion for other language, and indeed spoke little. He shook the traveller by the hand, and, after a few moments’ pause, occasioned by the entrance of a messenger from the king, said, gravely, “Yagoube, I think that is your name, hear what I say to you, and mark what I recommend to you. You are a man, I am told, who make it your business to wander in the fields in search after trees and grass in solitary places, and to sit up all night alone looking at the stars of the heavens. Other countries are not like this, though this was never so bad as it is now. These wretches here are enemies to strangers. If they saw you alone in your own parlour, their first thought would be how to murder you; though they knew they were to get nothing by it, they would murder you for mere mischief. Therefore,” says the Ras, “after a long conversation with your friend Aylo, whose advice I hear you happily take, as indeed we all do, I have thought that situation best which leaves you at liberty to follow your own designs, at the same time that it puts your person in safety; that you will not be troubled with monks about their religious matters, or in danger from those rascals that might seek to murder you for money.”
He then informed him that the king had appointed him Baalomaal, and commander of the Korcob horse; and desired him to go and kiss the ground before him on his appointment. Bruce now expressed his acknowledgments, and brought forward his present, which the Ras scarcely looked at; but shortly after observing him standing alone, commanded the door to be shut, and then said to him, in a low voice, “Have you any thing private to say?”—“I see you are busy, sir,” said Bruce, “but I will speak to Ozoro Esther.” His anxious countenance brightened up in a moment. “That is true,” said he; “Yagoube, it will require a long day to settle that account with you. Will the boy live?”—“The life of man is in the hand of God,” replied Bruce; “but I should hope the worst is over.” Upon which he said to one of his servants, “Carry Yagoube to Ozoro Esther.”