CHAP. XI.
The Author obtains Liberty to return Home—Takes Leave of the Iteghé at Koscam—Last Interview with the Monks.
Since the queen came again to Koscam, I had passed a great part of my time there, but my health declining every day, I had obtained, with great difficulty, liberty from her to attempt my return home. The king, too, after a hundred exceptions and provisos, had at length been brought to give an unwilling consent. I had seen also Metical Aga's servant, who, upon finding Ras Michael was disgraced, would not stay, but hasted back, and would fain have prevailed upon me to return with him thro' Tigrè into Arabia. But besides that I was determined to attempt completing my journey through Sennaar and the desert, I by no means liked the risk of passing again through Masuah, to experience a second time the brutal manners of the Naybe and garrison of that place.
Captain Thomas Price, of the Lion of Bombay, had been obliged, by his business with the government of Mecca, to continue at Jidda till the season after I went from thence to Abyssinia. I had already heard once from him, and now a second time. He informed me my countrymen had been in the greatest pain for me; that several reports had been current, both at Jidda and Mocha, of my having been assassinated; sometimes it was said by the Naybe of Masuah; sometimes that it had happened at Gondar; by others at Sennaar, in my return home. Captain Price wrote me in this last letter, that, thinking I must be distressed for want of money, he had left orders with Ibrahim Seraff, the English broker at Jidda, to advance me 1000 crowns, desiring my draft to be sent to Ibrahim, directed to him or his brother at Bombay, and to make it payable to a gentleman of that name who lived in Smithfield. I cannot omit mentioning these instances of the philanthropy and generosity of Mr Price, to whom I bore no relation, and who was but a common acquaintance, whom I had acquired among my countrymen during my stay at Jidda. The only title I had to this consideration was, that he thought I was probably in distress, and that as it was in his power alone to relieve me, this in itself, to a noble mind, constituted a sufficient obligation. I do not believe Captain Price was able to read a word of Latin, so that sentiment in Terence, "Homo sum, nihil humani mihi alienum esse puto," was as much an original in Mr Price's breast as if it had never before been uttered.
I told Metical Aga's servant the bad news I had got from Sennaar, and he agreed perfectly with the contents, adding, that the journey was not practicable; he declared they were so inhuman and so barbarous a race, that he would not attempt the journey, Mahometan as he was, for half the Indies. I begged him to say no more on that head, but to procure from his master, Metical Aga at Mecca, a letter to any man of consequence he knew at Sennaar.
My resolution being therefore taken, and leave obtained, this will be now the place to resume the account of my finances. I have already gone so far as to mention three hundred pounds which I had occasionally borrowed from a Greek whose name was Petros. This man was originally a native of the island of Rhodes, which he must have left early, for he was not at this time much past thirty; he had been by trade a shoemaker. For what reason he left his own country I know not, but he was of a very pleasing figure and address, though very timid. Joas and the Iteghé very much distinguished him, and the king had made him Azeleffa el Camisha, which answers precisely to groom of the stole, or first lord of the bed-chamber in England. Being pliant, civil, and artful, and always well-dressed, he had gained the good graces of the whole court; he was also rich, as the king was generous, and his perquisites not inconsiderable.
After the campaign of Mariam Barea, when the dwarf was shot who was standing before Ras Michael, and the palace set on fire in the fray which followed, the crown, which was under Petros's charge, was melted; the gold, indeed, that it consisted of, was afterwards found, but there was said to have been on the top of it a pearl, or jewel, of immense price and size, larger than a pigeon's egg; and this, whatever it was, had disappeared, being in all probability consumed by the fire. Ras Michael, on the contrary, believed that it had been taken out by Petros with a view to sell it, and for this reason he had constantly refused him liberty to leave Abyssinia, and had kept him always in fear that some day or other he would strip him of all that he had saved. While Michael was besieging the mountain Haramat, Petros beseeched me to take L.300 of him, and give him my first, second, and third bill of exchange upon Messrs Julian and Rosa, my correspondents at Cairo, payable a month after sight, to the Maronite Bishop of Mount Sinai, after which he set out for his own country, in formâ pauperis, and thereby escaped the rapacity of both Ras Michael and the Naybe of Masuah. As for the bill, it came duly to hand, and was paid to the bishop, who would very fain have received for each of the duplicates, and was near being bastinado'd for insisting upon this before the Bey at Cairo.
A Bill drawn from Gondar is a very great curiosity when arrived in London; it should be now upon the file in the shop of my very worthy and honourable friends the Messrs Drummond and Company at Charing-Cross. It was the only piece of writing of any kind which found its way to its intended destination, though many had been written by me on different occasions which presented for Arabia; so that I will recommend to all travellers, for the future, to tack bills of exchange to their letters of greatest consequence, as a sure method of preventing their miscarriage.
I had made a shew, and with some degree of ostentation, of sending my gold chain to Cairo by the hands of Metical Aga's servant, declaring always that it was the only piece of Abyssinian gold I should carry out of the country, which I was to leave, both in fact and appearance, a pauper. Mules are the only beasts for carriage commonly used in Abyssinia, though bulls and cows, of a particular kind, are bought for the purpose by carriers, merchants, and such like, in that country, especially near the mines or quarries of salt; they are very slow, however, and capable of no great burden, though very easily maintained. I had abundance of mules of my own for carrying my instruments and baggage, and the king and Iteghé furnished me with others for my own riding. I had, besides, two favourite horses, which I intended to attempt to carry home, foolishly enough; for though I thought in my own mind that I was sufficiently informed of, and prepared for all sorts of hardships, I had not foreseen the hundredth part of the difficulties and dangers that were then awaiting me.