Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/305

 During the following day, while preparations were making for our departure, the Ras appeared to be much depressed, wished me to keep continually near him, and often fixed his eyes upon me with a sorrowful expression, repeatedly inquiring, "if I should ever again return to the country." To which I answered, with some degree of reluctance, that "I believed, I should never again undertake, the voyage." I found, that a dream, which he had had a few nights before, had left a strange impression respecting me, upon his mind. He fancied that he was sitting on the brow of a hill, and, that he saw me, in a plain below, passing along and sowing grain with both hands, and that the corn sprung up instantaneously round me in great profusion; while, at the same instant, he perceived, that his lap was full of gold. It is astonishing what an effect trifling circumstances of this description produce in a country where the minds of the inhabitants are deeply tinged with superstition and a love of scriptural lore.

In the course of the ensuing night, we paid our last visit to the Ras: he was much affected, and the parting was painful on both sides. During the visit, he again expressed, in the strongest terms, his gratitude to our Sovereign, for regarding the welfare of so remote a country; and expressed his most anxious wish to encourage, by every means in his power, an intercourse with Great Britain; at the same time, expressing with great sincerity his fears, that the country which he commanded might not be able to supply any quantity of valuable commodities sufficient to recompense our merchants for engaging in so precarious a trade; more especially as the Abyssinians were not much acquainted with commercial transactions, and the unsettled state of the provinces prevented the usual circulation of gold and other articles which are brought from the interior. Could any plan, however, be arranged for obviating these difficulties, he assured me, that he would most readily concur in carrying it into effect, though, he observed, it would be useless for him to interfere with the Mahometans on the coast, so long as they had a naval superiority in the Red Sea. There was so much good sense in these remarks, and they so exactly corresponded with my own views of the subject, that they did not admit of any reply; except the