Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/86

lxx and ten men, so long, and so easily, as to enable you to undervalue the useful character of a physician, and seek neither to draw money nor protection from it? And how came it, that, contrary to the usage of other travellers, at Gondar you maintained a character of independence and equality, especially at court; instead of crouching, living out of sight as much as possible, in continual fear of priests, under the patronage, or rather as servant to some men of power.

this sensible and well-founded doubt I answer with great pleasure and readiness, as I would do to all others of the same kind, if I could possibly divine them:—It is not at all extraordinary that a stranger like me, and a parcel of vagabonds like those that were with me, should get themselves maintained, and find at Gondar a precarious livelihood for a limited time. A mind ever so little polished and instructed has infinite superiority over Barbarians, and it is in circumstances like these that a man sees the great advantages of education. All the Greeks in Gondar were originally criminals and vagabonds; they neither had, nor pretended to any profession, except Petros the king's chamberlain, who had been a shoemaker at Rhodes, which profession at his arrival he carefully concealed. Yet these were not only maintained, but by degrees, and without pretending to be physicians, obtained property, commands, and places.

is the virtue of Barbarians, who are hospitable in the ratio that they are barbarous, and for obvious reasons this virtue subsides among polished nations in the same proportion. If on my arrival in Abyssinia I assumed