Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/341

Rh that the same person who finds him should carry him to his coronation; for there is a family who have a right to dispute this honour with the first possessor; and, therefore, in his way from the wood, they set upon the people in whose hands he is, and a battle ensues, where several are killed or wounded; and if these last, by force, can take him out of the hands of the first finder, they enjoy all the honours due to him that made him king.

he enters his palace two men are to be slain; one at the foot of the tree by which his house is chiefly supported; the other at the threshold of his door, which is besmeared with the blood of the victim. And, it is said, (I have heard this often in Abyssinia from people coming from that country) that the particular family, whose priviledge it is to be slaughtered, so far from avoiding it, glory in the occasion, and offer themselves willingly to meet it. — To return to our travellers —

father and the ambassador, leaving the kingdom of Gingiro, proceeded in a direction due east, and entered the kingdom of Cambat, depending still on the empire of Abyssinia, and there halted at Sangara, which seems to be the principal place of the province, governed at that time by a Moor called Amelmal.

On the left of Cambat are the Guragués, who live in some beggarly villages, but mostly in caves and holes in the mountains. The father was detained two days at Sangara, at the persuasion of the inhabitants there, who told him there was a fair in the neighbourhood, and people would pass in numbers to accompany him, so that there