Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/389

 want of obedience, and a relaxation in discipline in the whole army. Each of the detachments, therefore, one after the other, left their poll from different excuses, and returned home. The bad consequence of this was now experienced. The Agows entered Begemder spreading desolation everywhere. Melca Christos, no longer sculking among the rocks of Lasta, planted his standard upon the plain, within five days march of the capital where the king was residing.

jealousies that had arisen between Socinios and his brother-in-law Sela Christos, had been so much aggravated since the oath administered by the patriarch, that the king had again deprived him of Gojam, suffering him to live in obscurity in Damot, and among the Agows, occupied, as the Jesuits say, in the conversion of that Pagan people, by destroying their idols, which they represent to be a species of cane or bamboo, and in forbidding the ceremonies of adoration and devotion, which at stated times they paid to the river.

remedy could be proposed, but the presence of Sela Christos, who, upon the first warning, joined the king, and coming suddenly upon the army of Lasta occupied in laying waste the low country of Begemder, gave them such an overthrow that sufficiently compensated the first loss of the king, and forced them again to take refuge among their strong-holds in Lasta.