Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/49

Rh utterly extirpated throughout the world. Full of this idea, on the feast of Ras Werk, in the month of July, the army passed the Yass, a large river of the kingdom of Mara, and encamped there. The troops were alarmed, the night after their arrival, by a piece of intelligence which proved a falsehood.

A, whose father had been a Christian, said, that she had very lately left the Moorish camp; that the enemy were at no great distance, and only waited a night of storm and rain to make a general attack upon the king's army; and the clouds threatening then a night of foul weather, it was not doubted but the engagement was thereupon immediately to follow. It blew, then, so violent a storm, that the king's tent, and most of those in the camp, were thrown down, and the soldiers were in very great confusion, imagining, every moment, the Moors ready to fall on them. But whether the story was a falsehood, or the storm too great for the Moors to venture out, nothing happened that night, nor, indeed, during their stay in that station.

this time a number of priests and others came out of curiosity to see their king making conquests of provinces and people till then unknown to them even by name: several large detachments of fresh troops from Abyssinia also arrived, and joined the army. Upon this, Amda Sion advanced a day's journey farther into Mara, and took a strong post, resolving to maintain himself there, and, by detachments, lay the whole country desolate. This place is called Dassi. There was neither river, however, nor spring near it, but only water procured by digging in the sand, being what comes down from the sides of the mountains in the rainy