Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/555

Rh the Great, after a long and glorious reign, had been murdered by his son Tecla Haimanout. Two years after, this parricide fell in the same manner. The assassination of two princes, so nearly related, and in so short a time, had involved, from different motives, the greatest part of the noble families of the kingdom, either in the crime itself, or in the suspicion of aiding and abetting it.

the death of Tecla Haimanout, Tisilis, or Theophilus, brother of Yasous, had been brought from the mountain, and placed on the throne as successor to his nephew; this prince was scarcely crowned when he made some very severe examples of the murderers of his brother, and he seemed privately taking informations that would have reached the whole of them, had not death put an end to his inquiries and to his justice.

family of king Yasous was very numerous on the mountain. It was the favourite store whence both the soldiery and the citizens chose to bring their princes. There were, at the very instant, many of his sons princes of great hopes and of proper ages. Nothing then was more probable than that the prince, now to succeed, would be of that family, and, as such, interested in pursuing the same measures of vengeance on the murderers of his father and of his brother as the late king Theophilus had done; and how far, or to whom this might extend, was neither certain nor safe to trust to.

time was now past when the nobles vied with each other who should be the first to steal away privately, or go with open force, to take the new king from the mountain,