Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/613

 effect, that nobody would supply this deficiency after his death, a general belief prevailing in Abyssinia that he is alive to this day, and will appear again in all his terrors. It is owing to this circumstance that we have nothing complete of this king's reign; only a few anecdotes are preserved, some of them very odd ones. I shall only, for the present, choose such of those as lead me to the subject I have in hand.

was exceedingly fond of divinations, dreams, and prophecies, so are all the Abyssinians; but he imbibed an additional propensity to these, among the Pagans to whom he had fled. One day, when walking alone, he perceived a priest exceedingly attentive in observing the forms that little pieces of straw, cut to certain lengths, made upon a pool of water into which ran a small stream. From the combination of these in letters, or figures, as they chanced to fall, an answer is procured to the doubt proposed, which, if you believe these idlers, is perfectly infallible.

in disguise, dressed like a poor man, is said to have asked the priest after what he was inquiring. The priest answered, He was trying whether the king would have a son, and who should govern the kingdom after him. The king abode the investigation patiently; and the answer was, That he should have a son; but that a Welleta Georgis should govern the kingdom after him for thirty years, though that Welleta Georgis should be neither his son nor any descendant of his. Full of thought at this untoward prediction, he harboured it in his breast without communicating it to any one, and resolved to blast the hopes of every Welleta Georgis that should be so unfortunate as to stand within the