Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/649

Rh had built a large and very costly church at Koscam, and he was still engaged in a more expensive work in the building of a palace at Gondar. He was also rebuilding his house at Riggobee-ber, (the north end of the town) which had been demolished by the rebels; and had begun a very large and expensive villa at Azazo, with extensive groves, or gardens, planted thick with orange and lemon trees, upon the banks of a beautiful and clear river which divides the palace from the church of Tecla Haimanout, a large edifice which, some time before, he had also built and endowed. Besides all these occupations, he was deeply engaged in ornamenting his palace at Gondar. A rebellion, massacre, or some such misfortune, had happened among the Christians of Smyrna; who, coming to Cairo, and finding that city in a still less peaceable state than the one which they had left, they repaired to Jidda in their way to India; but missing the monsoon, and being destitute of money and necessaries, they crossed over the Red Sea for Masuah, and came to Gondar. There were twelve of them silver-smiths, very excellent in that fine work called filligrane, who were all received very readily by the king, liberally furnished both with necessaries and luxuries, and employed in his palace as their own taste directed them.

the hands of these, and several Abyssinians whom they had taught, sons of Greek artists whose fathers were dead, he finished his presence-chamber in a manner truly admirable. The skirting, which in our country is generally of wood, was finished with ivory four feet from the ground. Over this were three rows of mirrors from Venice, all joined together, and fixed in frames of copper, or cornices gilt with gold. The roof, in gaiety and taste, corresponded