Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/65

Rh three children of the king of Adel, and his brother, who had all been in the engagement, seeing the great inferiority of their troops, and terrified at the approaching fate of their country, loading themselves with the most valuable of their effects, (which, in token of humility, they carried upon their heads, shoulders, and in their hands,) came with these presents before the king, who was sitting armed at the door of his tent, and, without further apology, or assurance given, threw themselves, as is the custom of Abyssinia, at his feet, with their foreheads in the dust, intreating pardon for what had hitherto been done amiss; submiting to him as his subjects, professing their readiness to obey all his commands, provided only that he would proceed no further, nor waste and destroy their country, but spare what still remained, which was, for the most part, the property of Arabian merchants who had done him no injury.

the king seemed little disposed to credit these assurances. He told them plainly, "That they, and all Ethiopia, knew the time was when they were under his dominion, paid him the same tribute, and owed him the same allegiance with the rest of his subjects; that neither he, nor his predecessors, at that time, had ever oppressed them, but returned them present for present, gold for gold, apparel for apparel, and dismissed them contentedly home whenever they came to pay their duty to them: That lately, from supposed weakness in him, when he was young in the beginning of his reign, and encouraged by the great addition of their brethren, who flocked to them from Arabia, they had, without provocation, thrown off their allegiance to him, upbraiding him as a eunuch, fit only to take care of the women of their seraglio, with many such