Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/673

Rh could serve him. He pretended to no precedency or pre-eminence at court, not even such as was due to the rank of his place, but behaved as a stranger that had no fixed abode among them.

day, dining with Kasmati Geta, the queen's brother, who was governor of Samen, and drinking out of a common-glass decanter called Brulhé, when it is the privilege and custom of the governor of Tigré to use a gold cup, being asked, Why he did not claim his privilege? he said, All the gold he had was in heaven, alluding to the name of the mountain Samayat, where his gold was surrendered, which word signifies Heaven. The king, who liked this kind of jests, of which Michael was full, on hearing this, sent him a gold cup, with a note written and placed within it, "Happy are they who place their riches in heaven;" which Michael directed immediately to be engraved by one of the Greeks upon the cup itself. What became of it I know not; I often wished to have found it out, and purchased it. I saw it the first day he dined, after coming from council, at his return from Tigré, after the execution of Abba Salama; but I never observed it at Serbraxos, nor since. I heard, indeed, a Greek say he had sent it by Ozoro Esther, as a present to a church of St Michael in Tigré,

was now given him in addition to the province of Tigré, and, soon after, Siré and all the provinces between the Tacazzé and the Red Sea; so he was now master of near half of Abyssinia.

rest of this king's reign was spent at home in his usual amusements and occupations. Several small