Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/196

174 counsel together, and came all forward to the river, where they paused a moment as if counting our number, and then began to enter the stream. Yasine now cried to them in Amharic, as I had done before in Tigré, desiring them, as they valued their lives, to come no nearer. They stopt, a sign of no great resolution; and, after some altercation, it was agreed the Shum, and his son with the gun, should pass the river.

Shum complained violently that we had left Addergey without his leave, and now were attacking him in his own government upon the high-road. "A pretty situation," said I, "was ours at Addergey, where the Shum left the king's stranger no other alternative but dying with hunger, or being ate by the hyæna."

is not your government," says Janni's servant; "you know my master, Ayto Aylo, commands here."—"And who is attacking you on the road?" says the Sirè servant. "Is it like peaceable people, or banditti, to come mounted on horseback and armed as you are? Would not your mules and your foot-servants have been as proper? and would not you have been better employed, with the king and Ras Michael, fighting the Galla, as you gave your promise, than here molesting passengers on the road?"—"You lie," says the Shum, "I never promised to go with your Ras;" and on this he lifted up his whip to strike Welleta Michael's servant; but that fellow, though quiet enough, was not of the kind to be beaten. "By G—d! Shum," says he, "offer to strike me again, and I will lay you dead among your horse's feet, and my master will say I did well. Never call for your men; you should have taken the red slip off your