Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/221

Rh been looked upon as equal to a renunciation of Christianity.

Janni's servant, who had accompanied us from Adowa, his kind and friendly master had wrote to Ayto Aylo, of whom I have already spoken. He was the constant patron of the Greeks, and had been so also of the Catholics who had ventured into this country, and been forced after to leave it. Though no man professed greater veneration for the priesthood, no one privately detested more those of his own country than he did; and he always pretended that, if a proper way of going to Jerusalem could be found, he would leave his large estates, and the rank he had in Abyssinia, and, with the little money he could muster, live the remaining part of his days among the monks, of whom he had now accounted himself one, in the convent of the holy sepulchre. This perhaps was, great part of it, imagination; but, as he had talked himself into a belief that he was to end his days either at Jerusalem, which was a pretence, or at Rome, which was his inclination, he willingly took the charge of white people of all communions who had hitherto been unhappy enough to stray into Abyssinia.

was about seven o'clock at night, of the 15th, when Hagi Saleh was much alarmed by a number of armed men at his door; and his surprise was still greater upon seeing Ayto Aylo, who, as far as I know, was never in the Moorish town before, descend from his mule, and uncover his head and shoulders, as if he had been approaching a person of the first distinction. I had been reading the prophet Enoch, which Janna had procured me at Adowa; and Wemmer's