Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/302

278 ing and chaffing his legs, saw a soldier, probably a Persian, who had lost his feeling by extreme numbness. The king immediately leaped from his chair, and ordered the soldier to be set down upon it. The fire soon brought him to his senses, but he had almost lost them again with fear, by finding himself in the king's seat. To whom Alexander said, "Remember, and distinguish, how much more advantageous to man my government is than that of the kings of Persia . By sitting down on my seat, you have saved your life; by sitting on theirs, you would infallibly have lost it."

Abyssinia it is considered as a fundamental law of the land, that none of the royal family, who has any deformity or bodily defect, shall be allowed to succeed to the crown; and, for this purpose, any of the princes, who may have escaped from the mountain of Wechnè, and who are afterwards taken, are mutilated in some of their members, that thus they may be disqualified from ever succeeding. In Persia the same was observed. Procopius tells us, that Zames, the son of Cabades, was excluded from the throne because he was blind of one eye, the law of Persia prohibiting any person that had a bodily defect to be elected king.

kings of Abyssinia were seldom seen by their subjects. Justin says, the Persians hid the person of their king to increase their reverence for his majesty. And it was a law of Deioces, king of the Medes, that nobody should be