Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/31

Rh faithful to the instructions of his master, and was independent of every person else. He applied to Mahomet Adulai, (a person kept by Ras Michael as a spy upon the Naybe, and in the same character by Metical Aga); and Adulai, that very night, dispatched a trusty messenger, with many of whom he was constantly provided. This runner, charged with our dispatches, having a friend and correspondent of his own among the Shiho, passed, by ways best known to himself, and was safely escorted by his own friends till the fifth day, when he arrived at the customhouse of Adowa, and there delivered our dispatches to our friend Janni.

Cairo, as I have already mentioned, I met with my friend father Christopher, who introduced me to the Greek patriarch, Mark. This patriarch had told me, that there were of his communion, to the number of about twenty, then in Abyssinia; some of them were good men and becoming rich in the way of trade; some of them had fled from the severity of the Turks, after having been detected by them in intimacy with Mahometan women; but all of them were in a great degree of credit at the court of Abyssinia, and possessing places under government greatly beyond his expectation. To these he wrote letters, in the manner of bulls from the pope, enjoining them, with regard to me, to obey his orders strictly, the particulars of which I shall have occasion to speak of afterwards.

, then at Adowa in Tigré, was a man of the first character for good life and morals. He had served two kings of Abyssinia with great reputation, and Michael had appointed him to the customhouse at Adowa, to superintend the affairs of the revenue there, while he himself was occu-