Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/132

 them. Above all, they had been used to see the effect of fire-arms, which they no longer feared as formerly, but boldly rushed in upon the musqueteers, sometimes without giving them time to fire, or at least before they had time to charge again.

At last, having previously called in all his out-posts, on the 13th of May he marched out of Gondar, taking with him the King and Abuna, as also Ozoro Esther, and Ozoro Altash her sister, and all the other ladies about court, who were in possession of the great fiefs of the crown, and whom he obliged to personal attendance, as well as to bring the quota of troops they were bound to by their respective tenures.

The king's army halted upon the same ground they had done on their return to Gondar. They were then supposed to be near 20,000 foot, belonging to Tigre and its dependencies, incomparably the best troops of the empire, 6000 of which were armed with musquets, six times the number that all the rest of Abyssinia could furnish, and, considering they were all match-locks, very expert in the management of them. The rest of the foot which joined them since he passed the Tacazze were about 10,000, besides 2000 of the king's household, 500 of which were horsemen; of these, few short of 200 were his black servants, armed with coats of mail, the horses with plates of brass on their cheeks and faces, with a sharp iron spike of about five inches in length, which stuck out in the middle of their forehead, a very troublesome, useless piece of their armour; their bridles were iron chains; the body of the horse covered with a kind of thin quilt stuffed with cotton, with two openings made