Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/203

 cording to his natural inclination (especially towards soldiers) he had bestowed them liberally, and I believe impartially. Guebra Mascal had not appeared; he was waiting upon his uncle Ras Michael, looking after his own interest, to which no Abyssinian is blind, and exposing those bloody spoils, which I have just mentioned, to the Ras, his uncle and general.

I had been absent from another motive, the attendance on my friend Engedan, to whose tent I had removed my bed, as he complained of great pain in his wound, and I had likewise obtained leave of the Ras to shift my tent near that of his, and leave the care of the king's horse to Laeca Mariam, an old slave and confidential servant of the king.

As these men were the king's menial servants in his palace, a number of them (about a fourth) staid at Gondar with the horses, and few more than 100 to 120 could now be mustered, from about 200 or 204 which they at first were: the arranging of this, attendance upon Ayto Engedan, and several delays in getting access to the Ras, who had all his troops of Tigré round him, made it past eight o'clock in the evening before I could see the king after he entered the camp; he had many times sent in search of Sertza Denghel, but no such person could be found; he had been been bravely fighting by Engedan's side in the entrance of the valley, when that young nobleman was wounded, and he had retired with him from the field, but nobody could give any account of him, and the king, by his repeated inquiries after him, shewed more anxiety, from the supposition he was lost, than he had done for Guebra Christos his uncle,