Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/261

 several days. He refused therefore to surrender upon the general summons; on which Powussen, who was encamped immediately below him, sent an officer to require him to submit, which he not only peremprorily refused, but told the officer, that, unless he instantly retired, he would give orders to fire upon him, as he had a treaty with Gusho, and, till that was ratified by Gusho himself, he would not surrender, nor suffer any other person to approach his post; at any rate, that he did not intend to surrender to a man of Powussen's low birth, however high his present post had raised him, which he no longer acknowledged, being the mere gift of Michael, one complaint against whom was that of levelling and confounding the nobility with their inferiors.

Gusho accordingly sent an officer, a man of great character, and a relation of the king, with a confirmation of his promise; whereupon Kefla Yasous surrendered, and sent down his foldiers, with what arms he pleased, to Gusho's camp, carrying the rest privately to his own house, to which he retired that very evening. Kefla Yasous was much beloved by the inhabitants of Gondar, though a Tigran, and perhaps in neither party was there a man so universally esteemed. He had done the townsmen often great service, having always stood between Michael and them in those moments of wrath and vengeance when no one else dared to speak; and, in particular, he had saved the town from burning that morning the Ras had retired with the king to Tigrè, when warned, as he said, by an apparition of Michael the archangel, or more probably of the devil, to put the inhabitants of Gondar to the sword, and set the city on fire; a measure that was supported by Nebrit Tecla, and