Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/263

 consequence, but gave his draft-board and men to a private friend; at the fame time renouncing his pretended divinations, as deceitful and sinful, by the confidence he had placed in them.

The king behaved with the greatest firmness and composure; he was indeed graver than usual, and talked less, but was not at all dejected. Scarce any body came near him the first day, or even the second, excepting the priests, some of the judges, and old inhabitants of the town, who had, taken no part. Some of the priests and monks, as is their custom, used certain liberties, and mixed a considerable degree of impertinence in their conversations, hinting it as doubtful, whether he would remain on the throne, and mentioning it, as on the part of the people, that he had imbibed from Michael a propensity towards cruelty and bloodshed, what some months ago no man in Gondar dared to have surmised for his life. These he only answered with a very severe look, but said nothing. One of these speeches being reported to Gusho, not as a complaint from the king, but through a by-stander who heard it, that nobleman ordered the offender (a priest of Erba Tensa, a church in Woggora) to be stript naked to his waist, and whipt with thongs three times round Aylo Meidan, till his back was bloody, for this violation of the majesty of the sovereign: and this example, which met with the public approbation of all parties, the clergy only excepted, very much lessened that insolence which the king's misfortunes had excited.

He had ate nothing the first day but a small piece of wheat-loaf, dividing the rest among the few servants that