Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/280

252 Ras Michael, on the contrary, believed that it had been taken out by Petros with a view to sell it, and for this reason he had constantly refused him liberty to leave Abyssinia, and had kept him always in fear that some day or other he would strip him of all that he had saved. While Michael was besieging the mountain Haramat, Petros beseeched me to take L.300 of him, and give him my first, second, and third bill of exchange upon Messrs Julian and Rosa, my correspondents at Cairo, payable a month after sight, to the Maronite Bishop of Mount Sinai, after which he set out for his own country, in formâ pauperis, and thereby escaped the rapacity of both Ras Michael and the Naybe of Masuah. As for the bill, it came duly to hand, and was paid to the bishop, who would very fain have received for each of the duplicates, and was near being bastinado'd for insisting upon this before the Bey at Cairo.

A drawn from Gondar is a very great curiosity when arrived in London; it should be now upon the file in the shop of my very worthy and honourable friends the Messrs Drummond and Company at Charing-Cross. It was the only piece of writing of any kind which found its way to its intended destination, though many had been written by me on different occasions which presented for Arabia; so that I will recommend to all travellers, for the future, to tack bills of exchange to their letters of greatest consequence, as a sure method of preventing their miscarriage.

I made a shew, and with some degree of ostentation, of sending my gold chain to Cairo by the hands of Metical Aga's servant, declaring always that it was the only piece of Abyssinian gold I should carry out of the country, which I