Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/286

 their neighbours in time of war. The whole country of Degwassa, the district which Aclog commanded, was totally destroyed; men, women, and children, were entirely extirpated, without distinction of age or sex; the houses all razed to the ground, and the country about it left as desolate as after the deluge. The villages belonging to the king were as severely treated; an universal cry was heard from every part, but no one dared to suggest any means of help; parties were so entirely mixed and confounded, that no one could safely enter into any confidence with his neighbour; but the common people, who had little to lose, began again to cry out for the return and government of Ras Michael.

Fasil, having given the king this sample of what he was capable of doing, halted at Sar-Ohha, and from thence sent a peremptory demand that Gusho should be at liberty. His messenger was a crooked, diminutive dwarf, called Dohho, of whom I have already spoken. It was a very bad sign of a treaty when such a one was the manager. He upbraided the king in terms scarcely decent, with the protection, life, and kingdom the Ras Fasil had given him, when the contrary was absolutely in his power. He asked the king if he knew who had protected him the night of the retreat from the hill of Serbraxos? and told him, in plain terms, that, being entirely void of the noble principles of gratitude himself, he had forced him, Fasil, to be wanting to the next great virtue, that of hospitality, in suffering a man of Gusho's quality to be made prisoner after arriving within the limits of his government. He concluded, by telling the king plainly, that, unless he restored Gusho to his liberty and government, without condition, he