Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/311

 backs, the fattest and best of all the pigeon kind. Waalia lies due N. W. from Gondar.

Having finished our dinner, or rather supper, about seven, for we made but one meal a-day, after taking care of our beasts, we entered into consultation what was next to be done. I told them, the first step we were to take was to send and call the Shum of one of the villages, and after him another, and if, knowing me to be the king's stranger, seeing the smallness of our number, and being informed that we were going to Tcherkin, to the house of Ayto Confu, their mailer, they did not tell us there were dangers on the road, we might be sure the intelligence we had received was void of foundation. "Sir, says one of the strangers that drove the asses, it is a lie. No man but Ayto Confu, not even Ayto Confu himself, could raise 500 men in this country; no not even 300, Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians altogether. Where is he to get his Pagans? unless he means his own Christian sort, who, indeed, are more Pagans than any thing else, and capable of every mischief; but there is not a Mahometan on this road that does not know who you are, and that you was Yasine's master, and gave him Ras el Feel. Stay here but a few days till I send to Ras el Feel, and to Tcherkin, and if you do not take the houses and wives, and all that these five hundred men have in the world from them, with the help you may find at Waalia, spit upon me for a liar, or my name is not Abdullah." "Abdullah, said I, you are a sensible fellow, though I did not know you was so well acquainted with me, nor do I wish that you speak of me in that manner publickly. But what convinces me of the truth of what you say is, that the man on foot had no more time but to say to me, in Arabic, while passing, that his com-