Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/319

 that night, and was sent to search for us, as we seemed to have tarried on the road. He had brought two mules, in case any of ours had been tired, and proposed that the next morning I should set out with him alone for Tcherkin, where I should find Ayto Confu, and my baggage should follow me. I told him that it was my fixed resolution, made at the beginning of my journey, and which I should adhere to till the. end, never to separate myself on the road from my servants and company, who were strangers, and without any other protection than that of being with me.

The man continued to press me all that evening very much, so that we were greatly surprised at what he could mean, and I still more and more resolved not to gratify him. Often I thought he wanted to communicate something to me, but he refrained, and I continued obstinate; and the rather so, as there was no certainty that Ayto Confu was yet arrived. I asked him, if Billetana Gueta Ammonios was not at Tcherkin? He answered, without the smallest alteration in his countenance, that he was not. No people on earth dissemble like the Abyissinians; this talent is born with them, and they improve it by continual practice. As we had therefore previously resolved, we passed the evening at Eggir Dembic, and the servant, finding he could not prevail, left our tent and we all went to bed. He did not seem angry, but at going out of the tent, said, as half to himself, "I cannot blame you; in such a journey nothing is like firmness."

On the 2d of January, in the morning, by seven o'clock, having dressed my hair, and perfumed it according to the custom of the country, and put on clean clothes, with no other arms but my knife, and a pair of pistols at my girdle,