Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/335

Rh phant or rhinoceros. Nobody would touch the carcase of the boar after it was dead, being an animal which is considered as unclean.

was a man of approved courage and conduct, and had been in all the wars of Ras Michael, and was placed about Ayto Confu, to lead the troops, curb the presumption, and check the impetuosity of that youthful warrior. He was tall, and aukwardly made; slow in speech and motion, so much as even to excite ridicule; about sixty years of age, and more corpulent than the Abyssinians generally are; in a word, as pedantic and grave in his manner as it is possible to express. He spent his whole leisure time in reading the scripture, nor did he willingly discourse of any thing else. He had been bred a foot-soldier; and, though he rode as well as many of the Abyssinians, yet, having long stirrup-leathers, with iron rings at the end of them, into which he put his naked toe only, instead of stirrups, he had no strength or agility on horseback, nor was his bridle such as could command his horse to stop, or wind and turn sharply among trees, though he might make a tolerable figure on a plain.

A, roused on our right, had wounded a horse and a footman of Ayto Confu, and then escaped. Two buffaloes were found by those on the right, one of which wounded a horse likewise. Ayto Confu, Engedan, Guebra Mariam, and myself, killed the other with equal share of merit, without being in any sort of danger. All this was in little more than an hour, when our sport seemed to be at the best; our horses were considerably blown, not tired, and though we were beating homewards, still we were looking very