Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/346

318 servants, who heard this message delivered, and who were as desirous of getting over this journey to Ras el Feel as I was, advised me to go with him up the hill to the town, and expostulate with the Erbab, who, he said, would be ashamed to refuse. Accordingly, I armed myself with a pair of pistols at my girdle, with a fusil and bayonet in my hand; and took with me two servants with their pistols also, each carrying a large ship-blunderbuss. We mounted the hill with great difficulty, being several times obliged to pull up one another by the hands, and entered into a large room about fifty feet long. It was all hung round with elephants heads and trunks, with skeletons of the heads of some rhinoceroses, and of monstrous hippopotami, as also several heads of the giraffa. Some large lion skins were thrown on several parts of the room, like carpets; and Gimbaro stood upright at one end of it, naked, only a small cloth about his middle; the largest man I ever remembered to have seen, perfectly black, flat-nosed, thick-lipped, and woolly-headed; and seemed to be a perfect picture of those Cannibal giants which we read of as inhabiting enchanted castles in fairy tales.

did not seem to take notice at my first entering the room, nor till I was very near him. He then came aukwardly forward, bowing, endeavouring to kiss my hand, which I withdrew from him, and said in a firm voice, "I apprehend, Sir, you do not know me." He bowed and said he did, but did not conceive, at the time, it was me that encamped at the brook. "You did know, Sir, when you sent your son with Yasine's servant, and you know that you are considerably in my debt. Besides, if you had any gratitude, you would remember the arrears I remitted you, and the pre[319]sents I made you when at Serbraxos, even though you misbehaved there. Your message to me while below at the river was the language of a rebel. Are you willing to be declared in rebellion?" He said, "By no means; he had always been a faithful servant to Ayto Confu, Ras Michael, and the king, and had come to Serbraxos upon receiving the first order, and