Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/440

 red, I soon fell found asleep, having first taken some drops of a strong spirituous tincture of the bark which I had prepared at Gondar, resolving, if I found any remission, as I then did, to take several good dozes of the bark in powder on the morrow, beginning at day-break, which I accordingly did with its usual success.

On the 20th of April, a little after the dawn of day, the Shekh, in great anxiety, came to the place where I was lying, upon a tanned buffaloe's hide, on the ground. His sorrow was soon turned into joy when he found me quite recovered from my illness. I had taken the bark, and expressed a desire of eating a hearty breakfast of rice, which was immediately prepared for me.

The Shekh of Beyla was an implicit believer in medicine. Seeing me take some drops of the tincture before coffee, he insisted upon pledging me, and I believe would have willingly emptied the whole bottle. After baring suffered great agony with his own complaint, he had passed some small stones, and was greatly better, as he said, for the soap-pills. I put him in a way to prepare these, as also his lime-water. It was impossible to have done any favour for him equal to this, as his agony had been so great. He told me our Moullah was arrived from Teawa and had left Shekh Fidele still repining at our departure, without leaving him the piastres. As for the eclipse, he said he did not care a straw, nor for what they did or knew at Mecca, for he had no interest there. I understood our friend Mahomet, Shekh of Beyla, had been under great uneasiness at the eclipse, when it advanced in the immersion, and became total, Some time before this, as he said,