Great jealousies now began to be entertained in Abyssinia on account of the favour shown to some of the Galla chieftains, who were brought to court and received with distinction. Violent dissensions took place: two kings successively met with a violent death; one being assassinated, and the other poisoned by Ras Michael, the governor of the province of Tigré, a most singular personage, with whom the reader will very shortly be made acquainted. King Tecla Haimanout succeeded to the throne; and the same year, 1769, James Bruce, the enterprising hero of these pages, landed at Masuah. Since the death of M. du Roulé, which took place seventy years before Bruce's arrival, Abyssinia had been so much forgotten in Europe that it seemed almost to have been blotted from the map of the world. The immense distance, the climate in which it was situated, the deserts which nearly surrounded it, and the barbarous character of the nations on its borders, were of themselves quite sufficient to deter any ordinary traveller; and the dangers of the route, great as they really were, had been much exaggerated by the disappointed and expelled Romanists. The great link which had so long connected Abyssinia with Europe, namely, the attempt to convert it to the See of Rome, had been violently broken, and the chasm which now separated them no one seemed desirous to pass. Having thus given a short sketch of so much of the history of Abyssinia as seemed absolutely necessary to interest the reader in the following narrative, it remains only to be observed, that Bruce has furnished a minute account (which occupies about a thousand pages of his volumes) of the reigns of the several kings of Abyssinia, with descriptions of their persons, their petty feuds and dissensions, their wars with the Moors, the Galla, and the Falasha (or Jews), the burning of their churches, their savage treatment of the Shangalla tribes, &c. The general reader will, however, feel probably but little curiosity to spend his time over the records of so remote a country; and more particularly as, after all, they are not implicitly to be relied on. FOOTNOTE: [25] With very great difficulty, Bruce succeeded in getting the whole book of Canticles translated into each of these languages. CHAPTER IX. Bruce's Arrival and dangerous Detention in Masuah. Masuah is a small island on the Abyssinian shore, standing in front of the town of Arkeeko, and forming an excellent harbour: it is three quarters of a mile in length, by about half that distance in breadth. One third of it is occupied by houses, one third by cisterns to receive rain-water, and the remainder is reserved as a place of burial. Masuah was once a place of great commerce, possessing a share of the Indian trade; but its importance declined from the time when, with several other towns of the western coast of the Red Sea, it fell under the dominion of Selim, emperor of Constantinople.