Bruce had scarcely arrived at Adowa before Janni, the Greek officer of the customs to whom he had written on his arrival at Masuah, waited upon him. "He had," says Bruce, "sent servants to conduct us from the passage of the river, and met us himself at the outer door of his house. I do not remember to have seen a more respectable figure. He had his own short white hair, covered with a thin muslin turban, and a thick, well-shaped beard, as white as snow, down to his waist. He was clothed in the Abyssinian dress, all of white cotton, only he had a red silk sash, embroidered with gold, about his waist, and sandals on his feet: his upper garment reached down to his ankles. He had a number of servants and slaves about him of both sexes; and, when I approached him, seemed disposed to receive me with marks of humility and inferiority, which mortified me much, considering the obligations I was under to him, the trouble I had given, and was unavoidably still to give him. I embraced him with great acknowledgments of kindness and gratitude, calling him father: a title I always used in speaking either to him or of him afterward, when I was in higher fortune, which he constantly remembered with great pleasure. "He conducted us through a courtyard planted with jasmine, to a very neat, and, at the same time, large room, furnished with a silk sofa: the floor was covered with Persian carpets and cushions. All round, flowers and green leaves were strewed upon the outer yard: and the windows and sides of the room stuck full of evergreens, in commemoration of the Christmas festival that was at hand. I stopped at the entrance of this room: my feet were both dirty and bloody; and it is not good breeding to show or speak of your feet in Abyssinia, especially if anything ails them, and at all times they are covered. He immediately perceived the wounds that were upon mine. Both our clothes and flesh had been torn to pieces at Tarenta and several other places; but he thought we had come on mules furnished us by the naybe; for the young man I had sent to him from Kella, following the genius of his countrymen, though telling truth was just as profitable to him as lying, had chosen the latter, and, seeing the horse I had got from the Baharnagash, had figured in his own imagination a multitude of others, he told Janni that there were with me horses, asses, and mules in great plenty; so that, when Janni saw us passing the water, he took me for a servant, and expected for several minutes to see the splendid company arrive, well-mounted upon horses and mules caparisoned.