Sennaar, and how I could best exert my power and influence over my faithful friend Yasine, at Ras el Feel, to pave my way, by assisting me to pass the desert into Atbara." The king, missing Bruce for some days at the palace, and hearing he had been at Ras Michael's, began to inquire who had been with him. Ayto Confu soon found Yasine, who informed him of the whole matter; upon which Bruce was sent for to the palace, where he found the king, with no one about him but menial servants. He immediately remarked to Bruce that he looked very ill, which was indeed the case, as he had scarcely ate or slept since the king saw him last, or even for some days before. The king asked him, in a condoling tone, "What ailed him?" observing that, "besides looking sick, he seemed as if something had ruffled him, and put him out of humour." Bruce replied, that what he observed was true: that, coming across the market-place, he had seen Za Mariam, the ras's doorkeeper, with three men bound, one of whom he hacked to pieces in his presence; that, as he was running across the place with his hand to his nose, Mariam called to him to stop till he should despatch the other two, as he wanted to speak to him; that the soldiers immediately fell upon the two men, whose cries, he said, were still remaining in his ears; that the hyænas at night would scarcely suffer him to pass in the streets as he returned from the palace; and that the dogs fled into his house to eat pieces of human flesh at leisure. "Although," says Bruce, "the king's intention was to look grave, I saw it was all he could do to stifle a laugh at grievances he thought very little of." "The men you saw with Za Mariam just now," says he, "are rebels, sent by Kefla Yasous for examples: he has forced a junction with Tecla and Welleta Michael in Samen, and a road is now open through Woggora, and plenty established in Gondar. The men you saw suffer were those that cut off the provisions from coming into the city; they have occasioned the death of many poor people: as for the hyæna, he never meddles with living people; he seeks carrion, and will soon clear the streets of these encumbrances that so much offend you. People say they are the Falasha of the mountains, who take that shape of the hyæna, and come down into the town to eat Christian flesh in the night." "If they depend upon Christian flesh, and eat no other," said Bruce, "perhaps the hyænas of Gondar will be the worst fed of any in the world!" "True," said the king, bursting out into loud laughter, "that may be; few of those that die by the knife anywhere are Christians, or have any religion at all; why then should you mind what they suffer?" "Sir," said Bruce, "that is not my sentiment; if you were to order a dog to be tortured to death before me every morning, I could not bear it. The carcasses of Abba, Salama, Guebra Denghel, and the rest, are still hanging where they were upon the tree; you smell the stench of them at