to the spirit residing in the river, whom they address as the Everlasting God, Light of the World, Eye of the World, God of Peace, the Saviour, and Father of the Universe. Relics of serpent-worship, which has in all ages extensively prevailed in the East, were likewise observed among the Agows, who use them, as the Romans did their sacred chickens, for purposes of divination. On the 10th of November Bruce took his leave of the fountains of the Nile, and returned to Gondar. Here, as the civil war still raged with unexampled fury, he was during a whole year witness of all those atrocities which ferocious barbarians exercise towards each other when excited by ambition or revenge. At the termination of this period, however, notwithstanding that old law of Abyssinia forbidding strangers to quit the country, which had a thousand times been broken, he obtained the king’s permission to depart, though not before he had taken a solemn oath, which he never intended to fulfil, that, after having visited his home and friends, he would return. Leaving Gondar on the 26th of December, 1771, with a numerous suite of attendants, he proceeded through the northern provinces of Abyssinia, the country of the Shangalla, and crossing the rivers Rabad, Dender, and Nile, arrived on the 29th of April, 1772, at Sennaar, the capital of Nubia. The next morning after his arrival he was summoned into the presence of the king, whom he found in a small apartment in his vast clay-built palace, dressed very meanly, and reposing on a mattress covered with a Persian carpet. He was a “fellow of no mark or likelihood,” with a “very plebeian countenance;” but he received the stranger civilly, asked him numerous questions, and furnished him with a very comfortable dinner of camel’s flesh. The crowds in the streets, however, were exceedingly insolent; and while they affronted and hooted at him as he passed, he called to mind with horror that, but a few years before, this same mob had murdered a French ambassador with all his attendants.