Tekla Haimanot’s ascetic practices in “tenantless wastes and malarious jungles” did not suffice him as the years advanced. “He hit upon an original idea of mortifying the flesh. There is in Shoa a small lake, which the saint in his peregrinations had often passed. To these waters he now repaired. The good people who followed him from all parts to hear his discourses and to obtain his blessing entreated him not to expose his precious person to the alligators and other aquatic monsters; but the holy man, who knew that all his exploits for the glory of the Church had not yet been accomplished, fearlessly stepped into the deep. Seven successive years he continued in the water, and probably he would have expired on his liquid couch, had not one of his legs dropped off. The clamour for this valuable relic created quite a dissension in the Church, but the monarch judiciously put a stop to the fierce war between the rival claimants by ordering it to be kept as a Palladium in the royal metropolis. This sacred talisman possesses more wonderful sanitary virtues than all the drugs in the universe. Patients from every province of the country visit the shrine to make votive offerings and to quaff the healing water in which the saint’s leg is weekly washed.”[136] That the miracles above related are stock miracles—if one may use such a phrase—and that the same legends are connected with more than one saint is evident from the following _gesta sanctorum_ cited by Mansfield Parkyns:— “Gabro Menfus Kouddos (Slave of the Holy Ghost) was a great saint from his birth; nay, more—he was born a saint. No sooner did he enter the world than he stood up, and three days after his birth he bowed his head thrice, saying in a distinct voice, ‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.’ He never tasted of his mother’s milk, nor during the whole period of his life partook of food or drink of any sort. Once, when praying on a mountain, he fell over a precipice two hundred cubits deep. Two angels immediately joined their spread wings under him to support him; but he refused their assistance, saying that he trusted to God alone for help. Another time he was ascending a very high mountain, and, being fatigued, the Holy Trinity came and assisted him. Many other equally absurd and almost blasphemous stories are related of him; at last, after a very long life, I forget of how many years, the Almighty sent Azrael, the angel of death, to take him. But the saint refused to die, saying, that as he had neither eaten nor drunk, he could not die. So all the saints came to him in turn for the purpose of persuading him to leave earth for Paradise. St. John the Baptist first addressed him, saying that he had gone the way of all flesh, notwithstanding his many privations and sufferings. Gabro Menfus Kouddos, however, at once met him with the answer, ‘Yes; but _you_ could not fast even for forty days, but fed on locusts and wild honey.’ Thus he