A custom exists in every Abyssinian court, which requires that no one shall go empty handed into the presence of royalty. Every visitor to the Negoos of Shoa in this manner brings with him some present, which, after having been registered by an officer appointed for that purpose, is deposited at the feet of the monarch. In return, it is expected that some request on the part of the inferior is to be graciously acceded to, and if what is asserted be true, the Negoos is obliged by the law of custom to consent to whatever is asked, should he accept, in the first instance, the proffered gift. A monstrous exaggeration of this system of presenting gifts, to be returned by some greater amount of property, is, at all events, practised very considerably, by the Abyssinians, upon ignorant strangers, for the custom is not confined to an interchange of favours with royalty, but is general also among all classes. I have myself frequently been imposed upon, or at least have had attempts made to impose upon me in this manner, when ridiculously small presents were offered, and then on my acceptance followed some exorbitant request. A memolagee of eggs, for example, would usher in a modest demand for as many dollars; when, from a calculation I have frequently made, one of the latter would purchase one thousand eggs, at the rate of five eggs for a needle, of which two hundred could be bought for a dollar. Again, a jar of ale, containing about five gallons, which would cost the third of an ahmulah, or salt-piece, or the third of two-pence halfpenny, would be deemed quite a sufficient gift to ask in return a slave girl, or a mule. To prevent all mistakes, after I had discovered that I had given considerable offence, in some cases, by refusing what had been demanded, I made it a rule to know previously to my accepting it, what was the object for which the memolagee was offered, and even then it was very seldom I would consent to give more than the market value of the pumpkins, water melons, and smuggled honey, which generally constituted these propitiatory offerings. The memolagee I had prepared for this visit to the Negoos, at Ankobar, was about two pounds of sugar which I had managed to manufacture from cane growing in the neighbourhood of Aliu Amba. I calculated upon the effect that such a present would have upon the naturally sagacious mind of the gifted monarch of Shoa, and that the usefulness of such an article, introduced as a manufactured product of his own country, would strike him as being of more importance than many richer presents, the use and value of which he could not, from the circumstances of his situation, have any idea of.