His first explanation was the cause of his non-arrival sooner, which was owing to the utter ignorance of my arrival on the part of Captain Harris, the chief of the Embassy, until the night but one before, when the King had forwarded by one of his pages two notes, which I had endeavoured to send to him, the last one dated from Dinnomalee. The other was the one which had been sent by Esau Ibrahim, who, it will be remembered, was despatched from Mullu, on the other side of the Hawash, with a note to Ankobar, informing Captain Harris of my being on the road with stores. Both these letters had been intercepted and detained, until public rumour spreading, the King could not have kept the Embassy much longer ignorant of my being in the country; and he therefore made a virtue of necessity, and sent the letters before they were demanded. An answer had been sent to me by Capt. Harris the day before by the messenger now in prison, confined by the Wallasmah for having brought a letter for me, after the King had issued orders that all correspondence between the English already in the country and those arriving should be prevented. Mr. Scott was not at all surprised when I informed him of the circumstance, though I certainly considered such a proceeding to be very much at variance with the conditions and stipulations I was given to understand were contained in the commercial treaty. I could not help remarking this, and Mr. Scott then candidly admitted the King did not know the character or purport of the paper he had signed; and had only been made aware of the new responsibilities he had incurred, by a sharply worded expostulatory letter, written by Mr. Krapf, in accordance to the dictation of Captain Harris, on an occasion subsequently to the signing of the treaty, when despatches and letters coming up from the coast were intercepted and detained for some time by the orders of the King. Singularly enough, this information was corroborated by Ohmed Medina, who told me that my letter from Dinnomalee had not been carried to Captain Harris, but to the King, who wanted to find out whether the English were his friends or not, and was trying my disposition and that of the Commander (Captain Harris) by this harsh treatment of me; a kind of experiment, in fact, to see what would be borne by us, and how far he had limited his authority by attaching his signature to the treaty. Any idea of granting public benefit, at the expense of his prerogative was never entertained for a moment, the intentions of the King being limited to shewing personal favour alone, which he is ever ready to concede even now to English travellers, much as he complains of the conduct of the Mission in Shoa as regards their political misdoings; more especially of the great insult offered to him by the unfortunate letter before alluded to, and which was worded so unguardedly, that the King, on receiving it, might well, considering his great regard for Mr. Krapf previously, turn to