In the course of the ten succeeding years, however, children were born to these people, and the question then arose, as to whether they shared the bondage of their parents, or were free. This was brought to issue by the Negoos bestowing certain lands, upon which were domiciled several of these bondsmen, upon a courtier, who made a demand of service from the children, which the parents refused to admit as his right, and an appeal was made to the Negoos in consequence. The court of “_Wombaroitsh_,” or judges of an inferior kind, who relieve the king of all first hearings of cases, except in most important ones, and who sit in judgment in one of the courts of the palace, decided in favour of the children; but this decision, on an appeal by the courtier, was negatived by the Negoos himself, without any hearing of those unfortunates who were most interested. The “_Wombaroitsh_” put in a plea, however, founded upon the canons of their Church, and the numerous solicitations of the free relations of the bondpeople, induced the Negoos to acknowledge himself to have been in error, and to proclaim that the people alone, whom he had fed and clothed in the time of the famine, were his slaves for life, and that their children for the future must be considered free. These circumstances I became acquainted with in consequence of having the daughter of one of these very bondsmen in my service, and who was old enough, at the time of the famine, to recollect the sad miseries that fell upon her own family during its continuance, until her father and two brothers sold themselves for their food, in the manner I have above related, to the future service of the Negoos. Among others who addressed the Negoos in favour of the children, whose numbers amounted to scarcely more than five hundred, were the officers of the British Mission, a fact, however, of which I never heard until my arrival in this country, nor is it, I am afraid, very generally known to have been the case by the inhabitants of Shoa, who have no other idea but that it was the effect of religious feeling, and of the great sense of justice, for which their sovereign, Sahale Selassee, is celebrated all over the eastern horn of Africa, and far into the interior towards the west. I was never given to understand that the proclamation that announced the freedom of the children at all affected the condition of their parents, who, I believe, still are and will continue until death the bond servants of the Negoos.