I have now one remaining part of my promise to fulfil, to account for the delay in the publication. It will not be thought surprising to any that shall reflect on the distant, dreary, and desert ways by which all letters were necessarily to pass, or the civil wars then raging in Abyssinia, the robberies and violences inseparable from a total dissolution of government, such as happened in my time, that no accounts for many years, one excepted, ever arrived in Europe. One letter, accompanied by a bill for a sum borrowed from a Greek at Gondar, found its way to Cairo; all the rest had miscarried: my friends at home gave me up for dead; and, as my death must have happened in circumstances difficult to have been proved, my property became as it were an _hereditas jacens_, without an owner, abandoned in common to those whose original title extended no further than temporary possession. A number of law-suits were the inevitable consequence of this upon my return. One carried on with a very expensive obstinacy for the space of ten years, by a very opulent and active company, was determined finally in the House of Peers, in the compass of a very few hours, by the well-known sagacity and penetration of a noble Lord, who, happily for the subjects of both countries, holds the first office in the law; and so judicious was the sentence, that harmony, mutual confidence, and good neighbourhood has ever since been the consequence of that determination. Other suits still remained, which unfortunately were not arrived to the degree of maturity to be so cut off; they are yet depending; patience and attention, it is hoped, may bring them to an issue at some future time. No imputation of rashness can possibly fall upon the decree, since the action has depended above thirty years. To these disagreeable avocations, which took up much time, were added others still more unfortunate. The relentless ague caught at Bengazi maintained its ground at times for a space of more than sixteen years, though every remedy had been used, but in vain; and, what was worst of all, a lingering distemper had seriously threatened the life of a most near relation, which, after nine years constant alarm, where every duty bound me to attention and attendance, conducted her at last, in very early life, to her grave[48].