It is, in Abyssinia, high-treason to sit upon any seat of the king’s; and he that presumed to do this would be instantly hewn to pieces, if there was not some other collateral proof of his being a madman. The reader will find, in the course of my history, a very ridiculous accident on this subject, in the king’s tent, with Guangoul, king of the Bertuma Galla. It is probable that Alexander had heard of this law in Persia, and disapproved of it; for one day, it being extremely cold, the king, sitting in his chair before the fire, warming and chaffing his legs, saw a soldier, probably a Persian, who had lost his feeling by extreme numbness. The king immediately leaped from his chair, and ordered the soldier to be set down upon it. The fire soon brought him to his senses, but he had almost lost them again with fear, by finding himself in the king’s seat. To whom Alexander said, “Remember, and distinguish, how much more advantageous to man my government is than that of the kings of Persia[38]. By sitting down on my seat, you have saved your life; by sitting on theirs, you would infallibly have lost it.” In Abyssinia it is considered as a fundamental law of the land, that none of the royal family, who has any deformity or bodily defect, shall be allowed to succeed to the crown; and, for this purpose, any of the princes, who may have escaped from the mountain of Wechnè, and who are afterwards taken, are mutilated in some of their members, that thus they may be disqualified from ever succeeding. In Persia the same was observed. Procopius[39] tells us, that Zames, the son of Cabades, was excluded from the throne because he was blind of one eye, the law of Persia prohibiting any person that had a bodily defect to be elected king. The kings of Abyssinia were seldom seen by their subjects. Justin[40] says, the Persians hid the person of their king to increase their reverence for his majesty. And it was a law of Deioces[41], king of the Medes, that nobody should be permitted to see the king; which regulation was as ancient as the time of Semiramis, whose son, Ninyas, is said to have grown old in the palace, without ever having been known by being seen out of it.