“Pardon me, Tecla Mariam, said I, if I do not understand you. I came here to solicit for Yasine, that Confu or his successor would appoint him their deputy, and you answer that you advise me to appoint him myself.”--“And so I do, replies Tecla Mariam: Who is to appoint him but you? You are governor of Ras el Feel; are you not?” I stood motionless with astonishment. “It is no great affair, says he, and I hope you will never see it. It is a hot, unwholesome country, full of Mahometans; but its gold is as good as any Christian gold whatever. I wish it had been Begemder with all my heart, but there is a good time coming.” After having recovered myself a little from my surprise, I went to Ayto Confu to kiss his hand as my superior, but this he would by no means suffer me to do. A great dinner was provided us by the Iteghé; and Yasine being sent for, was appointed, cloathed, that is invested, and ordered immediately to Ras el Feel to his government, to make peace with the Daveina, and bring all the horses he could get with him from thence, or from Atbara. I sent there also that poor man who had given us the small blue beads on the road, as I have already mentioned. The having thus provided for those two men, and secured, as I thought, a retreat to Sennaar for myself, gave me the first real pleasure that I had received since landing at Masuah; and that day, in company with Heikel, Tecla Mariam, Engedan, Aylo, and Guebra Denghel, all my great friends and the hopes of this country, I for the first time, since my arrival in Abyssinia, abandoned myself to joy. My constitution was, however, too much weakened to bear any excesses. The day after, when I went home to Emfras, I found myself attacked with a slow fever, and, thinking that it was the prelude of an ague, with which I was often tormented, I fell to taking bark, without any remission, or, where the remission was very obscure, I shut myself up in the house, upon my constant regimen of boiled rice, with abundant draughts of cold water. I was at this time told that there was a great commotion at Gondar; that a monk of Debra Libanos, a favourite of the Iteghè and of the king too, had excommunicated Abba Salama in a dispute about religion at the Itchegué’s house; and, the day after, Hagi Mahomet, one of Ras Michael’s tent-makers, who lived in the town below, through which the high road from Gojam passes, came to tell me, that many monks from Gojam had passed through the low town, and expressed themselves very much dissatisfied by hearing that a frank (meaning me) was in the town above. He said that when they came in sixes and sevens at a time, there was no fear; but when they returned altogether (as Michael sometimes made them do) they were like so many madmen; therefore, if I resolved to stay at Emfras, he wished I would order him send me some Mahometan soldiers, who would strictly act as I commanded them.