After having taken my leave of the king and the Ras, I paid the same compliment to the Iteghè at Koscam: I had not for several days been able to wait upon her, on account of the riots during the marriage, where the Ras required my attendance, and would admit of no excuse. That excellent princess endeavoured much to dissuade me from leaving Gondar. She treated the intention of going to the source of the Nile as a fantastical folly, unworthy of any man of sense or understanding, and very earnestly advised me to stay under her protection at Koscam, till I saw whether Ras, Michael and the king would return, and then take the first good opportunity of returning to my own country through Tigré, the way that I came, before any evil should overtake me. I excused myself the best I could. It was not easy to do it with any degree of conviction, to people utterly unlearned, and who knew nothing of the prejudice of ages in favour of the attempt I was engaged in. I therefore turned the discourse to professions of gratitude for benefits that I had every day received from her, and for the very great honour that she then did me, when she condescended to testify her anxiety concerning the fate of a poor unknown traveller like me, who could not possibly have any merit but what arose from her own gracious and generous sentiments, and universal charity, that extended to every object in proportion as they were helpless. “See, see, says she, how every day of our life punishes us with proofs of the perverseness and contradiction of human nature; you are come from Jerusalem, through vile Turkish governments, and hot, unwholesome climates, to see a river and a bog, no part of which you can carry away were it ever so valuable, and of which you have in your own country a thousand larger, better, and cleaner, and you take it ill when I discourage you from the pursuit of this fancy, in which you are likely to perish, without your friends at home ever hearing when or where the accident happened. While I, on the other hand, the mother of kings who have sat upon the throne of this country more than thirty years, have for my only wish, night and day, that, after giving up every thing in the world, I could be conveyed to the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and beg alms for my subsistence all my life after, if I could only be buried in the street within sight of the gate of that temple where our blessed Saviour once lay.” This was said in the most melancholy tone possible, an unusual gloom hanging upon her countenance. Her desiring me, however, to stay at Koscam, till I knew whether the king and Michael would return or not, considering the large army they were to lead to the field, and the feebleness of the so often defeated Fasil, made me from that instant apprehend that there was something behind with which I was yet unacquainted.