I was, for some minutes, in the utmost astonishment at this torrent of bad news. Whether the others knew more than I, it is impossible to say; dissimulation, in all ranks of these people, is as natural as breathing. Guebra Mehedin and Confu were the Iteghé’s two nephews, sons of Basha Eusebius her brother, a worthless man, and his sons no better. They were young men, however, whom I saw continually at the queen’s palace, and to whom I should have gone immediately without fear, if I had known their houses had been in my way, and they happened to be near Lebec at the hot wells; notwithstanding their rank, they were of such dissipated manners, that they were of no account, but treated as castaways in the house of the queen their aunt, and never, as far as I knew, had entered into the presence of the king. I had often ate and drank with them, however, in the house of Ayto Engedan, their cousin-german, who was gone off with Welleta Israel his aunt, at the passage of the Nile as before mentioned. They had beat Strates, who was their intimate acquaintance, violently; as also two others of my servants, to make them confess in what package the gold was. They had taken from them also a large blunderbuss, given me by the Swedish consul, Brander, at Algiers; a pair of pistols, a double-barrelled gun, and a Turkish sword mounted with silver, which, as there was then no prospect of their being immediately needed, were sent forward with the baggage. Netcho and Adigo, and all present, agreed that the whole was a fiction, and that, supposing the account to be true that Begemder and Amhara were in rebellion, young, wild, and worthless people, like Guebra Mehedin and Confu, could never be those pitched upon for the respectable office of Fit-Auraris. The worst that could be, as they conceived, was, that some misunderstanding might subsist between Ras Michael and the governors above named, but Fasil was undoubtedly the enemy of them all. They imagined therefore that this disgust, if any, would be soon got over, and concluded that it was highly absurd, in any case, to attack me, as they certainly knew that the queen, Powussen, and Gusho, would be full as ill-pleased with it as the king or Ras Michael. It therefore appeared to them, as it also did to me, that these wild, young men, had taken the first surmise of a rebellion, as a pretence for robbing all that came in their way, and that I, unfortunately, had been the first.