Gusho began by asking me, “Would it not have been better if you had gone with me to Amhara, as I desired you, when I saw you last at Gondar? you would have saved yourself a great deal of fatigue and trouble in that dangerous march through Maitsha.” To this I answered, “It is hard for me, who am a stranger, to know what is best to be done in such a country as this. I was, as you may have heard, the king’s guest, and was favoured by him; it was my duty therefore to attend him, especially when he desired it; and such I am informed has always been the custom of the country; besides, Ras Michael laid his commands upon me.” On this, says Powussen, shaking his head, “You see he cannot forget Michael and the Tigré yet.”--“Very naturally, added Gusho, they were good to him; he was a great man in their time; they gave him considerable sums of money, and he spent it all among his own soldiers, the king’s guard, which they had given him to command after the Armenian. Yagoube taught him and his brother George to ride on horseback like the Franks, and play tricks with guns and pikes on horseback; folly, all of it to be sure, but I never heard he meddled in affairs, or that he spoke ill of any one, much less did any harm, like those rascals the Greeks when they were in favour in Joas’s time, for it was not their fault they did not direct every thing.”--“I hope I never did, said I; sure I am I never so intended, nor had I any provocation. I have received much good usage from every one; and the honour, if I do not forget, of a great many professions and assurances of friendship from you, said I, turning to Gusho. He hesitated a little, and then added very superciliously, “Aye, aye, we were, as I think, always friends.”--“You have had, says Powussen, a devilish many hungry bellies since we left Gondar.”--“You will excuse me, Sir, replied I, as to that article; I at no time ever found any difference whether you was in Gondar or not.”--“There, says Gusho, by St Demetrius, there is a truth for you, and you don’t often hear that in Begemder. May I suffer death if ever you gave a jar of honey to any white man in your life.”--“But I, says Powussen, sitting upright on the floor, and leaving off play, will give you, Yagoube, a present better than Gusho’s paultry jars of honey. I have brought with me, addressing himself to me, your double-barrelled gun, and your sword, which I took from that son of a wh--e Guebra Mehedin: by St Michael, continued Powussen, if I had got hold of that infidel I would have hanged him upon the first tree in the way for daring to say that he was one of my army when he committed that unmanly robbery upon your people. The Iteghé, your friend, would yesterday have given me ten loads of wheat for your gun, for she believes I am to carry it back to Begemder again, and do not mean to give it you, but come to my tent to-morrow and you shall have it.” I very well understood his meaning, and that he wanted