I will spare myself the disagreeable task of shocking my readers with any further account of these horrid cruelties; enough has been said to give an idea of the character of these times and people. Blood continued to be spilt as water, day after day, till the Epiphany; priests, lay-men, young men and old, noble and vile, daily found their end by the knife or the cord. Fifty-seven people died publicly by the hand of the executioner in the course of a very few days; many disappeared, and were either murdered privately, or sent to prisons, no one knew where. The bodies of those killed by the sword were hewn to pieces and scattered about the streets, being denied burial. I was miserable, and almost driven to despair, at seeing my hunting-dogs, twice let loose by the carelessness of my servants, bringing into the court-yard the head and arms of slaughtered men, and which I could no way prevent but by the destruction of the dogs themselves; the quantity of carrion, and the stench of it, brought down the hyænas in hundreds from the neighbouring mountains; and, as few people in Gondar go out after it is dark, they enjoyed the streets to themselves, and seemed ready to dispute the possession of the city with the inhabitants. Often when I went home late from the palace, and it was this time the king chose chiefly for conversation, though I had but to pass the corner of the market-place before the palace, had lanthorns with me, and was surrounded with armed men, I heard them grunting by two's and three's so near me as to be afraid they would take some opportunity of seizing me by the leg; a pistol would have frightened them, and made them speedily run, and I constantly carried two loaded at my girdle, but the discharging a pistol in the night would have alarmed every one that heard it in the town, and it was not now the time to add any thing to people's fears. I at last scarce ever went out, and nothing occupied my thoughts but how to escape from this bloody country by way of Sennaar, and how I could best exert my power and influence over Yasine at Ras el Feel to pave my way, by assisting me to pass the desert into Atbara.