He had heard, while at Shoa, from some priests of Debra Libanos, that there was a strange white man in favour with the king at Gondar, who could do every thing but raise the dead; it was among his first requests to the king, to make him acquainted with me. The king therefore ordered me to wait upon him every morning, and I, on my part, did not let slip that opportunity. Insensibly we came to be inseparable companions. Our conversation fell one day to be upon the Abyssinian kings who first lived at Shoa at the time when the kingdom of Adel was a great mart for the East Indian trade, before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. He said that a book containing their history, he believed, was in some of the churches in Shoa, and that he would immediately send for it. Although I could not help testifying my desire of having a book which I had sought for in vain through the rest of the provinces of Abyssinia, yet I thought it unreasonable to desire a man to send 300 miles merely for the purpose of getting it; I therefore did not press it, being satisfied with his promise; but as my work would have been incomplete without it, I asked my friend Tecla Mariam to mention it to him as from the king. His answer was, "I have already promised to get it for Yagoube, the messenger by this time is in Amhara; depend upon it, my father will not fail to let me have it; for fear of mistake, I have dispatched a very intelligent man, who knows and has seen the book at Debra Libanos." The promise was punctually kept, the book came, and from it I have drawn the history of the Adelan war, and the reign of those kings who had not yet returned to Axum, but reigned in Shoa.