where he was found three days afterwards, with his
favourite and a monk. When they took him, they cut off the heads of his
two companions in the field, and carried him to the Emperor; the
procedure against him was not long, and he was condemned to be burnt
alive. Then imagining that, if he embraced the Catholic faith, the
intercession of the missionaries, with the entreaties of his wife and
children, might procure him a pardon, he desired a Jesuit to hear his
confession, and abjured his errors. The Emperor was inflexible both to
the entreaties of his daughter and the tears of his grand-children, and
all that could be obtained of him was that the sentence should be
mollified, and changed into a condemnation to be hanged. Tecla Georgis
renounced his abjuration, and at his death persisted in his errors.
Adero, his sister, who had borne the greatest share in his revolt, was
hanged on the same tree fifteen days after.

I arrived not long after at the Emperor's court, and had the honour of
kissing his hands; but stayed not long in a place where no missionary
ought to linger, unless obliged by the most pressing necessity: but being
ordered by my superiors into the kingdom of Damote, I set out on my
journey, and on the road was in great danger of losing my life by my
curiosity of tasting a herb, which I found near a brook, and which,
though I had often heard of it, I did not know. It bears a great
resemblance to our radishes; the leaf and colour were beautiful, and the
taste not unpleasant. It came into my mind when I began to chew it that
perhaps it might be that venomous herb against which no antidote had yet
been found, but persuading myself afterwards that my fears were merely
chimerical, I continued to chew it, till a man accidentally meeting me,
and seeing me with a handful of it, cried out to me that I was poisoned;
I had happily not swallowed any of it, and throwing out what I had in my
mouth, I returned God thanks for this instance of his protection.

I crossed the Nile the first time in my journey to the kingdom of Damote;
my passage brought into my mind all that I had read either in ancient or
modern writers of this celebrated river; I recollected the great expenses
at which some Emperors had endeavoured to gratify their curiosity of
knowing the sources of this mighty stream, which nothing but their little
acquaintance with the Abyssins made so difficult to be found. I passed
the river within two days' journe