rried in chains to the Emperor.

The time now approaching in which we were to be delivered to the Turks,
we had none but God to apply to for relief: all the measures we could
think of were equally dangerous. Resolving, nevertheless, to seek some
retreat where we might hide ourselves either all together or separately,
we determined at last to put ourselves under the protection of the Prince
John Akay, who had defended himself a long time in the province of Bar
against the power of Abyssinia.

After I had concluded a treaty with this prince, the patriarch and all
the fathers put themselves into his hands, and being received with all
imaginable kindness and civility, were conducted with a guard to Adicota,
a rock excessively steep, about nine miles from his place of residence.
The event was not agreeable to the happy beginning of our negotiation,
for we soon began to find that our habitation was not likely to be very
pleasant. We were surrounded with Mahometans, or Christians who were
inveterate enemies to the Catholic faith, and were obliged to act with
the utmost caution. Notwithstanding these inconveniences we were pleased
with the present tranquillity we enjoyed, and lived contentedly on
lentils and a little corn that we had; and I, after we had sold all our
goods, resolved to turn physician, and was soon able to support myself by
my practice.

I was once consulted by a man troubled with asthma, who presented me with
two alquieres--that is, about twenty-eight pounds weight--of corn and a
sheep. The advice I gave him, after having turned over my books, was to
drink goats' urine every morning; I know not whether he found any benefit
by following my prescription, for I never saw him after.

Being under a necessity of obeying our acoba, or protector, we changed
our place of abode as often as he desired it, though not without great
inconveniences, from the excessive heat of the weather and the faintness
which our strict observation of the fasts and austerities of Lent, as it
is kept in this country, had brought upon us. At length, wearied with
removing so often, and finding that the last place assigned for our abode
was always the worst, we agreed that I should go to our sovereign and
complain.

I found him entirely taken up with the imagination of a prodigious
treasure, affirmed by the monks to be hidden under a mountain. He was
told that his predecessors had been hindered from discovering it by the
demon that g