In this year, 1736, there happened a total eclipse of the sun, which very much affected the minds of the weaker sort of people. The dreamers and prophets were everywhere let loose, full of the lying spirit which possessed them, to foretel that the death of the king, and the downfal of his government were at hand, and that deluges of civil blood were then to be spilt both in the capital and provinces. There was not, indeed, at the time, any circumstance that warranted such a prediction, or any thing likely to be more fatal to the state, than the expenditure of the large sums of money to which the turn the king had taken subjected him.

He had built a large and very costly church at Koscam, and he was still engaged in a more expensive work, in the building of a palace at Gondar. He was also rebuilding his house at Riggobee-ber (the north end of the town), which had been demolished by the rebels; and had begun a very large and expensive villa at Azazo, with extensive groves, or gardens, planted thick with orange and lemon trees, upon the banks of a beautiful and clear river, which divides the palace from the church of Tecla Haimanout, a large edifice, which, some time before, he had also built and endowed. Besides all these occupations, he was deeply engaged in ornamenting his palace at Gondar. A rebellion, massacre, or some such misfortune, had happened among the Christians at Smyrna; who coming to Cairo, and finding that city in a still less peaceable state than the one which they had left, they repaired to Jidda in their way to India; but missing the monsoon, and being destitute of money and necessaries, they crossed over the Red Sea for Masuah, and came to Gondar. There were twelve of them silver-smiths, very excellent in that fine work called filigrane, who were all received very readily by the

king, liberally furnished both with necessaries and luxuries, and employed in his palace as their own taste directed them.

By the hands of these, and several Abyssinians whom they had taught, sons of Greek artists, whose fathers were dead, he finished his presence-chamber in a manner truly admirable. The skirting, which in our country is generally of wood, was finished with ivory four feet from the ground. Over this were three rows of mirrors from Venice, all joined toge ther, and fixed in frames of copper, or cornices gilt with gold. The roof, in gaiety and taste, correspon ded perfectly with the magnificent finishing of the room; it was the work of the Falasha, and consisted of painted cane, split and disposed in Mosaic figures, which produces a gayer effect than it is possible to conceive. This chamber, indeed, was never perfectly finished, from a want of mirrors. The king died; taste decayed; the artists were neglected, or employ. ed themselves in ornamenting saddles, bridles, swords, and other military ornaments, for which they were very ill paid; part of the mirrors fell down; part remained till my time; and I was present when the last of them were destroyed, on a particular occasion, after the battle of Serbraxos, as will be mentioned hereafter.

The king had begun another chamber of equal expence, consisting of plates of ivory, with stars of all colours stained in each plate at proper distances. This, too, was going to ruin; little had been done in it but the alcove in which he sat, and little of it was seen, as the throne and person of the king concealed it.

Yasous was charmed with this multiplicity of works and workmen. He gave himself up to it entirely; he even wrought with his own hand, and rejoiced at seeing the facility with which, by the use of a compass

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and a few straight lines, he could produce the figure of a star equally exact with any of his Greeks. Bounty followed bounty. The best villages, and those near the town, were given in property to the Greeks, that they might recreate themselves, but at a distance always liable to his call, and with as little loss of time as possible. He now renounced his favourite hunting matches and incursions upon the Shangalla and Shepherds of Atbara.

The extraordinary manner in which the king employed his time soon made him the object of public censure. Pasquinades began to be circulated throughout the capital; one in particular, a large roll of parchment, intituled "The expeditions of Yasous the Little." The king in reality was a man of short stature: The Ethiopic word Tannusli, joined to the king's name, Yasous El Tannush, applied both to his stature and actions. So Tallac, the name given to another Yasous, his predecessor, signified great in capacity and atchievement, as well as that he was of a large and masculine person.

These expeditions, though ennumerated in a large sheet of parchment, were confined to a very few miles; from Gondar to Kahha, from Kahha to Koscam, from Koscam to Azazo, from Azazo to Gondar, from Gondar to Koscam, from Koscam to Azazo, and so on. It was a similar piece of ridicule upon his father, Philip, as we are informed, that, in the last century, cost Don Carlos, prince of Spain, his life.

This satire provoked Yasous exceedingly; and, to wipe off the imputation of inactivity and want of ambition, he prepared for an expedition against Sennaar. It was not, however, one of those inroads into Atbara upon the Arabs and Shepherds, whom the Funge had conquered and made tributary to them; but a regu lar campaign with a royal army, aimed directly at the very vitals of the monarchy of Sennaar, the capital of

the Funge, and at the conquest or extirpation of those strangers entirely from Atbara.

We have seen, in the course of this history, that these two kingdoms, Abyssinia and Funge, had been on very bad terms during several of the last reigns; and that personal affronts and slights had passed between the contemporary princes themselves. Baady, son of L'Oul, who succeeded his father in the year 1733, had been distinguished by no exploits worthy of a king, but daily stained with acts of treachery and cruelty unworthy of a man. No intercourse had passed between Yasous and Baady during their respective reigns; there was no war declared, nor peace established, nor any sort of treaty subsisting between them.

Yasous, without any previous declaration, and without any provocation, at least as far as is known, raised a very numerous and formidable army, and gave the command of it to Ras Welled de l'Oul; to whom Kasmati Waragna was appointed fit-auraris. The king commanded a chosen body of troops, separate from the rest of the army, which was to act as a reserve, or as occasion should require, in the pitched battle. This he ardently wished for, and had figured to himself that he was to fight against Baady in person. Yasous, from the moment he entered the territory of Sennaar, gave his soldiers the accustomed licence he always had indulged them with, when marching through an enemy's country; nor knew he, in these circumstances, what was meant by mercy; all that had the breath of life was sacrificed by the sword, and the fire consumed the rest.

An universal terror spread around him down to the heart of Atbara. The Shepherds and Arabs, as many as could fly, dispersed themselves in the woods, which, all the way from the frontiers of Abyssinia to

the river Dender, are very thick, and in some places almost impenetrable. Some of the Arabs, either from affection or fear, joined Yasous in his march; among these was Nile Wed Ageeb, their prince; others, taking courage, gathered, and made a stand at the Dender, to try their fortune, and give their cattle time to pass the Nile; and then, if defeated, they were to follow them. Kasmati Waragna (as fit-auraris,) joined by the king, no sooner came up with these Arabs on the banks of the Dender, than he fell furiously upon them, broke and dispersed them with a considerable slaughter; then leaving Ras Welled de l'Oul with the king, and the main body to encamp, taking advantage of the confusion the defeat of the Arabs had occasioned, he advanced by a forced march to the Nile, to take a view of the town of Sennaar.

Baady had assembled a very large army on the other side of the river, and was preparing to march out of Sennaar; but, terrified at the king's approach, the defeat of the Arabs, and the velocity with which the Abyssinians advanced, he was about to change his resolution, abandon Sennaar, and retire north into Atbara.

There is a small kingdom, or principality, called Dar Fowr, all inhabited by negroes, far in the desert west of Sennaar, joining with two other petty negro states like itself, still farther westward, called Sele and Bagirma, while to the eastward it joins with Kordofan, formerly a province of Dar Fowr, but conquered from it by the Funge.

Hamis, prince of Dar Fowr, having been banished from his country in a late revolution occasioned by an unsuccessful war against Sele and Bagirma, had fled to Sennaar, where he had been received kindly by Baady, and it was by his assistance the Funge had subdued Kordofan. This prince, a gallant soldier,