and strewed about the streets, to be eaten by the hyænas and dogs; a most barbarous and offensive custom, to which they strictly adhere to this very day.

After having thus taken ample vengeance for the murder of his brother Yasous, Theophilus did not stop here. Tecla Haimanout was, it is true, a parricide, but he was likewise a king, and his nephew ; nor did it seem just to Theophilus that it should be left in the will of private subjects, after having acknowledged Tecla Haimanout as their sovereign, to choose a time afterwards, in which they were to cut him off for a crime which, however great, had not hindered them from swearing allegiance to him at his accession, and entering into his service at the time when it was recently committed. He, therefore, ordered all the regicides in custody to be put to death; and sent circular letters to the several governors, that they should observe the same rule as to all those directly concerned in the murder of his nephew Tecla Haimanout, who should be found in places under their command.

Tigi, formerly Betwudet, had been imprisoned in Hamazen, a small district near the Red Sea, under the government of Abba Saluce. This man, by birth a Galla, had escaped from Hamazen, and collected a considerable army of the different tribes of his nation, Liban, Kalkend, and Basso; and having found one that pretended to be of the royal blood, he proclaimed him king, and put his army in motion.

Upon the first news of this revolt, the king, though attended with few troops, immediately left Gondar, ordering all those, whose duty it was, to join him at Ibaba. Having there collected a little army, he marched immediately for the country of the Basso, destroying every thing with fire and sword. Tigi, in the mean time, by forced marches, came to Ibaba,

where he committed all sorts of cruelties, without distinction of age or sex. The cries of the sufferers reached the king, who turned immediately back to the relief of Ibaba; and, not discouraged by his enemy's great superiority of number, offered battle to them as soon as he arrived. Nor did Tigi and his Galla refuse it; but, on the 28th day of March 1709, a very obstinate engagement ensued; where, though the king was inferior in forces, yet being himself warlike and active, he was so well seconded by his troops, that the Basso and Liban were almost entirely cut off.

In the field of battle there was a church, built by the late king Yasous, after a victory gained there over the Galla; whence it had the name it then bore, Debra Mawea, or the Mountain of Victory. A large body of these Galla, seeing that all went against them in the field, fled to the church for a sanctuary, trusting to be protected from the fury of the soldiers by the holiness of the place; and they so far judged well; for the king's troops, though they surrounded the church on every side, did not offer to break through, or molest the enemy that had sheltered themselves within. Theophilus, informed of this scruple of his soldiers, immediately rode up to them, crying out, "That the church was defiled by the entrance of so many Pagans, and no longer fit for Christian worship; that they should therefore immediately set fire to it, and he would build a nobler one in its place." The soldiers obeyed without further hesitation; and, with cotton wads wrapt about the balls of their guns, they set fire to the thatch, with which every church in Abyssinia is covered. The whole was instantly consumed, and every creature within it perished. Many principal officers, and men of the best families on the king's side, Billetana Gueta Sana Denghel, and Bil letana Gueta Kirubel, Ayto Stephenous, son of Ozoro

Salla of Nara, all men of great consideration, were slain that day. What became of the rebel prince was never known. Tigi, with his two sons, fled from the field; but they were met by a peasant, who took them prisoners first; and, after discovering who they were, put them all three to death, and brought their heads to the king.

After so severe a rebuke, the Galla, on both sides of the Nile, seemed disposed to be quiet; and the king thereupon returned to Gondar amidst the acclamations of his soldiers and subjects; but scarcely had he arrived in the capital, when he was taken ill of a fever, and died on the 2d of September. He was buried at Tedda, after a reign of three years and three months.

OUSTAS.

From 1709 to 1714.

Usurps the Crown-Addicted to hunting-Account of the Shangalla-Active and bloody Reign-Entertains Catholic Priests privately-Falls sick and dies; but how, uncertain.

IT has been already observed, in the course of this history, that the Abyssinians, from a very ancient tradition, attribute the foundation of their monarchy to Menilek son of Solomon, by the queen of Saba, or Azab, rendered in the Vulgate, the queen of the south. The annals of this country mention but two interruptions to have happened, in the lineal succession of the heirs-male of Solomon. The first about the year 960, in the reign of Del Naad, by Judith queen of the Falasha; of which revolution we have already spoken sufficiently. The second interruption happened at the period to which we have now arrived in this history; and owed its origin, not to any misfortune that befel the royal family, as in the massacre of Judith, but seemed to be brought about by the peculiar circumstances of the times, from a well-founded attention to self-preservation.

Yasous the Great, after a long and glorious reign, had been murdered by his son Tecla Haimanout.

Two years after, this parricide fell in the same manner. The assassination of two princes, so nearly related, and in so short a time, had involved, from different motives, the greatest part of the noble families of the kingdom, either in the crime itself, or in the suspicion of aiding and abetting it.

Upon the death of Tecla Haimanout, Tifilis, or Theophilus, brother of Yasous, had been brought from the mountain, and placed on the throne as successor to his nephew. This prince was scarcely crowned, when he made some very severe examples of the murderers of his brother; and he seemed to be privately taking informations, that would have reached the whole of them, had not death put an end to his inquiries and to his justice.

The family of king Yasous was very numerous on the mountain. It was the favourite store whence both the soldiery and the citizens chose to bring their princes. There were, at the very instant, many of his sons, princes of great hopes, and of proper ages. Nothing, then, was more probable, than that the prince, now to succeed, would be of that family, and, as such, interested in pursuing the same measures of vengeance on the murderers of his father and of his brother, as the late king Theophilus had done; and how far, or to whom, this might extend, was neither certain nor safe to trust to.

The time was now past when the nobles vied with each other who should be the first to steal away privately, or go with open force, to take the new king from the mountain, and bring him to Gondar, his capital. A backwardness was visible in the behaviour of each of them, because in each one's breast the fear was the same.

In so uncommon a conjuncture, and disposition of men's minds, a subject had the ambition and bold