Though For Months We Were Rather Hard Up, What By Employing Servants Of Political Prisoners, Friends Or Relatives Of The

Rebels, by using the influence of the Bishop, or through the protection of Wagshum Gobaze, money again found its way

To Magdala, and relieved us from our apprehensions. Theodore knew indirectly that we sent servants to the coast, but as it is the custom to allow prisoners' servants to go to their masters' families to beg for them, he could not well forbid us; the more so as he never gave us anything. If messengers had fallen into his hands he would probably have plundered the money, but not injured them. As for letters it was quite a different affair: if those we wrote had by accident come into his possession, he would have made short work of the messenger, and most certainly of us also.

It might appear strange that the Abyssinians - a race of thieves - should have proved themselves so honest on these occasions, and not absconded with the couple of hundred dollars entrusted to them: a fortune for a poor servant. Though it would be ungrateful to run down these men, who exposed themselves to great perils, often travelled the whole distance from Massowah to Magdala at night, and who, I may say, saved us from starvation; still I believe that they acted more on the old adage that honesty is the best policy, than from any innate virtue. First, they were handsomely rewarded, well treated, and expected a further reward (which they very properly received) should fortune once more smile upon us; Secondly, all the great rebel chiefs befriended us, and we should have had but to communicate with them directly, or, better still, through the Bishop; for them to have at once seized the delinquent, deprived him of his ill-gotten wealth, and punished him severely.

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