Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/254

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146
TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

my religion teaches me to do good to all men, even to enemies, without reward, or without considering whether I ever should see them again."

"Now, after the drugs I sent you by Ibrahim, tell me, and tell me truly, upon the faith of an Arab, would your people, if they met me in the desert, do me any wrong, more than now, as I have eat and drank with you to-day?"

The old man Nimmer, on this rose from his carpet, and sat upright, a more ghastly and more horrid figure I never saw. "No, said he, Shekh, cursed be those men of my people, or others, that ever shall lift up their hand against you, either in the Desert or the Tell, i.e. the part of Egypt which is cultivated. As long as you are in this country, or between this and Cosseir, my son shall serve you with heart and hand; one night of pain that your medicines freed me from, would not be repaid, if I was to follow you on foot to Messir, that is Cairo."

I then thought it a proper time to enter into conversation about penetrating into Abyssinia that way, and they discussed it among themselves in a very friendly, and at the same time in a very sagacious and sensible manner.

"We could carry you to El Haimer, (which I understood to be a well in the desert, and which I afterwards was much better acquainted with to my sorrow.) We could conduct you so far, says old Nimmer, under God, without fear of harm, all that country was Christian once, and weChristians