letter had been closely represented with punch and file. "Tell me," said
the king, on the case of this culprit being mentioned to him, "how is that
machine made which in your country pours out the silver crowns like a
shower of rain?" The hand corn-mills, presented by the British Government,
had been erected within the palace walls, and slaves were turning the
wheels with unceasing diligence. "Demetrius, the Armenian, made a machine
to grind corn," exclaimed his majesty in a transport of delight, as the
flour streamed upon the floor; "and though it cost the people a year of
hard labour to construct, it was useless when finished, because the priest
declared it to be the devil's work, and cursed the bread. But, may the
Sahela Selasse die--these engines are the work of clever hands."

The monarch, elated with his knowledge, now determined to build a bridge,
which in three days was completed; and, as was predicted by the quiet
English spectators, in three hours fell down on the very first fresh
produced by the annual rains.

Weaving excepted, the people manufactured nothing; but British commerce
has long been known, though evidently of the coarsest kind. At length, on
his majesty's being told that five thousand looms would bring him more
wealth than ten thousand soldiers, he gradually consented to form a
commercial treaty. The crown had hitherto appropriated the property of
strangers dying in the country. The purchase or display of costly goods by
the subject had been interdicted, and a maxim exhibiting the whole
jealousy of savage life had been established, that the stranger who once
entered was never to depart from Abyssinia. By the articles of the
commercial treaty, all those barbarous prohibitions have been abolished.

As the monarch returned the deed, he made a short speech sufficiently able
and appropriate: "You have loaded me with costly presents, the rainment