Not far from the mass of goods was a confusion of
camels, asses, and mules that had formed the means of transport.
I now met an Italian merchant, with whom I subsequently became
intimately acquainted, Signor Angelo Bolognesi--he had arrived
from Khartoum to purchase coffee and bees'-wax. We were delighted
to meet a civilized European after so long an absence. For some
months we had had little intercourse with any human beings beyond
the hunters that had composed our party, in countries that were
so wild and savage, that the print of a naked foot upon the sand
had instinctively brought the rifle upon full cock. Our European
society was quickly increased: two German missionaries had
arrived, en ronte for an establishment that had been set on foot
in the heart of Abyssinia, under the very nose of the King
Theodore, who regarded missionaries as an unsavoury odour. Both
were suffering from fever, having foolishly located themselves in
a hut close to the foul stench of dead animals on the margin of
the polluted stream, the water of which they drank. One of these
preachers was a blacksmith, whose iron constitution had entirely
given way, and the little strength that remained, he exhausted in
endless quotations of texts from the Bible, which he considered
applicable to every trifling event or expression.
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