We Were Now
Convinced That Our Enterprise Was Impracticable, And That To Hazard
Ourselves Amidst So Many Insurmountable Difficulties Would
Be to
tempt Providence; despairing, therefore, that I should ever come
this way to Abyssinia, I resolved to return back
With my
intelligence to my companion, whom I had left at Pate.
I cannot, however, leave this country without giving an account of
their manner of blood-letting, which I was led to the knowledge of
by a violent fever, which threatened to put an end to my life and
travels together. The distress I was in may easily be imagined,
being entirely destitute of everything necessary. I had resolved to
let myself blood, though I was altogether a stranger to the manner
of doing it, and had no lancet, but my companions hearing of a
surgeon of reputation in the place, went and brought him. I saw,
with the utmost surprise, an old Moor enter my chamber, with a kind
of small dagger, all over rusty, and a mallet in his hand, and three
cups of horn about half a foot long. I started, and asked what he
wanted. He told me to bleed me; and when I had given him leave,
uncovering my side, applied one of his horn cups, which he stopped
with chewed paper, and by that means made it stick fast; in the same
manner he fixed on the other two, and fell to sharpening his
instrument, assuring me that he would give me no pain.
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