Excerpt from The Cradle of the Blue Nile, Vol. 2 of 2: A Visit to the Court of King John of Ethiopia Seeing me plainly dressed in grey cloth, Maderakal asked if I was not going to wear a uniform. I told him that being on a simple sporting expedition I had not brought one with me, and that with us a gorgeous dress was not the necessary symbol of social position that it is in the East, and that indeed we often showed our pride by dressing our servants far more splendidly than ourselves. At this moment the king's gasket zagry, or esquire, bearing his sword and shield, came for us, and Maderakal, daring to delay no longer, led me to the front of the royal enclosure. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.