Returning to his friend the young priest, he told him that his wife expected he would come and fetch her on a particular day. Accordingly, when the time arrived, the two priests set out together, and, on reaching Dixan, the young one found out that his aged friend had not only sold the woman and the two boys, but that he, the father, was sold also! The whole family were thus, by treachery, doomed to finish their days in bondage. However, the slave-merchants persuaded the old priest to accompany the party to a place near Dixan, where he was assured that he should receive all that was due to him. On reaching this spot they fell upon him and bound him too as their slave, the woman and the young priest begging for permission, meanwhile, to pluck out his beard; and as that ceremony, besides its well-merited pain, would add to the old gentleman's value by making him look younger, leave was readily granted. On reaching Masuah, the woman and the boys were instantly sold and carried into Arabia; but the two priests were still slaves at Masuah when Bruce left there.
"The priests of Axum," says Bruce, "and those of the monastery of Abba Garima, are equally infamous with those of Damo for this practice, which is winked at by Ras Michael as contributing to his greatness, by furnishing firearms to his provinces of Tigré, which gives him superiority over all Abyssinia. As a return for these firearms, about five hundred of these unfortunate people are annually exported from Masuah to Arabia, of which three hundred are pagans from the market at Gondar, the other two hundred are Christian children kidnapped. The naybe receives six patakas of duty for each one exported."
On the 25th of November Bruce and his party left Dixan, and, descending the very steep hill on which the town is situated, they reached an immense daroo-tree, seven and a half feet in diameter, with a head spreading in proportion. This tree, and the rivulet on which it stands, mark the boundary of that part of Tigré which the Naybe of Masuah farms or rents of the governors of Abyssinia. One of Bruce's servants delighted (as they all were) to get out of the dominions of Masuah, no sooner reached this tree, than he made a mark on the ground with his knife, and swore thereupon that if any one belonging to the naybe dared to cross it, he would bind him hand and foot, and leave him to the lions and the hyænas. The naybe's people, on this hint, at once retired. Their presence had been a source of constant alarm to Bruce, who always felt that he owed his life to the advice and assistance he had received from Achmet. "We remained," says Bruce, "under this tree the night of the 25th. It will be to me a station ever memorable, as the first where I recovered a portion of that tranquillity of mind to which I had been a stranger ever since my arrival at Masuah."