A Voyage to Abyssinia

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This etext was prepared from the 1887 Cassell and quiet space toysCompanyedition by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.

A VOYAGE TO ABYSSINIA.

by
FATHER JEROME LOBO.

Translated from theFrench
by
SAMUEL JOHNSON.

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
london, paris, newyork & melbourne.
1887.

INTRODUCTION.

Jeronimo Lobo was born in Lisbon in the year 1593.  Heentered the Order of the Jesuits at the age of sixteen. After passing through the studies by which Jesuits were trainedfor missionary work, which included special attention to the artsof speaking and writing, Father Lobo was sent as a missionary toIndia at the age of twenty-eight, in the year 1621.  Hereached Goa, as his book tells, in 1622, and was in 1624, at theage of thirty-one, told off as one of the missionaries to beemployed in the conversion of the Abyssinians.  They were tobe converted, from a form of Christianity peculiar to themselves,to orthodox Catholicism.  The Abyssinian Emperor Segued wasprotector of the enterprise, of which we have here the storytold.

Father Lobo was nine years in Abyssinia, from the age ofthirty-one to the age of forty, and this was the adventurous timeof his life.  The death of the Emperor Segued put an end tothe protection that had given the devoted missionaries, in themidst of dangers, a precarious hold upon their work.  Whenhe and his comrades fell into the hands of the Turks at Massowah,his vigour of body and mind, his readiness of resource, and hisfidelity, marked him out as the one to be sent to theheadquarters in India to secure the payment of a ransom for hiscompanions.  He obtained the ransom, and desired also toobtain from the Portuguese Viceroy in India armed force tomaintain the missionaries in the position they had so farwon.  But the Civil power was deaf to his pleading.  Heremoved the appeal to Lisbon, and after narrowly escaping on theway from a shipwreck, and after having been captured by pirates,he reached Lisbon, and sought still to obtain means of overawingthe force hostile to the work of the Jesuits in Abyssinia. The Princess Margaret gave friendly hearing, but sent him on topersuade, if he could, the King of Spain; and failing at Madrid,he went to Rome and tried the Pope.  He was chosen to go tothe Pope, said the Patriarch Alfonso Mendez, because, of all thebrethren at Goa, the ‘Pater Hieronymus Lupus’ (Lobotranslated into Wolf) was the most ingenious and learned in allsciences, with a mind most generous in its desire to conquerdifficulties, dexterous in management of business, and found mostable to make himself agreeable to those with whom there wasbusiness to be done.  The vigour with which he held by hispurpose of endeavouring in every possible way to bring theChristianity of Abyssinia within the pale of the Catholic Churchis in accordance with the character that makes the centre of thestory of this book.  Whimsical touches arise out of thisstrength of character and readiness of resource, as when he tellsof the taste of the Abyssinians for raw cow’s flesh, with asauce high in royal Abyssinian favour, made of the cow’sgall and contents of its entrails, of which, when he was pressedto partake, he could only excuse himself and his brethren bysuggesting that it was too good for such humblemissionaries.  Out of distinguished respect for it, theyrefrained from putting it into their mouths.

Good Father Lobo gave up the desire of his heart, when it wasproved unattainable, and returned to India six years after thebreaking up of his work in Abyssinia, at the age offorty-seven.  He came to be head of the Provincials of theJesuit settlement at Goa, and after about ten more years ofactive duty in the East returned in 1658 to Lisbon, when he diedin the religious house of St. Roque in 1678, at the age ofeighty-five.  A comrade of Father Lobo’s, BaltazarTellez, said that Lobo had travelled thirty-eight thousandleagues with no other object before him but the winning of moresouls to God.  His years in Abyssinia stood out prominentlyto his mind among all the years of his long life, and he wrote anaccount of them in Portuguese, of which the manuscript is atLisbon in the monastery of St. Roque, where he closed hislife.

Of that manuscript, then and still unprinted (though use wasmade of it by Baltazar Tellez in his History of‘Ethiopia-Coimbra,’ 1660), the Abbe Legrand, Prior ofNeuville-les-Dames, and of Prevessin, published a translationinto French.  The Abbe Legrand had been to Lisbon asSecretary to the Abbe d’Estrees, Ambassador from France toPortugal.  The negotiations were so long continued that M.Legrand was detained five years in Lisbon, and employed the timein researches among documents illustrating the Portuguesepossessions in India and the East.  He obtained many memoirsof great interest, and published from one of them an account ofCeylon; but of all the manuscripts he found none interested himso much as that of Father Lobo.  His translation wasaugmented with illustrative dissertations, letters, and a memoiron the circumstances of the death of M. du Roule.  It filledtwo volumes, or 636 pages of forty lines.  This waspublished in 1728.  It was on the 31st of October, 1728,that Samuel Johnson, aged nineteen, went to Pembroke College,Oxford, and Legrand’s ‘Voyage Historiqued’Abissinie du R. P. Jerome Lobo, de la Compagnie de Jesus,Traduit du Portugais, continue et augmente de plusieursDissertations, Lettres et Memoires,’ was one of the newbooks read by Johnson during his short period of collegelife.  In 1735, when Johnson’s age was twenty-six, andthe world seemed to have shut against him every door of hope,Johnson stayed for six months at Birmingham with his oldschoolfellow Hector, who was aiming at medical practice, and wholodged at the house of a bookseller.  Johnson spoke withinterest of Father Lobo, whose book he had read at PembrokeCollege.  Mr. Warren, the bookseller, thought it would beworth while to print a translation.  Hector joined in urgingJohnson to undertake it, for a payment of five guineas. Although nearly brought to a stop midway by hypochondriacdespondency, a little suggestion that the printers also werestopped, and if they had not their work had not their pay, causedJohnson to go on to the end.  Legrand’s book wasreduced to a fifth of its size by the omission of all thatoverlaid Father Lobo’s personal account of his adventures;and Johnson began work as a writer with this translation, firstpublished at Birmingham in 1735.

H.M.

THE PREFACE

The following relation is so curious and entertaining, and thedissertations that accompany it so judicious and instructive,that the translator is confident his attempt stands in need of noapology, whatever censures may fall on the performance.

The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of hiscountrymen, has amused his reader with no romantic absurdities orincredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, isat least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the boundsof probability has a right to demand that they should believe himwho cannot contradict him.

He appears by his modest and unaffected narration to havedescribed things as he saw them, to have copied nature from thelife, and to have consulted his senses, not his imagination; hemeets with no basilisks that destroy with their eyes, hiscrocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataractsfall from the rock without deafening the neighbouringinhabitants.

The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediablebarrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity, no perpetualgloom or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here describedeither devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in allprivate and social virtues; here are no Hottentots withoutreligion, polity, or articulate language, no Chinese perfectlypolite, and completely skilled in all sciences: he will discover,what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartialinquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found there is amixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason, andthat the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions,but has balanced in most countries their particularinconveniences by particular favours.

In his account of the mission, where his veracity is most tobe suspected, he neither exaggerates overmuch the merits of theJesuits, if we consider the partial regard paid by the Portugueseto their countrymen, by the Jesuits to their society, and by thePapists to their church, nor aggravates the vices of theAbyssins; but if the reader will not be satisfied with a Popishaccount of a Popish mission, he may have recourse to the historyof the church of Abyssinia, written by Dr. Geddes, in which hewill find the actions and sufferings of the missionaries placedin a different light, though the same in which Mr. Le Grand, withall his zeal for the Roman church, appears to have seen them.

This learned dissertator, however valuable for his industryand erudition, is yet more to be esteemed for having dared sofreely in the midst of France to declare his disapprobation ofthe Patriarch Oviedo’s sanguinary zeal, who was continuallyimportuning the Portuguese to beat up their drums formissionaries, who might preach the gospel with swords in theirhands, and propagate by desolation and slaughter the true worshipof the God of Peace.

It is not easy to forbear reflecting with how little reasonthese men profess themselves the followers of Jesus, who leftthis great characteristic to His disciples, that they should beknown by loving one another, by universal and unbounded charityand benevolence.

Let us suppose an inhabitant of some remote and superiorregion, yet unskilled in the ways of men, having read andconsidered the precepts of the gospel, and the example of ourSaviour, to come down in search of the true church: if he wouldnot inquire after it among the cruel, the insolent, and theoppressive; among those who are continually grasping at dominionover souls as well as bodies; among those who are employed inprocuring to themselves impunity for the most enormousvillainies, and studying methods of destroying theirfellow-creatures, not for their crimes but their errors; if hewould not expect to meet benevolence, engaged in massacres, or tofind mercy in a court of inquisition, he would not look for thetrue church in the Church of Rome.

Mr. Le Grand has given in one dissertation an example of greatmoderation, in deviating from the temper of his religion, but inthe others has left proofs that learning and honesty are oftentoo weak to oppose prejudice.  He has made no scruple ofpreferring the testimony of Father du Bernat to the writings ofall the Portuguese Jesuits, to whom he allows great zeal, butlittle learning, without giving any other reason than that hisfavourite was a Frenchman.  This is writing only toFrenchmen and to Papists: a Protestant would be desirous to knowwhy he must imagine that Father du Bernat had a cooler head ormore knowledge; and why one man whose account is singular is notmore likely to be mistaken than many agreeing in the sameaccount.

If the Portuguese were biassed by any particular views,another bias equally powerful may have deflected the Frenchmanfrom the truth, for they evidently write with contrary designs:the Portuguese, to make their mission seem more necessary,endeavoured to place in the strongest light the differencesbetween the Abyssinian and Roman Church; but the great Ludolfus,laying hold on the advantage, reduced these later writers toprove their conformity.

Upon the whole, the controversy seems of no great importanceto those who believe the Holy Scriptures sufficient to teach theway of salvation, but of whatever moment it may be thought, thereare not proofs sufficient to decide it.

His discourses on indifferent subjects will divert as well asinstruct, and if either in these, or in the relation of FatherLobo, any argument shall appear unconvincing, or descriptionobscure, they are defects incident to all mankind, which,however, are not too rashly to be imputed to the authors, beingsometimes, perhaps, more justly chargeable on the translator.

In this translation, if it may be so called, great libertieshave been taken, which, whether justifiable or not, shall befairly confessed; and let the judicious part of mankind pardon orcondemn them.

In the first part the greatest freedom has been used inreducing the narration into a narrow compass, so that it is by nomeans a translation but an epitome, in which, whether everythingeither useful or entertaining be comprised, the compiler is leastqualified to determine.

In the account of Abyssinia, and the continuation, the authorshave been followed with more exactness, and as few passagesappeared either insignificant or tedious, few have been eithershortened or omitted.

The dissertations are the only part in which an exacttranslation has been attempted, and even in those abstracts aresometimes given instead of literal quotations, particularly inthe first; and sometimes other parts have been contracted.

Several memorials and letters, which are printed at the end ofthe dissertations to secure the credit of the foregoingnarrative, are entirely left out.

It is hoped that, after this confession, whoever shall comparethis attempt with the original, if he shall find no proofs offraud or partiality, will candidly overlook any failure ofjudgment.

PART I—THE VOYAGE TO ABYSSINIA

CHAPTER I

The author arrives after some difficulties at Goa.  Ischosen for the Mission of Æthiopia.  The fate of thoseJesuits who went by Zeila.  The author arrives at the coastof Melinda.

I embarked in March, 1622, in the same fleet with the CountVidigueira, on whom the king had conferred the viceroyship of theIndies, then vacant by the resignation of Alfonso Noronha, whoseunsuccessful voyage in the foregoing year had been the occasionof the loss of Ormus, which being by the miscarriage of thatfleet deprived of the succours necessary for its defence, wastaken by the Persians and English.  The beginning of thisvoyage was very prosperous: we were neither annoyed with thediseases of the climate nor distressed with bad weather, till wedoubled the Cape of Good Hope, which was about the end ofMay.  Here began our misfortunes; these coasts areremarkable for the many shipwrecks the Portuguese havesuffered.  The sea is for the most part rough, and the windstempestuous; we had here our rigging somewhat damaged by a stormof lightning, which when we had repaired, we sailed forward toMosambique, where we were to stay some time.  When we camenear that coast, and began to rejoice at the prospect of ease andrefreshment, we were on the sudden alarmed with the sight of asquadron of ships, of what nation we could not at firstdistinguish, but soon discovered that they were three English andthree Dutch, and were preparing to attack us.  I shall nottrouble the reader with the particulars of this fight, in which,though the English commander ran himself aground, we lost threeof our ships, and with great difficulty escaped with the restinto the port of Mosambique.

This place was able to afford us little consolation in ouruneasy circumstances; the arrival of our company almost caused ascarcity of provisions.  The heat in the day is intolerable,and the dews in the night so unwholesome that it is almostcertain death to go out with one’s head uncovered. Nothing can be a stronger proof of the malignant quality of theair than that the rust will immediately corrode both the iron andbrass if they are not carefully covered with straw.  Westayed, however, in this place from the latter end of July to thebeginning of September, when having provided ourselves with othervessels, we set out for Cochin, and landed there after a veryhazardous and difficult passage, made so partly by the currentsand storms which separated us from each other, and partly bycontinual apprehensions of the English and Dutch, who werecruising for us in the Indian seas.  Here the viceroy andhis company were received with so much ceremony, as was rathertroublesome than pleasing to us who were fatigued with thelabours of the passage; and having stayed here some time, thatthe gentlemen who attended the viceroy to Goa might fit out theirvessels, we set sail, and after having been detained some time atsea, by calms and contrary winds, and somewhat harassed by theEnglish and Dutch, who were now increased to eleven ships of war,arrived at Goa, on Saturday, the 16th of December, and theviceroy made his entry with great magnificence.

I lived here about a year, and completed my studies indivinity; in which time some letters were received from thefathers in Æthiopia, with an account that Sultan Segued,Emperor of Abyssinia, was converted to the Church of Rome, thatmany of his subjects had followed his example, and that there wasa great want of missionaries to improve these prosperousbeginnings.  Everybody was very desirous of seconding thezeal of our fathers, and of sending them the assistance theyrequested; to which we were the more encouraged, because theemperor’s letters informed our provincial that we mighteasily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala, but unhappily,the secretary wrote Zeila for Dancala, which cost two of ourfathers their lives.

We were, however, notwithstanding the assurances given us bythe emperor, sufficiently apprised of the danger which we wereexposed to in this expedition, whether we went by sea orland.  By sea, we foresaw the hazard we run of falling intothe hands of the Turks, amongst whom we should lose, if not ourlives, at least our liberty, and be for ever prevented fromreaching the court of Æthiopia.  Upon thisconsideration our superiors divided the eight Jesuits chosen forthis mission into two companies.  Four they sent by sea andfour by land; I was of the latter number.  The four firstwere the more fortunate, who though they were detained some timeby the Turkish bassa, were dismissed at the request of theemperor, who sent him a zebra, or wild ass, a creature of largesize and admirable beauty.

As for us, who were to go by Zeila, we had still greaterdifficulties to struggle with: we were entirely strangers to theways we were to take, to the manners, and even to the names ofthe nations through which we were to pass.  Our chief desirewas to discover some new road by which we might avoid havinganything to do with the Turks.  Among great numbers whom weconsulted on this occasion, we were informed by some that wemight go through Melinda.  These men painted that hideouswilderness in charming colours, told us that we should find acountry watered with navigable rivers, and inhabited by a peoplethat would either inform us of the way, or accompany us init.  These reports charmed us, because they flattered ourdesires; but our superiors finding nothing in all this talk thatcould be depended on, were in suspense what directions to giveus, till my companion and I upon this reflection, that since allthe ways were equally new to us, we had nothing to do but toresign ourselves to the Providence of God, asked and obtained thepermission of our superiors to attempt the road throughMelinda.  So of we who went by land, two took the way ofZeila, and my companion and I that of Melinda.

Those who were appointed for Zeila embarked in a vessel thatwas going to Caxume, where they were well received by the king,and accommodated with a ship to carry them to Zeila; they werethere treated by the Check with the same civility which they hadmet with at Caxume.  But the king being informed of theirarrival, ordered them to be conveyed to his court at Auxa, towhich place they were scarce come before they were thrown by theking’s command into a dark and dismal dungeon, where thereis hardly any sort of cruelty that was not exercised uponthem.  The Emperor of Abyssinia endeavoured by large offersto obtain their liberty, but his kind offices had no other effectthan to heighten the rage of the king of Zeila.  Thisprince, besides his ill will to Sultan Segued, which was kept upby some malcontents among the Abyssin nobility, who, provoked atthe conversion of their master, were plotting a revolt,entertained an inveterate hatred against the Portuguese for thedeath of his grandfather, who had been killed many years before,which he swore the blood of the Jesuits should repay.  Soafter they had languished for some time in prison their headswere struck off.  A fate which had been likewise our own,had not God reserved us for longer labours!

Having provided everything necessary for our journey, such asArabian habits, and red caps, calicoes, and other trifles to makepresents of to the inhabitants, and taking leave of our friends,as men going to a speedy death, for we were not insensible of thedangers we were likely to encounter, amongst horrid deserts,impassable mountains, and barbarous nations, we left Goa on the26th day of January in the year 1624, in a Portuguese galliotthat was ordered to set us ashore at Pate, where we landedwithout any disaster in eleven days, together with a youngAbyssin, whom we made use of as our interpreter.  While westayed here we were given to understand that those who had beenpleased at Goa to give us directions in relation to our journeyhad done nothing but tell us lies.  That the people weresavage, that they had indeed begun to treat with the Portuguese,but it was only from fear, that otherwise they were a barbarousnation, who finding themselves too much crowded in their owncountry, had extended themselves to the sea-shore; that theyravished the country and laid everything waste where they came,that they were man-eaters, and were on that account dreadful inall those parts.  My companion and I being undeceived bythis terrible relation, thought it would be the highestimprudence to expose ourselves both together to a death almostcertain and unprofitable, and agreed that I should go with ourAbyssin and a Portuguese to observe the country; that if I shouldprove so happy as to escape being killed by the inhabitants, andto discover a way, I should either return, or send back theAbyssin or Portuguese.  Having fixed upon this, I hired alittle bark to Jubo, a place about forty leagues distant fromPate, on board which I put some provisions, together with mysacerdotal vestments, and all that was necessary for saying mass:in this vessel we reached the coast, which we found inhabited byseveral nations: each nation is subject to its own king; thesepetty monarchies are so numerous, that I counted at least ten inless than four leagues.

CHAPTER II

The author lands: The difficulty of his journey.  Anaccount of the Galles, and of the author’s reception at theking’s tent; Their manner of swearing, and of lettingblood.  The author returns to the Indies, and finds thepatriarch of Æthiopia.

On this coast we landed, with an intention of travelling onfoot to Jubo, a journey of much greater length and difficultythan we imagined.  We durst not go far from our bark, andtherefore were obliged to a toilsome march along the windings ofthe shore, sometimes clambering up rocks, and sometimes wadingthrough the sands, so that we were every moment in the utmostdanger of falling from the one, or sinking in the other. Our lodging was either in the rocks or on the sands, and eventhat incommoded by continual apprehensions of being devoured bylions and tigers.  Amidst all these calamities ourprovisions failed us; we had little hopes of a supply, for wefound neither villages, houses, nor any trace of a humancreature; and had miserably perished by thirst and hunger had wenot met with some fishermen’s boats, who exchanged theirfish for tobacco.

Through all these fatigues we at length came to Jubo, akingdom of considerable extent, situated almost under the line,and tributary to the Portuguese, who carry on a trade here forivory and other commodities.  This region so abounds withelephants, that though the teeth of the male only are valuable,they load several ships with ivory every year.  All thiscoast is much infested with ravenous beasts, monkeys, andserpents, of which last here are some seven feet in length, andthicker than an ordinary man; in the head of this serpent isfound a stone about the bigness of an egg, resembling bezoar, andof great efficacy, as it is said, against all kinds ofpoison.  I stayed here some time to inform myself whether Imight, by pursuing this road, reach Abyssinia; and could get noother intelligence but that two thousand Galles (the same peoplewho inhabited Melinda) had encamped about three leagues fromJubo; that they had been induced to fix in that place by theplenty of provisions they found there.  These Galles layeverything where they come in ruin, putting all to the swordwithout distinction of age or sex; which barbarities, thoughtheir numbers are not great, have spread the terror of them overall the country.  They choose a king, whom they call Lubo:every eighth year. They carry their wives with them, and exposetheir children without any tenderness in the woods, it beingprohibited, on pain of death, to take any care of those which areborn in the camp.  This is their way of living when they arein arms, but afterwards when they settle at home they breed uptheir children.  They feed upon raw cow’s flesh; whenthey kill a cow, they keep the blood to rub their bodies with,and wear the guts about their necks for ornaments, which theyafterwards give to their wives.

Several of these Galles came to see me, and as it seemed theyhad never beheld a white man before, they gazed on me withamazement; so strong was their curiosity that they even pulledoff my shoes and stockings, that they might be satisfied whetherall my body was of the same colour with my face.  I couldremark, that after they had observed me some time, theydiscovered some aversion from a white; however, seeing me pullout my handkerchief, they asked me for it with a great deal ofeagerness; I cut it into several pieces that I might satisfy themall, and distributed it amongst them; they bound them about theirheads, but gave me to understand that they should have liked thembetter if they had been red: after this we were seldom withouttheir company, which gave occasion to an accident, which thoughit seemed to threaten some danger at first, turned afterwards toour advantage.

As these people were continually teasing us, our Portugueseone day threatened in jest to kill one of them.  The blackran in the utmost dread to seek his comrades, and we were in onemoment almost covered with Galles; we thought it the most propercourse to decline the first impulse of their fury, and retiredinto our house.  Our retreat inspired them with courage;they redoubled their cries, and posted themselves on an eminencenear at hand that overlooked us; there they insulted us bybrandishing their lances and daggers.  We were fortunatelynot above a stone’s cast from the sea, and could thereforehave retreated to our bark had we found ourselves reduced toextremities.  This made us not very solicitous about theirmenaces; but finding that they continued to hover about ourhabitation, and being wearied with their clamours, we thought itmight be a good expedient to fright them away by firing fourmuskets towards them, in such a manner that they might hear thebullets hiss about two feet over their heads.  This had theeffect we wished; the noise and fire of our arms struck them withso much terror that they fell upon the ground, and durst not forsome time so much as lift up their heads.  They forgotimmediately their natural temper, their ferocity and haughtinesswere softened into mildness and submission; they asked pardon fortheir insolence, and we were ever after good friends.

After our reconciliation we visited each other frequently, andhad some conversation about the journey I had undertaken, and thedesire I had of finding a new passage into Æthiopia. It was necessary on this account to consult their lubo or king: Ifound him in a straw hut something larger than those of hissubjects, surrounded by his courtiers, who had each a stick inhis hand, which is longer or shorter according to the quality ofthe person admitted into the king’s presence.  Theceremony made use of at the reception of a stranger is somewhatunusual; as soon as he enters, all the courtiers strike him withtheir cudgels till he goes back to the door; the amity thensubsisting between us did not secure me from this uncouthreception, which they told me, upon my demanding the reason ofit, was to show those whom they treated with that they were thebravest people in the world, and that all other nations ought tobow down before them.  I could not help reflecting on thisoccasion how imprudently I had trusted my life in the hands ofmen unacquainted with compassion or civility, but recollecting atthe same time that the intent of my journey was such as mightgive me hopes of the divine protection, I banished all thoughtsbut those of finding a way into Æthiopia.  In thisstrait it occurred to me that these people, however barbarous,have some oath which they keep with an inviolable strictness; thebest precaution, therefore, that I could use would be to bindthem by this oath to be true to their engagements.  Themanner of their swearing is this: they set a sheep in the midstof them, and rub it over with butter, the heads of families whoare the chief in the nation lay their hands upon the head of thesheep, and swear to observe their promise.  This oath (whichthey never violate) they explain thus: the sheep is the mother ofthem who swear; the butter betokens the love between the motherand the children, and an oath taken on a mother’s head issacred.  Upon the security of this oath, I made themacquainted with my intention, an intention, they told me, it wasimpossible to put in execution.  From the moment I left themthey said they could give me no assurance of either life orliberty, that they were perfectly informed both of the roads andinhabitants, that there were no fewer than nine nations betweenus and Abyssinia, who were always embroiled amongst themselves,or at war with the Abyssins, and enjoyed no security even intheir own territories.  We were now convinced that ourenterprise was impracticable, and that to hazard ourselves amidstso many insurmountable difficulties would be to tempt Providence;despairing, therefore, that I should ever come this way toAbyssinia, I resolved to return back with my intelligence to mycompanion, whom I had left at Pate.

I cannot, however, leave this country without giving anaccount of their manner of blood-letting, which I was led to theknowledge of by a violent fever, which threatened to put an endto my life and travels together.  The distress I was in mayeasily be imagined, being entirely destitute of everythingnecessary.  I had resolved to let myself blood, though I wasaltogether a stranger to the manner of doing it, and had nolancet, but my companions hearing of a surgeon of reputation inthe place, went and brought him.  I saw, with the utmostsurprise, an old Moor enter my chamber, with a kind of smalldagger, all over rusty, and a mallet in his hand, and three cupsof horn about half a foot long.  I started, and asked whathe wanted.  He told me to bleed me; and when I had given himleave, uncovering my side, applied one of his horn cups, which hestopped with chewed paper, and by that means made it stick fast;in the same manner he fixed on the other two, and fell tosharpening his instrument, assuring me that he would give me nopain.  He then took off his cups, and gave in each place astroke with his poignard, which was followed by a stream ofblood.  He applied his cups several times, and every timestruck his lancet into the same place; having drawn away a largequantity of blood, he healed the orifices with three lumps oftallow.  I know not whether to attribute my cure to bleedingor my fear, but I had from that time no return of my fever.

When I came to Pate, in hopes of meeting with my associate, Ifound that he was gone to Mombaza, in hopes of receivinginformation.  He was sooner undeceived than I, and we met atthe place where we parted in a few days; and soon afterwards leftPate to return to the Indies, and in nine-and-twenty days arrivedat the famous fortress of Diou.  We were told at this placethat Alfonso Mendes, patriarch of Æthiopia, was arrived atGoa from Lisbon.  He wrote to us to desire that we wouldwait for him at Diou, in order to embark there for the Red Sea;but being informed by us that no opportunities of going thitherwere to be expected at Diou, it was at length determined that weshould meet at Bazaim; it was no easy matter for me to find meansof going to Bazaim.  However, after a very uneasy voyage, inwhich we were often in danger of being dashed against the rocks,or thrown upon the sands by the rapidity of the current, andsuffered the utmost distress for want of water, I landed atDaman, a place about twenty leagues distant from Bazaim. Here I hire a catre and four boys to carry me to Bazaim: thesecatres are a kind of travelling couches, in which you may eitherlie or sit, which the boys, whose business is the same with thatof chairmen in our country, support upon their shoulders by twopoles, and carry a passenger at the rate of eighteen or twentymiles a day.  Here we at length found the patriarch, withthree more priests, like us, designed for the mission ofÆthiopia.  We went back to Daman, and from thence toDiou, where we arrived in a short time.

CHAPTER III

The author embarks with the patriarch, narrowly escapesshipwreck near the isle of Socotora; enters the Arabian Gulf, andthe Red Sea.  Some account of the coast of the Red Sea.

The patriarch having met with many obstacles anddisappointments in his return to Abyssinia, grew impatient ofbeing so long absent from his church.  Lopo Gomezd’Abreu had made him an offer at Bazaim of fitting outthree ships at his own expense, provided a commission could beprocured him to cruise in the Red Sea.  This proposal wasaccepted by the patriarch, and a commission granted by theviceroy.  While we were at Diou, waiting for these vessels,we received advice from Æthiopia that the emperor,unwilling to expose the patriarch to any hazard, thought Dagher,a port in the mouth of the Red Sea, belonging to a princedependent on the Abyssins, a place of the greatest security toland at, having already written to that prince to give him safepassage through his dominions.  We met here with new delays;the fleet that was to transport us did not appear, the patriarchlost all patience, and his zeal so much affected the commander atDiou, that he undertook to equip a vessel for us, and pushed thework forward with the utmost diligence.  At length, thelong-expected ships entered the port; we were overjoyed, we weretransported, and prepared to go on board.  Many persons atDiou, seeing the vessels so well fitted out, desired leave to gothis voyage along with us, imagining they had an excellentopportunity of acquiring both wealth and honour.  Wecommitted, however, one great error in setting out, for havingequipped our ships for privateering, and taken no merchandise onboard, we could not touch at any of the ports of the RedSea.  The patriarch, impatient to be gone, took leave in themost tender manner of the governor and his other friends,recommended our voyage to the Blessed Virgin, and in the field,before we went on shipboard, made a short exhortation, so movingand pathetic, that it touched the hearts of all who heardit.  In the evening we went on board, and early the nextmorning being the 3rd of April, 1625, we set sail.

After some days we discovered about noon the island Socotora,where we proposed to touch.  The sky was bright and the windfair, nor had we the least apprehension of the danger into whichwe were falling, but with the utmost carelessness and jollityheld on our course.  At night, when our sailors, especiallythe Moors, were in a profound sleep (for the Mohammedans,believing everything forewritten in the decrees of God, and notalterable by any human means, resign themselves entirely toProvidence), our vessel ran aground upon a sand bank at theentrance of the harbour.  We got her off with the utmostdifficulty, and nothing but a miracle could have preservedus.  We ran along afterwards by the side of the island, butwere entertained with no other prospect than of a mountainouscountry, and of rocks that jutted out over the sea, and seemedready to fall into it.  In the afternoon, putting into themost convenient ports of the island, we came to anchor; very muchto the amazement and terror of the inhabitants, who were not usedto see any Portuguese ships upon their coasts, and were thereforeunder a great consternation at finding them even in theirports.  Some ran for security to the mountains, others tookup arms to oppose our landing, but were soon reconciled to us,and brought us fowls, fish, and sheep, in exchange for Indiacalicoes, on which they set a great value.  We left thisisland early the next morning, and soon came in sight of CapeGardafui, so celebrated heretofore under the name of the Cape ofSpices, either because great quantities were then found there, orfrom its neighbourhood to Arabia the Happy, even at this dayfamous for its fragrant products.  It is properly at thiscape (the most eastern part of Africa) that the Gulf of Arabiabegins, which at Babelmandel loses its name, and is called theRed Sea.  Here, though the weather was calm, we found thesea so rough, that we were tossed as in a high wind for twonights; whether this violent agitation of the water proceededfrom the narrowness of the strait, or from the fury of the latestorm, I know not; whatever was the cause, we suffered all thehardships of a tempest.  We continued our course towards theRed Sea, meeting with nothing in our passage but a gelve, or kindof boat, made of thin boards, sewed together, with no other sailthan a mat.  We gave her chase, in hopes of being informedby the crew whether there were any Arabian vessels at the mouthof the strait; but the Moors, who all entertain dismalapprehensions of the Franks, plied their oars and sail with theutmost diligence, and as soon as they reached land, quitted theirboat, and scoured to the mountains.  We saw them makesignals from thence, and imagining they would come to a parley,sent out our boat with two sailors and an Abyssin, putting theships off from the shore, to set them free from any suspicion ofdanger in coming down.  All this was to no purpose, theycould not be drawn from the mountain, and our men had orders notto go on shore, so they were obliged to return withoutinformation.  Soon after we discovered the isle ofBabelmandel, which gives name to the strait so called, and partsthe sea that surrounds it into two channels; that on the side ofArabia is not above a quarter of a league in breadth, and throughthis pass almost all the vessels that trade to or from the RedSea.  The other, on the side of Æthiopia, though muchlarger, is more dangerous, by reason of the shallows, which makeit necessary for a ship, though of no great burthen, to pass verynear the island, where the channel is deeper and lessembarrassed.  This passage is never made use of but by thosewho would avoid meeting with the Turks who are stationed on thecoast of Arabia; it was for this reason that we chose it. We passed it in the night, and entered that sea, so renowned onmany accounts in history, both sacred and profane.

In our description of this famous sea, an account of which mayjustly be expected in this place, it is most convenient to beginwith the coast of Arabia, on which part at twelve leagues fromthe mouth stands the city of Moca, a place of considerabletrade.  Forty leagues farther is the Isle of Camaram, whoseinhabitants are annoyed with little serpents, which they callbasilisks, which, though very poisonous and deadly, do not, asthe ancients have told us, kill with their eyes, or if they haveso fatal a power, it is not at least in this place.  Sailingninety leagues farther, you see the noted port of Jodda, wherethe pilgrims that go to Mecca and Medina unlade those richpresents which the zeal of different princes is every dayaccumulating at the tomb of Mahomet.  The commerce of thisplace, and the number of merchants that resort thither from allparts of the world, are above description, and so richly ladenare the ships that come hither, that when the Indians wouldexpress a thing of inestimable price, they say, “It is ofgreater value than a ship of Jodda.”  An hundred andeighteen leagues from thence lies Toro, and near it the ruins ofan ancient monastery.  This is the place, if the report ofthe inhabitants deserves any credit, where the Israelitesmiraculously passed through the Red Sea on dry land; and there issome reason for imagining the tradition not ill grounded, for thesea is here only three leagues in breadth.  All the groundabout Toro is barren for want of water, which is only to be foundat a considerable distance, in one fountain, which flows out ofthe neighbouring mountains, at the foot of which there are stilltwelve palm-trees.  Near Toro are several wells, which, asthe Arabs tell us, were dug by the order of Moses to quiet theclamours of the thirsty Israelites.  Suez lies in the bottomof the Gulf, three leagues from Toro, once a place of note, nowreduced, under the Turks, to an inconsiderable village, where themiserable inhabitants are forced to fetch water at threeleagues’ distance.  The ancient Kings of Egyptconveyed the waters of the Nile to this place by an artificialcanal, now so choked with sand, that there are scarce any marksremaining of so noble and beneficial a work.

The first place to be met with in travelling along the coastof Africa is Rondelo, situate over against Toro, and celebratedfor the same miraculous passage.  Forty-five leagues fromthence is Cocir.  Here ends that long chain of mountainsthat reaches from this place even to the entrance of the RedSea.  In this prodigious ridge, which extends three hundredleagues, sometimes approaching near the sea, and sometimesrunning far up into the land, there is only one opening, throughwhich all that merchandise is conveyed, which is embarked atRifa, and from thence distributed through all the east. These mountains, as they are uncultivated, are in some partsshaded with large forests, and in others dry and bare.  Asthey are exceedingly high, all the seasons may be here foundtogether; when the storms of winter beat on one side, on theother is often a serene sky and a bright sunshine.  The Nileruns here so near the shore that it might without much difficultybe turned through this opening of the mountains into the Red Sea,a design which many of the Emperors have thought of putting inexecution, and thereby making a communication between the Red Seaand the Mediterranean, but have been discouraged either by thegreatness of the expense or the fear of laying great part ofEgypt under water, for some of that country lies lower thansea.

Distant from Rondelo a hundred and thirty leagues is the Isleof Suaquem, where the Bassa of that country chooses hisresidence, for the convenience of receiving the tribute withgreater exactness, there being a large trade carried on here withthe Abyssins.  The Turks of Suaquem have gardens on the firmland, not above a musket shot from the island, which supply themwith many excellent herbs and fruits, of which I doubt whetherthere be not a greater quantity on this little spot than on thewhole coast of Africa besides, from Melinda to Suez.  For ifwe except the dates which grow between Suez and Suaquem, theground does not yield the least product; all the necessaries oflife, even water, is wanting.  Nothing can support itself inthis region of barrenness but ostriches, which devour stones, oranything they meet with; they lay a great number of eggs, part ofwhich they break to feed their young with.  These fowls, ofwhich I have seen many, are very tame, and when they are pursued,stretch out their wings, and run with amazing swiftness.  Asthey have cloven feet, they sometimes strike up the stones whenthey run, which gave occasion to the notion that they threwstones at the hunters, a relation equally to be credited withthose of their eating fire and digesting iron.  Thosefeathers which are so much valued grow under their wings: theshell of their eggs powdered is an excellent remedy for soreeyes.

The burning wind spoken of in the sacred writings, I take tobe that which the natives term arur, and the Arabs uri, whichblowing in the spring, brings with it so excessive a heat, thatthe whole country seems a burning oven; so that there is notravelling here in this dreadful season, nor is this the onlydanger to which the unhappy passenger is exposed in theseuncomfortable regions.  There blows in the months of June,July, and August, another wind, which raises mountains of sandand carries them through the air; all that can be done in thiscase is when a cloud of sand rises, to mark where it is likely tofall, and to retire as far off as possible; but it is very usualfor men to be taken unexpectedly, and smothered in thedust.  One day I found the body of a Christian, whom I knew,upon the sand; he had doubtless been choked by these winds. I recommended his soul to the divine mercy and buried him. He seemed to have been some time dead, yet the body had no illsmell.  These winds are most destructive in Arabia theDesert.

CHAPTER IV

The author’s conjecture on the name of the RedSea.  An account of the cocoa-tree.  He lands atBaylur.

To return to the description of the coast: sixty leagues fromSuaquem is an island called Mazna, only considerable for itsports, which make the Turks reside upon it, though they areforced to keep three barks continually employed in fetchingwater, which is not to be found nearer than at a distance oftwelve miles.  Forty leagues from hence is Dalacha, anisland where many pearls are found, but of small value.  Thenext place is Baylur, forty leagues from Dalacha, and twelve fromBabelmandel.

There are few things upon which a greater variety ofconjectures has been offered than upon the reasons that inducedthe ancients to distinguish this gulf, which separates Asia fromAfrica, by the name of the Red Sea, an appellation that hasalmost universally obtained in all languages.  Some affirmthat the torrents, which fall after great rains from themountains, wash down such a quantity of red sand as gives atincture to the water: others tell us that the sunbeams beingreverberated from the red rocks, give the sea on which theystrike the appearance of that colour.  Neither of theseaccounts are satisfactory; the coasts are so scorched by the heatthat they are rather black than red; nor is the colour of thissea much altered by the winds or rains.  The notiongenerally received is, that the coral found in such quantities atthe bottom of the sea might communicate this colour to the water:an account merely chimerical.  Coral is not to be found inall parts of this gulf, and red coral in very few.  Nor doesthis water in fact differ from that of other seas.  Thepatriarch and I have frequently amused ourselves with makingobservations, and could never discover any redness, but in theshallows, where a kind of weed grew which they call gouesmon,which redness disappeared as soon as we plucked up theplant.  It is observable that St. Jerome, confining himselfto the Hebrew, calls this sea Jamsuf.  Jam in that languagesignifies sea, and suf is the name of a plant in Æthiopia,from which the Abyssins extract a beautiful crimson; whether thisbe the same with the gouesmon, I know not, but am of opinion thatthe herb gives to this sea both the colour and the name.

The vessels most used in the Red Sea, though ships of allsizes may be met with there, are gelves, of which some mentionhath been made already; these are the more convenient, becausethey will not split if thrown upon banks or against rocks. These gelves have given occasion to the report that out of thecocoa-tree alone a ship may be built, fitted out with masts,sails, and cordage, and victualled with bread, water, wine,sugar, vinegar, and oil.  All this indeed cannot be done outof one tree, but may out of several of the same kind.  Theysaw the trunk into planks, and sew them together with threadwhich they spin out of the bark, and which they twist for thecables; the leaves stitched together make the sails.  Thisboat thus equipped may be furnished with all necessaries from thesame tree.  There is not a month in which the cocoa does notproduce a bunch of nuts, from twenty to fifty.  At firstsprouts out a kind of seed or capsula, of a shape not unlike thescabbard of a scimitar, which they cut, and place a vessel under,to receive the liquor that drops from it; this drink is calledsoro, and is clear, pleasant, and nourishing.  If it beboiled, it grows hard, and makes a kind of sugar much valued inthe Indies: distil this liquor and you have a strong water, ofwhich is made excellent vinegar.  All these differentproducts are afforded before the nut is formed, and while it isgreen it contains a delicious cooling water; with these nuts theystore their gelves, and it is the only provision of water whichis made in this country.  The second bark which contains thewater is so tender that they eat it.  When this fruitarrives to perfect maturity, they either pound the kernel intomeal, and make cakes of or draw an oil from it of a fine scentand taste, and of great use in medicine; so that what is reportedof the different products of this wonderful tree is neither falsenor incredible.

It is time we should come now to the relation of ourvoyage.  Having happily passed the straits at the entranceof the Red Sea, we pursued our course, keeping as near the shoreas we could, without any farther apprehensions of theTurks.  We were, however, under some concern that we wereentirely ignorant in what part of the coast to find Baylur, aport where we proposed landing, and so little known, that ourpilots, who had made many voyages in this sea, could give us noaccount of it.  We were in hopes of information from thefishermen, but found that as soon as we came near they fled fromus in the greatest consternation; no signals of peace orfriendship could prevail on them to stay; they either durst nottrust or did not understand us.  We plied along the coast inthis uncertainty two days, till on the first of March havingdoubled a point of land, which came out a great way into the sea,we found ourselves in the middle of a fair large bay, which manyreasons induced us to think was Baylur; that we might be fartherassured we sent our Abyssin on shore, who returning next morningconfirmed our opinion.  It would not be easy to determinewhether our arrival gave us greater joy, or the inhabitantsgreater apprehensions, for we could discern a continual tumult inthe land, and took notice that the crews of some barks that layin the harbour were unlading with all possible diligence, toprevent the cargo from falling into our hands, very much indeedto the dissatisfaction of many of our soldiers, who havingengaged in this expedition, with no other view than of fillingtheir pockets, were, before the return of our Abyssin, fortreating them like enemies, and taking them as a lawfulprize.  We were willing to be assured of a good reception inthis port; the patriarch therefore sent me to treat withthem.  I dressed myself like a merchant, and in that habitreceived the four captains of gelves which the Chec sent tocompliment me, and ordered to stay as hostages, whom I sent back,that I might gain upon their affections by the confidence Iplaced in their sincerity; this had so good an effect, that theChec, who was transported with the account the officers gave ofthe civilities they had been treated with, came in an hour tovisit me, bringing with him a Portuguese, whom I had sent ashoreas a security for his return.  He informed me that the Kinghis master was encamped not far off, and that a Chec who was thenin the company was just arrived from thence, and had seen theEmperor of Æthiopia’s letters in our favour; I wasthen convinced that we might land without scruple, and to givethe patriarch notice of it ordered a volley of our muskets to befired, which was answered by the cannon of the two ships that layat a distance, for fear of giving the Moors any cause ofsuspicion by their approach.  The Chec and his attendants,though I had given them notice that we were going to let off ourguns in honour of the King their master, could not forbeartrembling at the fire and noise.  They left us soon after,and next morning we landed our baggage, consisting chiefly of thepatriarch’s library, some ornaments for the church, someimages, and some pieces of calico, which were of the same use asmoney.  Most of the soldiers and sailors were desirous ofgoing with us, some from real principles of piety, and a desireof sharing the labours and merits of the mission, others uponmotives very different, the hopes of raising a fortune.  Tohave taken all who offered themselves would have been an injuryto the owners of the ships, by rendering them unable to continuetheir voyage; we therefore accepted only of a few.

CHAPTER V

An account of Dancali.  The conduct of Chec Furt. The author wounded.  They arrive at the court of the King ofDancali.  A description of his pavilion, and the receptionthey met with.

Our goods were no sooner landed than we were surrounded with acrowd of officers, all gaping for presents; we were forced togratify their avarice by opening our bales, and distributingamong them some pieces of calico.  What we gave to the Checmight be worth about a pistole, and the rest in proportion.

The kingdom of Dancali, to which this belongs, is barren, andthinly peopled; the king is tributary to the Emperor ofAbyssinia, and very faithful to his sovereign.  The emperorhad not only written to him, but had sent a Moor and Portugueseas his ambassadors, to secure us a kind reception; these in theirway to this prince had come through the countries ofChumo-Salamay and Senaa, the utmost confines of Abyssinia, andhad carried thither the emperor’s orders concerning ourpassage.

On Ascension Day we left Baylur, having procured some camelsand asses to carry our baggage.  The first day’s marchwas not above a league, and the others not much longer.  Ourguides performed their office very ill, being influenced, as weimagined, by the Chec Furt, an officer, whom, though unwilling,we were forced to take with us.  This man, who might havebrought us to the king in three days, led us out of the waythrough horrid deserts destitute of water, or where what we foundwas so foul, nauseous, and offensive, that it excited a loathingand aversion which nothing but extreme necessity could haveovercome.

Having travelled some days, we were met by the King’sbrother, to whom, by the advice of Chec Furt, whose intent infollowing us was to squeeze all he could from us; we presentedsome pieces of Chinese workmanship, such as cases of boxes, astandish, and some earthenware, together with several pieces ofpainted calico, which were so much more agreeable, that hedesired some other pieces instead of our Chinese curiosities; wewillingly made the exchange.  Yet some time afterwards heasked again for those Chinese goods which he had returned us, norwas it in our power to refuse them.  I was here in danger oflosing my life by a compliment which the Portuguese paid theprince of a discharge of twelve muskets; one being unskilfullycharged too high, flew out of the soldier’s hand, andfalling against my leg, wounded it very much; we had no surgeonwith us, so that all I could do was to bind it hard with somecloth.  I was obliged by this accident to make use of theChec Furt’s horse, which was the greatest service wereceived from him in all our journey.

When we came within two leagues and a half of the King’scourt, he sent some messengers with his compliments, and fivemules for the chief of our company.  Our road lay through awood, where we found the ground covered over with young locusts,a plague intolerably afflictive in a country so barren ofitself.  We arrived at length at the bank of a small river,near which the King usually keeps his residence, and found hispalace at the foot of a little mountain.  It consisted ofabout six tents and twenty cabins, erected amongst some thornsand wild trees, which afforded a shelter from the heat of theweather.  He received us the first time in a cabin about amusket shot distant from the rest, furnished out with a throne inthe middle built of clay and stones, and covered with tapestryand two velvet cushions.  Over against him stood his horsewith his saddle and other furniture hanging by him, for in thiscountry, the master and his horse make use of the same apartment,nor doth the King in this respect affect more grandeur than hissubjects.  When we entered, we seated ourselves on theground with our legs crossed, in imitation of the rest, whom wefound in the same posture.  After we had waited some time,the King came in, attended by his domestics and hisofficers.  He held a small lance in his hand, and wasdressed in a silk robe, with a turban on his head, to which werefastened some rings of very neat workmanship, which fell downupon his forehead.  All kept silence for some time, and theKing told us by his interpreter that we were welcome to hisdominions, that he had been informed we were to come by theEmperor his father, and that he condoled the hardships we hadundergone at sea.  He desired us not to be under any concernat finding ourselves in a country so distant from our own, forthose dominions were ours, and he and the Emperor his fatherwould give us all the proofs we could desire of the sincerestaffection.  We returned him thanks for this promise of hisfavour, and after a short conversation went away. Immediately we were teazed by those who brought us the mules, anddemanded to be paid the hire of them; and had advice given us atthe same time that we should get a present ready for theKing.  The Chec Furt, who was extremely ready to undertakeany commission of this kind, would needs direct us in the affair,and told us that our gifts ought to be of greater value, becausewe had neglected making any such offer at our first audience,contrary to the custom of that country.  By these pretenceshe obliged us to make a present to the value of about twentypounds, with which he seemed to be pleased, and told us we hadnothing to do but prepare to make our entry.

CHAPTER VI

The King refuses their present.  The author’sboldness.  The present is afterwards accepted.  Thepeople are forbidden to sell them provisions.  The authorremonstrates against the usage.  The King redresses it.

But such was either the hatred or avarice of this man, thatinstead of doing us the good offices he pretended, he advised theKing to refuse our present, that he might draw from us somethingmore valuable.  When I attended the King in order to deliverthe presents, after I had excused the smallness of them, asbeing, though unworthy his acceptance, the largest that ourprofession of poverty, and distance from our country, allowed usto make, he examined them one by one with a dissatisfied look,and told me that however he might be pleased with our goodattentions, he thought our present such as could not be offeredto a king without affronting him; and made me a sign with hishand to withdraw, and take back what I had brought.  Iobeyed, telling him that perhaps he might send for it againwithout having so much.  The Chec Furt, who had been theoccasion of all this, coming to us afterwards, blamed usexceedingly for having offered so little, and being told by usthat the present was picked out by himself, that we had nothingbetter to give, and that what we had left would scarce defray theexpenses of our journey, he pressed us at least to add something,but could prevail no farther than to persuade us to repeat ourformer offer, which the King was now pleased to accept, thoughwith no kinder countenance than before.

Here we spent our time and our provisions, without being ableto procure any more.  The country indeed affords goats andhoney, but nobody would sell us any, the King, as I was secretlyinformed, having strictly prohibited it, with a view of forcingall we had from us.  The patriarch sent me to expostulatethe matter with the King, which I did in very warm terms, tellinghim that we were assured by the Emperor of a reception in thiscountry far different from what we met with, which assurances hehad confirmed by his promise and the civilities we wereentertained with at our first arrival; but that instead offriends who would compassionate our miseries, and supply ournecessities, we found ourselves in the midst of mortal enemiesthat wanted to destroy us.

The King, who affected to appear ignorant of the whole affair,demanded an account of the injuries I complained of, and told methat if any of his subjects should dare to attempt our lives, itshould cost him his own.  We were not, replied I, in dangerof being stabbed or poisoned, but are doomed to a more lingeringand painful death by that prohibition which obliges your subjectsto deny us the necessaries of life; if it be YourHighness’s pleasure that we die here, we entreat that wemay at least be despatched quickly, and not condemned to longertorments.  The King, startled at this discourse, denied thathe had given any such orders, and was very importunate to knowthe author of our intelligence, but finding me determined not todiscover him, he sent me away with a promise that for the futurewe should be furnished with everything we wanted, and indeed thatsame day we bought three goats for about a crown, and some honey,and found ourselves better treated than before.

CHAPTER VII

They obtain leave, with some difficulty, to depart fromDancali.  The difficulties of their march.  A broilwith the Moors.  They arrive at the plain of salt.

This usage, with some differences we had with a Moor, made usvery desirous of leaving this country, but we were still put offwith one pretence or other whenever we asked leave todepart.  Tired with these delays, I applied myself to hisfavourite minister, with a promise of a large present if he couldobtain us an audience of leave; he came to us at night to agreeupon the reward, and soon accomplished all we desired, bothgetting us a permission to go out of the kingdom, and procuringus camels to carry our baggage, and that of the Abyssinianambassadors who were ordered to accompany us.

We set out from the kingdom of Dancali on the 15th of June,having taken our leave of the King, who after many excuses foreverything that had happened, dismissed us with a present of acow, and some provisions, desiring us to tell the Emperor ofÆthiopia his father that we had met with kind treatment inhis territories, a request which we did not at that time think itconvenient to deny.

Whatever we had suffered hitherto, was nothing to thedifficulties we were now entering upon, and which God had decreedus to undergo for the sake of Jesus Christ.  Our way now laythrough a region scarce passable, and full of serpents, whichwere continually creeping between our legs; we might have avoidedthem in the day, but being obliged, that we might avoid theexcessive heats, to take long marches in the night, we were everymoment treading upon them.  Nothing but a signalinterposition of Providence could have preserved us from beingbitten by them, or perishing either by weariness or thirst, forsometimes we were a long time without water, and had nothing tosupport our strength in this fatigue but a little honey, and asmall piece of cows’ flesh dried in the sun.  Thus wetravelled on for many days, scarce allowing ourselves any rest,till we came to a channel or hollow worn in the mountains by thewinter torrents; here we found some coolness, and good water, ablessing we enjoyed for three days; down this channel all thewinter runs a great river which is dried up in the heats, or tospeak more properly, hides itself under ground.  We walkedalong its side, sometimes seven or eight leagues without seeingany water, and then we found it rising out of the ground, atwhich places we never failed to drink as much as we could, andfill our bottles.

In our march, there fell out an unlucky accident, which,however, did not prove of the bad consequence it might havedone.  The master of our camels was an old Mohammedan, whohad conceived an opinion that it was an act of merit to do us allthe mischief he could; and in pursuance of his notion, made ithis chief employment to steal everything he could lay hold on;his piety even transported him so far, that one morning he stoleand hid the cords of our tents.  The patriarch who saw himat the work charged him with it, and upon his denial, showed himthe end of the cord hanging from under the saddle of one of hiscamels.  Upon this we went to seize them, but were opposedby him and the rest of the drivers, who set themselves in aposture of opposition with their daggers.  Our soldiers hadrecourse to their muskets, and four of them putting the mouths oftheir pieces to the heads of some of the most obstinate andturbulent, struck them with such a terror, that all the clamourwas stilled in an instant; none received any hurt but the Moorwho had been the occasion of the tumult.  He was knockeddown by one of our soldiers, who had cut his throat but that thefathers prevented it: he then restored the cords, and was moretractable ever after.  In all my dealings with the Moors, Ihave always discovered in them an ill-natured cowardice, whichmakes them insupportably insolent if you show them the leastrespect, and easily reduced to reasonable terms when you treatthem with a high hand.

After a march of some days we came to an opening between themountains, the only passage out of Dancali into Abyssinia. Heaven seems to have made this place on purpose for the repose ofweary travellers, who here exchange the tortures of parchingthirst, burning sands, and a sultry climate, for the pleasures ofshady trees, the refreshment of a clear stream, and the luxury ofa cooling breeze.  We arrived at this happy place aboutnoon, and the next day at evening left those fanning winds, andwoods flourishing with unfading verdure, for the dismalbarrenness of the vast uninhabitable plains, from which Abyssiniais supplied with salt.  These plains are surrounded withhigh mountains, continually covered with thick clouds which thesun draws from the lakes that are here, from which the water runsdown into the plain, and is there congealed into salt. Nothing can be more curious than to see the channels andaqueducts that nature has formed in this hard rock, so exact andof such admirable contrivance, that they seem to be the work ofmen.  To this place caravans of Abyssinia are continuallyresorting, to carry salt into all parts of the empire, which theyset a great value upon, and which in their country is of the sameuse as money.  The superstitious Abyssins imagine that thecavities of the mountains are inhabited by evil spirits whichappear in different shapes, calling those that pass by theirnames as in a familiar acquaintance, who, if they go to them, arenever seen afterwards.  This relation was confirmed by theMoorish officer who came with us, who, as he said, had lost aservant in that manner: the man certainly fell into the hands ofthe Galles, who lurk in those dark retreats, cut the throats ofthe merchants, and carry off their effects.

The heat making it impossible to travel through this plain inthe day-time, we set out in the evening, and in the night lostour way.  It is very dangerous to go through this place, forthere are no marks of the right road, but some heaps of salt,which we could not see.  Our camel drivers getting togetherto consult on this occasion, we suspected they had some illdesign in hand, and got ready our weapons; they perceived ourapprehensions, and set us at ease by letting us know the reasonof their consultation.  Travelling hard all night, we foundourselves next morning past the plain; but the road we were inwas not more commodious, the points of the rocks pierced ourfeet; to increase our perplexities we were alarmed with theapproach of an armed troop, which our fear immediately suggestedto be the Galles, who chiefly beset these passes of themountains; we put ourselves on the defensive, and expected them,whom, upon a more exact examination, we found to be only acaravan of merchants come as usual to fetch salt.

CHAPTER VIII

They lose their way, are in continual apprehensions of theGalles.  They come to Duan, and settle in Abyssinia.

About nine the next morning we came to the end of thistoilsome and rugged path, where the way divided into two, yetboth led to a well, the only one that was found in ourjourney.  A Moor with three others took the shortest,without directing us to follow him; so we marched forwards weknew not whither, through woods and over rocks, without sleep orany other refreshment: at noon the next day we discovered that wewere near the field of salt.  Our affliction and distress isnot to be expressed; we were all fainting with heat andweariness, and two of the patriarch’s servants were uponthe point of dying for want of water.  None of us had anybut a Moor, who could not be prevailed upon to part with it atless than the weight in gold; we got some from him at last, andendeavoured to revive the two servants, while part of us went tolook for a guide that might put us in the right way.  TheMoors who had arrived at the well, rightly guessing that we werelost, sent one of their company to look for us, whom we heardshouting in the woods, but durst make no answer for fear of theGalles.  At length he found us, and conducted us to therest; we instantly forgot our past calamities, and had no othercare than to recover the patriarch’s attendants.  Wedid not give them a full draught at first, but poured in thewater by drops, to moisten their mouths and throats, which wereextremely swelled: by this caution they were soon well.  Wethen fell to eating and drinking, and though we had nothing butour ordinary repast of honey and dried flesh, thought we neverhad regaled more pleasantly in our lives.

We durst not stay long in this place for fear of the Galles,who lay their ambushes more particularly near this well, by whichall caravans must necessarily pass.  Our apprehensions werevery much increased by our suspicion of the camel-drivers, who,as we imagined, had advertised the Galles of our arrival. The fatigue we had already suffered did not prevent ourcontinuing our march all night: at last we entered a plain, whereour drivers told us we might expect to be attacked by the Galles;nor was it long before our own eyes convinced us that we were ingreat danger, for we saw as we went along the dead bodies of acaravan who had been lately massacred, a sight which froze ourblood, and filled us with pity and with horror.  The samefate was not far from overtaking us, for a troop of Galles, whowere detached in search of us, missed us but an hour ortwo.  We spent the next night in the mountains, but when weshould have set out in the morning, were obliged to a fiercedispute with the old Moor, who had not yet lost his inclinationto destroy us; he would have had us taken a road which was fullof those people we were so much afraid of: at length finding hecould not prevail with us, that we charged the goods upon him asbelonging to the Emperor, to whom he should be answerable for theloss of them, he consented, in a sullen way, to go with us.

The desire of getting out of the reach of the Galles made uspress forward with great expedition, and, indeed, fear havingentirely engrossed our minds, we were perhaps less sensible ofall our labours and difficulties; so violent an apprehension ofone danger made us look on many others with unconcern; our painsat last found some intermission at the foot of the mountains ofDuan, the frontier of Abyssinia, which separates it from thecountry of the Moors, through which we had travelled.

Here we imagined we might repose securely, a felicity we hadlong been strangers to.  Here we began to rejoice at theconclusion of our labours; the place was cool and pleasant, thewater was excellent, and the birds melodious.  Some of ourcompany went into the wood to divert themselves with hearing thebirds and frightening the monkeys, creatures so cunning that theywould not stir if a man came unarmed, but would run immediatelywhen they saw a gun.  At this place our camel drivers leftus, to go to the feast of St. Michael, which the Æthiopianscelebrate the 16th of June.  We persuaded them, however, toleave us their camels and four of their company to take care ofthem.

We had not waited many days before some messengers came to uswith an account that Father Baradas, with the Emperor’snephew, and many other persons of distinction, waited for us atsome distance; we loaded our camels, and following the course ofthe river, came in seven hours to the place we were directed tohalt at.  Father Manuel Baradas and all the company, who hadwaited for us a considerable time on the top of the mountain,came down when they saw our tents, and congratulated ourarrival.  It is not easy to express the benevolence andtenderness with which they embraced us, and the concern theyshowed at seeing us worn away with hunger, labour, and weariness,our clothes tattered, and our feet bloody.

We left this place of interview the next day, and on the 21stof June arrived at Fremone, the residence of the missionaries,where we were welcomed by great numbers of Catholics, bothPortuguese and Abyssins, who spared no endeavours to make usforget all we had suffered in so hazardous a journey, undertakenwith no other intention than to conduct them in the way ofsalvation.

PART II—A DESCRIPTION OF ABYSSINIA

CHAPTER I

The history of Abyssinia.  An account of the Queen ofSheba, and of Queen Candace.  The conversion of theAbyssins.

The original of the Abyssins, like that of all other nations,is obscure and uncertain.  The tradition generally receivedderives them from Cham, the son of Noah, and they pretend,however improbably, that from his time till now the legalsuccession of their kings hath never been interrupted, and thatthe supreme power hath always continued in the same family. An authentic genealogy traced up so high could not but beextremely curious; and with good reason might the Emperors ofAbyssinia boast themselves the most illustrious and ancientfamily in the world.  But there are no real grounds forimagining that Providence has vouchsafed them so distinguishing aprotection, and from the wars with which this empire hath beenshaken in these latter ages we may justly believe that, like allothers, it has suffered its revolutions, and that the history ofthe Abyssins is corrupted with fables.  This empire is knownby the name of the kingdom of Prester-John.  For thePortuguese having heard such wonderful relations of an ancientand famous Christian state called by that name, in the Indies,imagined it could be none but this of Æthiopia.  Manythings concurred to make them of this opinion: there was noChristian kingdom or state in the Indies of which all was truewhich they heard of this land of Prester-John: and there was nonein the other parts of the world who was a Christian separatedfrom the Catholic Church but what was known, except this kingdomof Æthiopia.  It has therefore passed for the kingdomof Prester-John since the time that it was discovered by thePortuguese in the reign of King John the Second.

The country is properly called Abyssinia, and the people termthemselves Abyssins.  Their histories count a hundred andsixty-two reigns, from Cham to Faciladas or Basilides; amongwhich some women are remarkably celebrated.  One of the mostrenowned is the Queen of Sheba, mentioned in Scripture, whom thenatives call Nicaula or Macheda, and in their translation of thegospel, Nagista Azeb, which in their language is Queen of theSouth.  They still show the ruins of a city which appears tohave been once of note, as the place where she kept her court,and a village which, from its being the place of her birth, theycall the land of Saba.  The Kings of Æthiopia drawtheir boasted pedigree from Minilech, the son of this Queen andSolomon.  The other Queen for whom they retain a greatveneration is Candace, whom they call Judith, and indeed if whatthey relate of her could be proved, there never was, amongst themost illustrious and beneficent sovereigns, any to whom theircountry was more indebted, for it is said that she beingconverted by Inda her eunuch, whom St. Philip baptised, prevailedwith her subjects to quit the worship of idols, and profess thefaith of Jesus Christ.  This opinion appears to me withoutany better foundation than another of the conversion of theAbyssins to the Jewish rites by the Queen of Sheba, at her returnfrom the court of Solomon.  They, however, who patronisethese traditions give us very specious accounts of the zeal andpiety of the Abyssins at their first conversion.  Many, theysay, abandoned all the pleasures and vanities of life forsolitude and religious austerities; others devoted themselves toGod in an ecclesiastical life; they who could not do these setapart their revenues for building churches, endowing chapels, andfounding monasteries, and spent their wealth in costly ornamentsfor the churches and vessels for the altars.  It is truethat this people has a natural disposition to goodness; they arevery liberal of their alms, they much frequent their churches,and are very studious to adorn them; they practise fasting andother mortifications, and notwithstanding their separation fromthe Roman Church, and the corruptions which have crept into theirfaith, yet retain in a great measure the devout fervour of theprimitive Christians.  There never were greater hopes ofuniting this people to the Church of Rome, which their adherenceto the Eutichian heresy has made very difficult, than in the timeof Sultan Segued, who called us into his dominions in the year1625, from whence we were expelled in 1634.  As I have liveda long time in this country, and borne a share in all that haspassed, I will present the reader with a short account of what Ihave observed, and of the revolution which forced us to abandonÆthiopia, and destroyed all our hopes of reuniting thiskingdom with the Roman Church.

The empire of Abyssinia hath been one of the largest whichhistory gives us an account of: it extended formerly from the RedSea to the kingdom of Congo, and from Egypt to the IndianSea.  It is not long since it contained forty provinces; butis now not much bigger than all Spain, and consists but of fivekingdoms and six provinces, of which part is entirely subject tothe Emperor, and part only pays him some tribute, oracknowledgment of dependence, either voluntarily or bycompulsion.  Some of these are of very large extent: thekingdoms of Tigre, Bagameder, and Goiama are as big as Portugal,or bigger; Amhara and Damote are something less.  Theprovinces are inhabited by Moors, Pagans, Jews, and Christians:the last is the reigning and established religion.  Thisdiversity of people and religion is the reason that the kingdomin different parts is under different forms of government, andthat their laws and customs are extremely various.

The inhabitants of the kingdom of Amhara are the mostcivilised and polite; and next to them the natives of Tigre, orthe true Abyssins.  The rest, except the Damotes, theGasates, and the Agaus, which approach somewhat nearer tocivility, are entirely rude and barbarous.  Among thesenations the Galles, who first alarmed the world in 1542, haveremarkably distinguished themselves by the ravages they havecommitted, and the terror they have raised in this part ofAfrica.  They neither sow their lands nor improve them byany kind of culture; but, living upon milk and flesh, encamp likethe Arabs without any settled habitation.  They practise norites of worship, though they believe that in the regions abovethere dwells a Being that governs the world: whether by thisBeing they mean the sun or the sky is not known; or, indeed,whether they have not some conception of the God that createdthem.  This deity they call in their language Oul.  Inother matters they are yet more ignorant, and have some customsso contrary even to the laws of nature, as might almost affordreason to doubt whether they are endued with reason.  TheChristianity professed by the Abyssins is so corrupted withsuperstitions, errors, and heresies, and so mingled withceremonies borrowed from the Jews, that little besides the nameof Christianity is to be found here; and the thorns may be saidto have choked the grain.  This proceeds in a great measurefrom the diversity of religions which are tolerated there, eitherby negligence or from motives of policy; and the same cause hathproduced such various revolutions, revolts, and civil wars withinthese later ages.  For those different sects do not easilyadmit of an union with each other, or a quiet subjection to thesame monarch.  The Abyssins cannot properly be said to haveeither cities or houses; they live either in tents, or incottages made of straw and clay; for they very rarely build withstone.  Their villages or towns consist of these huts; yeteven of such villages they have but few, because the grandees,the viceroys, and the Emperor himself are always in the camp,that they may be prepared, upon the most sudden summons, to gowhere the exigence of affairs demands their presence.  Andthis precaution is no more than necessary for a prince every yearengaged either in foreign wars or intestine commotions. These towns have each a governor, whom they call gadare, overwhom is the educ, or lieutenant, and both accountable to anofficer called the afamacon, or mouth of the King; because hereceives the revenues, which he pays into the hands of therelatinafala, or grand master of the household: sometimes theEmperor creates a ratz, or viceroy, general over all the empire,who is superior to all his other officers.

Æthiopia produces very near the same kinds of provisionsas Portugal; though, by the extreme laziness of the inhabitants,in a much less quantity: however, there are some roots, herbs,and fruits which grow there much better than in otherplaces.  What the ancients imagined of the torrid zone beinguninhabitable is so far from being true, that this climate isvery temperate: the heats, indeed, are excessive in Congo andMonomotapa, but in Abyssinia they enjoy a perpetual spring, moredelicious and charming than that in our country.  The blackshere are not ugly like those of the kingdoms I have spoken of,but have better features, and are not without wit and delicacy;their apprehension is quick, and their judgment sound.  Theheat of the sun, however it may contribute to their colour, isnot the only reason of it; there is some peculiarity in thetemper and constitution of their bodies, since the same men,transported into cooler climates, produce children very near asblack as themselves.

They have here two harvests in the year, which is a sufficientrecompense for the small produce of each; one harvest they havein the winter, which lasts through the months of July, August,and September, the other in the spring; their trees are alwaysgreen, and it is the fault of the inhabitants that they produceso little fruit, the soil being well adapted to all sorts,especially those that come from the Indies.  They have inthe greatest plenty raisins, peaches, sour pomegranates, andsugarcanes, and some figs.  Most of these are ripe aboutLent, which the Abyssins keep with great strictness.

After the vegetable products of this country, it seems notimproper to mention the animals which are found in it, of whichhere are as great numbers, of as many different species, as inany country in the world: it is infested with lions of manykinds, among which are many of that which is called the lionroyal.  I cannot help giving the reader on this occasion arelation of a fact which I was an eye-witness of.  A lionhaving taken his haunt near the place where I lived, killed allthe oxen and cows, and did a great deal of other mischief, ofwhich I heard new complaints every day.  A servant of minehaving taken a resolution to free the country from thisdestroyer, went out one day with two lances, and after he hadbeen some time in quest of him, found him with his mouth allsmeared with the blood of a cow he had just devoured; the manrushed upon him, and thrust his lance into his throat with suchviolence that it came out between his shoulders; the beast, withone dreadful roar, fell down into a pit, and lay struggling, tillmy servant despatched him.  I measured the body of thislion, and found him twelve feet between the head and thetail.

CHAPTER II

The animals of Abyssinia; the elephant, unicorn, their horsesand cows; with a particular account of the moroc.

There are so great numbers of elephants in Abyssinia that inone evening we met three hundred of them in three troops: as theyfilled up the whole way, we were in great perplexity a long timewhat measures to take; at length, having implored the protectionof that Providence that superintends the whole creation, we wentforwards through the midst of them without any injury.  Oncewe met four young elephants, and an old one that played withthem, lifting them up with her trunk; they grew enraged on asudden, and ran upon us: we had no way of securing ourselves butby flight, which, however, would have been fruitless, had not ourpursuers been stopped by a deep ditch.  The elephants ofÆthiopia are of so stupendous a size, that when I wasmounted on a large mule I could not reach with my hand within twospans of the top of their backs.  In Abyssinia is likewisefound the rhinoceros, a mortal enemy to the elephant.  Inthe province of Agaus has been seen the unicorn, that beast somuch talked of, and so little known: the prodigious swiftnesswith which this creature runs from one wood into another hasgiven me no opportunity of examining it particularly, yet I havehad so near a sight of it as to be able to give some descriptionof it.  The shape is the same with that of a beautifulhorse, exact and nicely proportioned, of a bay colour, with ablack tail, which in some provinces is long, in others veryshort: some have long manes hanging to the ground.  They areso timorous that they never feed but surrounded with other beaststhat defend them.  Deer and other defenceless animals oftenherd about the elephant, which, contenting himself with roots andleaves, preserves those beasts that place themselves, as it were,under his protection, from the rage and fierceness of others thatwould devour them.

The horses of Abyssinia are excellent; their mules, oxen, andcows are without number, and in these principally consists thewealth of this country.  They have a very particular custom,which obliges every man that hath a thousand cows to save everyyear one day’s milk of all his herd, and make a bath withit for his relations, entertaining them afterwards with asplendid feast.  This they do so many days each year, asthey have thousands of cattle, so that to express how rich anyman is, they tell you he bathes so many times.  The tributepaid out of their herds to the King, which is not the mostinconsiderable of his revenues, is one cow in ten every threeyears.  The beeves are of several kinds; one sort they havewithout horns, which are of no other use than to carry burthens,and serve instead of mules.  Another twice as big as ourswhich they breed to kill, fattening them with the milk of threeor four cows.  Their horns are so large, the inhabitants usethem for pitchers, and each will hold about five gallons. One of these oxen, fat and ready to be killed, may be bought atmost for two crowns.  I have purchased five sheep, or fivegoats with nine kids, for a piece of calico worth about acrown.

The Abyssins have many sort of fowls both wild and tame; someof the former we are yet unacquainted with: there is one ofwonderful beauty, which I have seen in no other place exceptPeru: it has instead of a comb, a short horn upon its head, whichis thick and round, and open at the top.  The feitan favez,or devil’s horse, looks at a distance like a man dressed infeathers; it walks with abundance of majesty, till it findsitself pursued, and then takes wing, and flies away.  Butamongst all their birds there is none more remarkable than themoroc, or honey-bird, which is furnished by nature with apeculiar instinct or faculty of discovering honey.  Theyhave here multitudes of bees of various kinds; some are tame,like ours, and form their combs in hives.  Of the wild ones,some place their honey in hollow trees, others hide it in holesin the ground, which they cover so carefully, that though theyare commonly in the highway, they are seldom found, unless by themoroc’s help, which, when he has discovered any honey,repairs immediately to the road side, and when he sees atraveller, sings, and claps his wings, making many motions toinvite him to follow him, and when he perceives him coming, fliesbefore him from tree to tree, till he comes to the place wherethe bees have stored their treasure, and then begins to singmelodiously.  The Abyssin takes the honey, without failingto leave part of it for the bird, to reward him for hisinformation.  This kind of honey I have often tasted, and donot find that it differs from the other sorts in anything butcolour; it is somewhat blacker.  The great quantity of honeythat is gathered, and a prodigious number of cows that is kepthere, have often made me call Abyssinia a land of honey andbutter.

CHAPTER III

The manner of eating in Abyssinia, their dress, theirhospitality, and traffic.

The great lords, and even the Emperor himself, maintain theirtables with no great expense.  The vessels they make use ofare black earthenware, which, the older it is, they set a greatervalue on.  Their way of dressing their meat, an European,till he hath been long accustomed to it, can hardly be persuadedto like; everything they eat smells strong and swims withbutter.  They make no use of either linen or plates. The persons of rank never touch what they eat, but have theirmeat cut by their pages, and put into their mouths.  Whenthey feast a friend they kill an ox, and set immediately aquarter of him raw upon the table (for their most elegant treatis raw beef newly killed) with pepper and salt; the gall of theox serves them for oil and vinegar; some, to heighten thedelicacy of the entertainment, add a kind of sauce, which theycall manta, made of what they take out of the guts of the ox;this they set on the fire, with butter, salt, pepper, andonion.  Raw beef, thus relished, is their nicest dish, andis eaten by them with the same appetite and pleasure as we eatthe best partridges.  They have often done me the favour ofhelping me to some of this sauce, and I had no way to declineeating it besides telling them it was too good for amissionary.

The common drink of the Abyssins is beer and mead, which theydrink to excess when they visit one another; nor can there be agreater offence against good manners than to let the guests goaway sober: their liquor is always presented by a servant, whodrinks first himself, and then gives the cup to the company, inthe order of their quality.

The meaner sort of people here dress themselves very plain;they only wear drawers, and a thick garment of cotton, thatcovers the rest of their bodies: the people of quality,especially those that frequent the court, run into the contraryextreme, and ruin themselves with costly habits.  They wearall sorts of silks, and particularly the fine velvets ofTurkey.

They love bright and glaring colours, and dress themselvesmuch in the Turkish manner, except that their clothes are wider,and their drawers cover their legs.  Their robes are alwaysfull of gold and silver embroidery.  They are most exactabout their hair, which is long and twisted, and their care of itis such that they go bare-headed whilst they are young for fearof spoiling it, but afterwards wear red caps, and sometimesturbans after the Turkish fashion.

The ladies’ dress is yet more magnificent and expensive;their robes are as large as those of the religious, of the orderof St. Bernard.  They have various ways of dressing theirheads, and spare no expense in ear-rings, necklaces, or anythingthat may contribute to set them off to advantage.  They arenot much reserved or confined, and have so much liberty invisiting one another that their husbands often suffer by it; butfor this evil there is no remedy, especially when a man marries aprincess, or one of the royal family.  Besides theirclothes, the Abyssins have no movables or furniture of muchvalue, or doth their manner of living admit of them.

One custom of this country deserves to be remarked: when astranger comes to a village, or to the camp, the people areobliged to entertain him and his company according to hisrank.  As soon as he enters a house (for they have no innsin this nation), the master informs his neighbours that he hath aguest; immediately they bring in bread and all kinds ofprovisions; and there is great care taken to provide enough,because, if the guest complains, the town is obliged to paydouble the value of what they ought to have furnished.  Thispractice is so well established that a stranger goes into a houseof one he never saw with the same familiarity and assurance ofwelcome as into that of an intimate friend or near relation; acustom very convenient, but which gives encouragement to greatnumbers of vagabonds throughout the kingdom.

There is no money in Abyssinia, except in the easternprovinces, where they have iron coin: but in the chief provincesall commerce is managed by exchange.  Their chief tradeconsists in provisions, cows, sheep, goats, fowls, pepper, andgold, which is weighed out to the purchaser, and principally insalt, which is properly the money of this country.

When the Abyssins are engaged in a law-suit, the two partiesmake choice of a judge, and plead their own cause before him; andif they cannot agree in their choice, the governor of the placeappoints them one, from whom there lies an appeal to the viceroyand to the Emperor himself.  All causes are determined onthe spot; no writings are produced.  The judge sits down onthe ground in the midst of the high road, where all that pleasemay be present: the two persons concerned stand before him, withtheir friends about them, who serve as their attorneys.  Theplaintiff speaks first, the defendant answers him; each ispermitted to rejoin three or four times, then silence iscommanded, and the judge takes the opinions of those that areabout him.  If the evidence be deemed sufficient, hepronounces sentence, which in some cases is decisive and withoutappeal.  He then takes the criminal into custody till hehath made satisfaction; but if it be a crime punishable withdeath he is delivered over to the prosecutor, who may put him todeath at his own discretion.

They have here a particular way of punishing adultery; a womanconvicted of that crime is condemned to forfeit all her fortune,is turned out of her husband’s house, in a mean dress, andis forbid ever to enter it again; she has only a needle given herto get her living with.  Sometimes her head is shaved,except one lock of hair, which is left her, and even that dependson the will of her husband, who has it likewise in his choicewhether he will receive her again or not; if he resolves never toadmit her they are both at liberty to marry whom they will. There is another custom amongst them yet more extraordinary,which is, that the wife is punished whenever the husband provesfalse to the marriage contract; this punishment indeed extends nofarther than a pecuniary mulct, and what seems more equitable,the husband is obliged to pay a sum of money to his wife. When the husband prosecutes his wife’s gallant, if he canproduce any proofs of a criminal conversation, he recovers fordamages forty cows, forty horses, and forty suits of clothes, andthe same number of other things.  If the gallant be unableto pay him, he is committed to prison, and continues there duringthe husband’s pleasure, who, if he sets him at libertybefore the whole fine be paid, obliges him to take an oath thathe is going to procure the rest, that he may be able to make fullsatisfaction.  Then the criminal orders meat and drink to bebrought out, they eat and drink together, he asks a formalpardon, which is not granted at first; however, the husbandforgives first one part of the debt, and then another, till atlength the whole is remitted.

A husband that doth not like his wife may easily find means tomake the marriage void, and, what is worse, may dismiss thesecond wife with less difficulty than he took her, and return tothe first; so that marriages in this country are only for a termof years, and last no longer than both parties are pleased witheach other, which is one instance how far distant these peopleare from the purity of the primitive believers, which theypretend to have preserved with so great strictness.  Themarriages are in short no more than bargains, made with thisproviso, that when any discontent shall arise on either side,they may separate, and marry whom they please, each taking backwhat they brought with them.

CHAPTER IV

An account of the religion of the Abyssins.

Yet though there is a great difference between our manners,customs, civil government, and those of the Abyssins, there isyet a much greater in points of faith; for so many errors havebeen introduced and ingrafted into their religion, by theirignorance, their separation from the Catholic Church, and theirintercourse with Jews, Pagans, and Mohammedans, that theirpresent religion is nothing but a kind of confused miscellany ofJewish and Mohammedan superstitions, with which they havecorrupted those remnants of Christianity which they stillretain.

They have, however, preserved the belief of our principalmysteries; they celebrate with a great deal of piety the passionof our Lord; they reverence the cross; they pay a great devotionto the Blessed Virgin, the angels, and the saints; they observethe festivals, and pay a strict regard to the Sunday.  Everymonth they commemorate the assumption of the Virgin Mary, and areof opinion that no Christians beside themselves have a true senseof the greatness of the mother of God, or pay her the honoursthat are due to her.  There are some tribes amongst them(for they are distinguished like the Jews by their tribes), amongwhom the crime of swearing by the name of the Virgin is punishedwith forfeiture of goods and even with loss of life; they areequally scrupulous of swearing by St. George.  Every weekthey keep a feast to the honour of the apostles and angels; theycome to mass with great devotion, and love to hear the word ofGod.  They receive the sacrament often, but do not alwaysprepare themselves by confession.  Their charity to the poormay be said to exceed the proper bounds that prudence ought toset it, for it contributes to encourage great numbers of beggars,which are a great annoyance to the whole kingdom, and as I haveoften said, afford more exercise to a Christian’s patiencethan his charity; for their insolence is such, that they willrefuse what is offered them if it be not so much as they thinkproper to ask.

Though the Abyssins have not many images, they have greatnumbers of pictures, and perhaps pay them somewhat too high adegree of worship.  The severity of their fasts is equal tothat of the primitive church.  In Lent they never eat tillafter sunset; their fasts are the more severe because milk andbutter are forbidden them, and no reason or necessity whatsoevercan procure them a permission to eat meat, and their countryaffording no fish, they live only on roots and pulse.  Onfast-days they never drink but at their meat, and the priestsnever communicate till evening, for fear of profaning them. They do not think themselves obliged to fast till they havechildren either married or fit to be married, which yet doth notsecure them very long from these mortifications, because theiryouths marry at the age of ten years, and their girlsyounger.

There is no nation where excommunication carries greaterterrors than among the Abyssins, which puts it in the power ofthe priests to abuse this religious temper of the people, as wellas the authority they receive from it, by excommunicating them,as they often do, for the least trifle in which their interest isconcerned.

No country in the world is so full of churches, monasteries,and ecclesiastics as Abyssinia; it is not possible to sing in onechurch or monastery without being heard by another, and perhapsby several.  They sing the psalms of David, of which, aswell as the other parts of the Holy Scriptures, they have a veryexact translation in their own language; in which, thoughaccounted canonical, the books of the Maccabees areomitted.  The instruments of music made use of in theirrites of worship are little drums, which they hang about theirnecks, and beat with both their hands; these are carried even bytheir chief men, and by the gravest of their ecclesiastics. They have sticks likewise, with which they strike the ground,accompanying the blow with a motion of their whole bodies. They begin their concert by stamping their feet on the ground,and playing gently on their instruments; but when they haveheated themselves by degrees, they leave off drumming, and fallto leaping, dancing, and clapping their hands, at the same timestraining their voices to the utmost pitch, till at length theyhave no regard either to the tune or the pauses, and seem rathera riotous than a religious assembly.  For this manner ofworship they cite the psalm of David, “O clap your handsall ye nations.”  Thus they misapply the sacredwritings to defend practices yet more corrupt than those I havebeen speaking of.

They are possessed with a strange notion that they are theonly true Christians in the world; as for us, they shunned us asheretics, and were under the greatest surprise at hearing usmention the Virgin Mary with the respect which is due to her, andtold us that we could not be entirely barbarians since we wereacquainted with the mother of God.  It plainly appears thatprepossessions so strong, which receive more strength from theignorance of the people, have very little tendency to disposethem to a reunion with the Catholic Church.

They have some opinions peculiar to themselves aboutpurgatory, the creation of souls, and some of ourmysteries.  They repeat baptism every year, they retain thepractice of circumcision, they observe the Sabbath, they abstainfrom all those sorts of flesh which are forbidden by thelaw.  Brothers espouse the wives of their brothers, and toconclude, they observe a great number of Jewish ceremonies.

Though they know the words which Jesus Christ appointed to beused in the administration of baptism, they have without scruplesubstituted others in their place, which makes the validity oftheir baptism, and the reality of their Christianity, verydoubtful.  They have a few names of saints, the same withthose in the Roman martyrology, but they often insert others, asZama la Cota, the Life of Truth; Ongulari, the Evangelist; AscaGeorgi, the Mouth of Saint George.

To bring back this people into the enclosure of the CatholicChurch, from which they have been separated so many ages, was thesole view and intention with which we undertook so long andtoilsome a journey, crossed so many seas, and passed so manydeserts, with the utmost hazard of our lives; I am certain thatwe travelled more than seven thousand leagues before we arrivedat our residence at Fremona.

We came to this place, anciently called Maigoga, on the 21stof June, as I have said before, and were obliged to continuethere till November, because the winter begins here in May, andits greatest rigour is from the middle of June to the middle ofSeptember.  The rains that are almost continually falling inthis season make it impossible to go far from home, for therivers overflow their banks, and therefore, in a place like this,where there are neither bridges nor boats, are, if they are notfordable, utterly impassable.  Some, indeed, have crossedthem by means of a cord fastened on both sides of the water,others tie two beams together, and placing themselves upon them,guide them as well as they can, but this experiment is sodangerous that it hath cost many of these bold adventurers theirlives.  This is not all the danger, for there is yet more tobe apprehended from the unwholesomeness of the air, and thevapours which arise from the scorched earth at the fall of thefirst showers, than from the torrents and rivers.  Even theywho shelter themselves in houses find great difficulty to avoidthe diseases that proceed from the noxious qualities of thesevapours.  From the beginning of June to that of September itrains more or less every day.  The morning is generally fairand bright, but about two hours after noon the sky is clouded,and immediately succeeds a violent storm, with thunder andlightning flashing in the most dreadful manner.  While thislasts, which is commonly three or four hours, none go out ofdoors.  The ploughman upon the first appearance of itunyokes his oxen, and betakes himself with them intocovert.  Travellers provide for their security in theneighbouring villages, or set up their tents, everybody flies tosome shelter, as well to avoid the unwholesomeness as theviolence of the rain.  The thunder is astonishing, and thelightning often destroys great numbers, a thing I can speak offrom my own experience, for it once flashed so near me, that Ifelt an uneasiness on that side for a long time after; at thesame time it killed three young children, and having run round myroom went out, and killed a man and woman three hundred pacesoff.  When the storm is over the sun shines out as before,and one would not imagine it had rained, but that the groundappears deluged.  Thus passes the Abyssinian winter, adreadful season, in which the whole kingdom languishes withnumberless diseases, an affliction which, however grievous, isyet equalled by the clouds of grasshoppers, which fly in suchnumbers from the desert, that the sun is hid and the skydarkened; whenever this plague appears, nothing is seen throughthe whole region but the most ghastly consternation, or heard butthe most piercing lamentations, for wherever they fall, thatunhappy place is laid waste and ruined; they leave not one bladeof grass, nor any hopes of a harvest.

God, who often makes calamities subservient to His will,permitted this very affliction to be the cause of the conversionof many of the natives, who might have otherwise died in theirerrors; for part of the country being ruined by the grasshoppersthat year in which we arrived at Abyssinia, many, who were forcedto leave their habitations, and seek the necessaries of life inother places, came to that part of the land where some of ourmissionaries were preaching, and laid hold on that mercy whichGod seemed to have appointed for others.

As we could not go to court before November, we resolved, thatwe might not be idle, to preach and instruct the people in thecountry; in pursuance of this resolution I was sent to amountain, two days’ journey distant from Maigoga.  Thelord or governor of the place was a Catholic, and had desiredmissionaries, but his wife had conceived an implacable aversionboth from us and the Roman Church, and almost all the inhabitantsof that mountain were infected with the same prejudices asshe.  They had been persuaded that the hosts which weconsecrated and gave to the communicants were mixed with juicesstrained from the flesh of a camel, a dog, a hare, and a swine;all creatures which the Abyssins look upon with abhorrence,believing them unclean, and forbidden to them, as they were tothe Jews.  We had no way of undeceiving them, and they fledfrom us whenever we approached.  We carried with us ourtent, our chalices, and ornaments, and all that was necessary forsaying mass.  The lord of the village, who, like otherpersons of quality throughout Æthiopia, lived on the top ofa mountain, received us with very great civility.  All thatdepended upon him had built their huts round about him; so thatthis place compared with the other towns of Abyssinia seemsconsiderable; as soon as we arrived he sent us his compliments,with a present of a cow, which, among them, is a token of highrespect.  We had no way of returning this favour but bykilling the cow, and sending a quarter smoking, with the gall,which amongst them is esteemed the most delicate part.  Iimagined for some time that the gall of animals was less bitterin this country than elsewhere, but upon tasting it, I found itmore; and yet have frequently seen our servants drink largeglasses of if with the same pleasure that we drink the mostdelicious wines.

We chose to begin our mission with the lady of the village,and hoped that her prejudice and obstinacy, however great, wouldin time yield to the advice and example of her husband, and thather conversion would have a great influence on the whole village,but having lost several days without being able to prevail uponher to hear us on any one point, we left the place, and went toanother mountain, higher and better peopled.  When we cameto the village on the top of it, where the lord lived, we weresurprised with the cries and lamentations of men that seemed tosuffer or apprehend some dreadful calamity; and were told, uponinquiring the cause, that the inhabitants had been persuaded thatwe were the devil’s missionaries, who came to seduce themfrom the true religion, that foreseeing some of their neighbourswould be ruined by the temptation, they were lamenting themisfortune which was coming upon them.  When we began toapply ourselves to the work of the mission we could not by anymeans persuade any but the lord and the priest to receive us intotheir houses; the rest were rough and untractable to that degreethat, after having converted six, we despaired of making anyfarther progress, and thought it best to remove to other townswhere we might be better received.

We found, however, a more unpleasing treatment at the nextplace, and had certainly ended our lives there had we not beenprotected by the governor and the priest, who, though notreconciled to the Roman Church, yet showed us the utmostcivility; the governor informed us of a design against our lives,and advised us not to go out after sunset, and gave us guards toprotect us from the insults of the populace.

We made no long stay in a place where they stopped their earsagainst the voice of God, but returned to the foot of thatmountain which we had left some days before; we were surrounded,as soon as we began to preach, with a multitude of auditors, whocame either in expectation of being instructed, or from a desireof gratifying their curiosity, and God bestowed such a blessingupon our apostolical labours that the whole village was convertedin a short time.  We then removed to another at the middleof the mountain, situated in a kind of natural parterre, orgarden; the soil was fruitful, and the trees that shaded it fromthe scorching heat of the sun gave it an agreeable and refreshingcoolness.  We had here the convenience of improving theardour and piety of our new converts, and, at the same time, ofleading more into the way of the true religion: and indeed oursuccess exceeded the utmost of our hopes; we had in a short timegreat numbers whom we thought capable of being admitted to thesacraments of baptism and the mass.

We erected our tent, and placed our altar under some greattrees, for the benefit of the shade; and every day beforesun-rising my companion and I began to catechise and instructthese new Catholics, and used our utmost endeavours to make themabjure their errors.  When we were weary with speaking, weplaced in ranks those who were sufficiently instructed, andpassing through them with great vessels of water, baptised themaccording to the form prescribed by the Church.  As theirnumber was very great, we cried aloud, those of this rank arenamed Peter, those of that rank Anthony.  And did the sameamongst the women, whom we separated from the men.  We thenconfessed them, and admitted them to the communion.  Aftermass we applied ourselves again to catechise, to instruct, andreceive the renunciation of their errors, scarce allowingourselves time to make a scanty meal, which we never did morethan once a day.

After some time had been spent here, we removed to anothertown not far distant, and continued the same practice.  HereI was accosted one day by an inhabitant of that place, where hehad found the people so prejudiced against us, who desired to beadmitted to confession.  I could not forbear asking him somequestions about those lamentations, which we heard upon ourentering into that place.  He confessed with the utmostfrankness and ingenuity that the priests and religious have givendreadful accounts both of us and of the religion we preached;that the unhappy people were taught by them that the curse of Godattended us wheresoever we went; that we were always followed bythe grasshoppers, that pest of Abyssinia, which carried famineand destruction over all the country; that he, seeing nograsshoppers following us when we passed by their village, beganto doubt of the reality of what the priests had so confidentlyasserted, and was now convinced that the representation they madeof us was calumny and imposture.  This discourse gave usdouble pleasure, both as it proved that God had confuted theaccusations of our enemies, and defended us against their malicewithout any efforts of our own, and that the people who hadshunned us with the strongest detestation were yet lovers oftruth, and came to us on their own accord.  Nothing could bemore grossly absurd than the reproaches which the Abyssinianecclesiastics aspersed us and our religion with.  They hadtaken advantage of the calamity that happened the year of ourarrival: and the Abyssins, with all their wit, did not considerthat they had often been distressed by the grasshoppers beforethere came any Jesuits into the country, and indeed before therewere any in the world.

Whilst I was in these mountains, I went on Sundays andsaints’ days sometimes to one church and sometimes toanother.  One day I went out with a resolution not to go toa certain church, where I imagined there was no occasion for me,but before I had gone far, I found myself pressed by a secretimpulse to return back to that same church.  I obeyed theinfluence, and discovered it to proceed from the mercy of God tothree young children who were destitute of all succour, and atthe point of death.  I found two very quickly in thismiserable state; the mother had retired to some distance that shemight not see them die, and when she saw me stop, came and toldme that they had been obliged by want to leave the town theylived in, and were at length reduced to this dismal condition,that she had been baptised, but that the children had not. After I had baptised and relieved them, I continued my walk,reflecting with wonder on the mercy of God, and about eveningdiscovered another infant, whose mother, evidently a Catholic,cried out to me to save her child, or at least that if I couldnot preserve this uncertain and perishable life, I should give itanother certain and permanent.  I sent my servant to fetchwater with the utmost expedition, for there was none near, andhappily baptised the child before it expired.

Soon after this I returned to Fremona, and had great hopes ofaccompanying the patriarch to the court; but, when we were almostsetting out, received the command of the superior of the missionto stay at Fremona, with a charge of the house there, and of allthe Catholics that were dispersed over the kingdom of Tigre, anemployment very ill-proportioned to my abilities.  The houseat Fremona has always been much regarded even by those emperorswho persecuted us; Sultan Segued annexed nine large manors to itfor ever, which did not make us much more wealthy, because of theexpensive hospitality which the great conflux of strangersobliged us to.  The lands in Abyssinia yield but smallrevenues, unless the owners themselves set the value upon them,which we could not do.

The manner of letting farms in Abyssinia differs much fromthat of other countries: the farmer, when the harvest is almostripe, invites the chumo or steward, who is appointed to make anestimate of the value of each year’s product, to his house,entertains him in the most agreeable manner he can; makes him apresent, and then takes him to see his corn.  If the chumois pleased with the treat and present, he will give him adeclaration or writing to witness that his ground, which affordedfive or six sacks of corn, did you yield so many bushels, andeven of this it is the custom to abate something; so that ourrevenue did not increase in proportion to our lands; and we foundourselves often obliged to buy corn, which, indeed, is not dear,for in fruitful years forty or fifty measures, weighing eachabout twenty-two pounds, may be purchased for a crown.

Besides the particular charge I had of the house of Fremona, Iwas appointed the patriarch’s grand-vicar through the wholekingdom of Tigre.  I thought that to discharge this officeas I ought, it was incumbent on me to provide necessaries as wellfor the bodies as the souls of the converted Catholics. This labour was much increased by the famine which thegrasshoppers had brought that year upon the country.  Ourhouse was perpetually surrounded by some of those unhappy people,whom want had compelled to abandon their habitations, and whosepale cheeks and meagre bodies were undeniable proofs of theirmisery and distress.  All the relief I could possibly affordthem could not prevent the death of such numbers that theirbodies filled the highways; and to increase our affliction, thewolves having devoured the carcases, and finding no other food,fell upon the living; their natural fierceness being so increasedby hunger, that they dragged the children out of the veryhouses.  I saw myself a troop of wolves tear a child of sixyears old in pieces before I or any one else could come to itsassistance.

While I was entirely taken up with the duties of my ministry,the viceroy of Tigre received the commands of the Emperor tosearch for the bones of Don Christopher de Gama.  On thisoccasion it may not be thought impertinent to give some accountof the life and death of this brave and holy Portuguese, who,after having been successful in many battles, fell at last intothe hands of the Moors, and completed that illustrious life by aglorious martyrdom.

CHAPTER V

The adventures of the Portuguese, and the actions of DonChristopher de Gama in Æthiopia.

About the beginning of the sixteenth century arose a Moor nearthe Cape of Gardafui, who, by the assistance of the forces senthim from Moca by the Arabs and Turks, conquered almost allAbyssinia, and founded the kingdom of Adel.  He was calledMahomet Gragne, or the Lame.  When he had ravagedÆthiopia fourteen years, and was master of the greatestpart of it, the Emperor David sent to implore succour of the Kingof Portugal, with a promise that when those dominions wererecovered which had been taken from him, he would entirely submithimself to the Pope, and resign the third part of his territoriesto the Portuguese.  After many delays, occasioned by thegreat distance between Portugal and Abyssinia, and someunsuccessful attempts, King John the Third, having made DonStephen de Gama, son of the celebrated Don Vasco de Gama, viceroyof the Indies, gave him orders to enter the Red Sea in pursuit ofthe Turkish galleys, and to fall upon them wherever he foundthem, even in the Port of Suez.  The viceroy, in obedienceto the king’s commands, equipped a powerful fleet, went onboard himself, and cruised about the coast without being able todiscover the Turkish vessels.  Enraged to find that withthis great preparation he should be able to effect nothing, helanded at Mazna four hundred Portuguese, under the command of DonChristopher de Gama, his brother.  He was soon joined bysome Abyssins, who had not yet forgot their allegiance to theirsovereign; and in his march up the country was met by the EmpressHelena, who received him as her deliverer.  At first nothingwas able to stand before the valour of the Portuguese, the Moorswere driven from one mountain to another, and were dislodged evenfrom those places, which it seemed almost impossible to approach,even unmolested by the opposition of an enemy.

These successes seemed to promise a more happy event than thatwhich followed them.  It was now winter, a season in which,as the reader hath been already informed, it is almost impossibleto travel in Æthiopia.  The Portuguese unadvisedlyengaged themselves in an enterprise, to march through the wholecountry, in order to join the Emperor, who was then in the mostremote part of his dominions.  Mahomet, who was inpossession of the mountains, being informed by his spies that thePortuguese were but four hundred, encamped in the plain ofBallut, and sent a message to the general that he knew theAbyssins had imposed on the King of Portugal, which, beingacquainted with their treachery, he was not surprised at, andthat in compassion of the commander’s youth, he would givehim and his men, if they would return, free passage, and furnishthem with necessaries; that he might consult upon the matter, anddepend upon his word, reminding him, however, that it was notsafe to refuse his offer.

The general presented the ambassador with a rich robe, andreturned this gallant answer: “That he and hisfellow-soldiers were come with an intention to drive Mahomet outof these countries, which he had wrongfully usurped; that hispresent design was, instead of returning back the way he came, asMahomet advised, to open himself a passage through the country ofhis enemies; that Mahomet should rather think of determiningwhether he would fight or yield up his ill-gotten territories,than of prescribing measures to him; that he put his wholeconfidence in the omnipotence of God and the justice of hiscause, and that to show how just a sense he had ofMahomet’s kindness, he took the liberty of presenting himwith a looking-glass and a pair of pincers.”

This answer, and the present, so provoked Mahomet, who was atdinner when he received it, that he rose from table immediatelyto march against the Portuguese, imagining he should meet with noresistance; and indeed, any man, however brave, would have beenof the same opinion; for his forces consisted of fifteen thousandfoot, beside a numerous body of cavalry, and the Portuguesecommander had but three hundred and fifty men, having lost eightin attacking some passes, and left forty at Mazma, to maintain anopen intercourse with the viceroy of the Indies.  Thislittle troop of our countrymen were upon the declivity of a hillnear a wood; above them stood the Abyssins, who resolved toremain quiet spectators of the battle, and to declare themselveson that side which should be favoured with victory.

Mahomet began the attack with only ten horsemen, against whomas many Portuguese were detached, who fired with so muchexactness, that nine of the Moors fell, and the tenth with greatdifficulty made his escape.  This omen of good fortune gavethe soldiers great encouragement; the action grew hot, and theycame at length to a general battle; but the Moors, dismayed bythe advantages our men had obtained at first, were half defeatedbefore the fight.  The great fire of our muskets andartillery broke them immediately.  Mahomet preserved his ownlife not without difficulty, but did not lose his capacity withthe battle: he had still a great number of troops remaining,which he rallied, and entrenched himself at Membret, a placenaturally strong, with an intention to pass the winter there, andwait for succours.

The Portuguese, who were more desirous of glory than wealth,did not encumber themselves with plunder, but with the utmostexpedition pursued their enemies, in hopes of cutting thementirely off.  This expectation was too sanguine: they foundthem encamped in a place naturally almost inaccessible, and sowell fortified, that it would be no less than extreme rashness toattack them.  They therefore entrenched themselves on a hillover against the enemy’s camp, and though victorious, wereunder great disadvantages.  They saw new troops arrive everyday at the enemy’s camp, and their small number grew lesscontinually; their friends at Mazna could not join them; theyknew not how to procure provisions, and could put no confidencein the Abyssins; yet recollecting the great things achieved bytheir countrymen, and depending on the Divine protection, theymade no doubt of surmounting all difficulties.

Mahomet on his part was not idle; he solicited the assistanceof the Mahometan princes, pressed them with all the motives ofreligion, and obtained a reinforcement of two thousand musketeersfrom the Arabs, and a train of artillery from the Turks. Animated with these succours, he marched out of his trenches toenter those of the Portuguese, who received him with the utmostbravery, destroyed prodigious numbers of his men, and made manysallies with great vigour, but losing every day some of theirsmall troops, and most of their officers being killed, it waseasy to surround and force them.

Their general had already one arm broken, and his kneeshattered with a musket-shot, which made him unable to repair toall those places where his presence was necessary to animate hissoldiers.  Valour was at length forced to submit tosuperiority of numbers; the enemy entered the camp and put all tothe sword.  The general with ten more escaped the slaughter,and by means of their horses retreated to a wood, where they weresoon discovered by a detachment sent in search of them, andbrought to Mahomet, who was overjoyed to see his most formidableenemy in his power, and ordered him to take care of his uncle andnephew, who were wounded, telling him he should answer for theirlives; and, upon their death, taxed him with hastening it. The brave Portuguese made no excuses, but told him he camethither to destroy Mahometans, and not to save them. Mahomet, enraged at this language, ordered a stone to be put onhis head, and exposed this great man to the insults andreproaches of the whole army.  After this they inflictedvarious kinds of tortures on him, which he endured withincredible resolution, and without uttering the least complaint,praising the mercy of God who had ordained him to suffer in sucha cause.

Mahomet, at last satisfied with cruelty, made an offer ofsending him to the viceroy of the Indies, if he would turnMussulman.  The hero took fire at this proposal, andanswered with the highest indignation that nothing should makehim forsake his heavenly Master to follow an impostor, andcontinued in the severest terms to vilify their false prophet,till Mahomet struck off his head.

Nor did the resentment of Mahomet end here; he divided hisbody into quarters, and sent them to different places.  TheCatholics gathered the remains of this glorious martyr, andinterred them.  Every Moor that passed by threw a stone uponhis grave, and raised in time such a heap, as I found itdifficult to remove when I went in search of those preciousrelics.

What I have here related of the death of Don Christopher deGama I was told by an old man, who was an eye-witness of it: andthere is a tradition in the country that in the place where hishead fell, a fountain sprung up of wonderful virtue, which curedmany diseases otherwise past remedy.

CHAPTER VI

Mahomet continues the war, and is killed.  The stratagemof Peter Leon.

Mahomet, that he might make the best use of his victory,ranged over a great part of Abyssinia in search of the EmperorClaudius, who was then in the kingdom of Dambia.  All placessubmitted to the Mahometan, whose insolence increased every daywith his power; and nothing after the defeat of the Portuguesewas supposed able to put a stop to the progress of his arms.

The soldiers of Portugal, having lost their chief, resorted tothe Emperor, who, though young, promised great things, and toldthem that since their own general was dead, they would accept ofnone but himself.  He received them with great kindness, andhearing of Don Christopher de Gama’s misfortune, could notforbear honouring with some tears the memory of a man who hadcome so far to his succour, and lost his life in his cause.

The Portuguese, resolved at any rate to revenge the fate oftheir general, desired the Emperor to assign them the postopposite to Mahomet, which was willingly granted them.  ThatKing, flushed with his victories, and imagining to fight wasundoubtedly to conquer, sought all occasions of giving theAbyssins battle.  The Portuguese, who desired nothing morethan to re-establish their reputation by revenging the affrontput upon them by the late defeat, advised the Emperor to lay holdon the first opportunity of fighting.  Both parties joinedbattle with equal fury.  The Portuguese directed all theirforce against that part where Mahomet was posted.  PeterLeon, who had been servant to the general, singled the King outamong the crowd, and shot him into the head with hismusket.  Mahomet, finding himself wounded, would haveretired out of the battle, and was followed by Peter Leon, tillhe fell down dead; the Portuguese, alighting from his horse, cutoff one of his ears.  The Moors being now without a leader,continued the fight but a little time, and at length fleddifferent ways in the utmost disorder; the Abyssinians pursuedthem, and made a prodigious slaughter.  One of them, seeingthe King’s body on the ground, cut off his head andpresented it to the Emperor.  The sight of it filled thewhole camp with acclamations; every one applauded the valour andgood fortune of the Abyssin, and no reward was thought greatenough for so important a service.  Peter Leon, having stoodby some time, asked whether the King had but one ear? if he hadtwo, says he, it seems likely that the man who killed him cut offone and keeps it as a proof of his exploit.  The Abyssinstood confused, and the Portuguese produced the ear out of hispocket.  Every one commended the stratagem; and the Emperorcommanded the Abyssin to restore all the presents he hadreceived, and delivered them with many more to Peter Leon.

I imagined the reader would not be displeased to be informedwho this man was, whose precious remains were searched for by aviceroy of Tigre, at the command of the Emperor himself. The commission was directed to me, nor did I ever receive onethat was more welcome on many accounts.  I had contracted anintimate friendship with the Count de Vidigueira, viceroy of theIndies, and had been desired by him, when I took my leave of him,upon going to Melinda, to inform myself where his relation wasburied, and to send him some of his relics.

The viceroy, son-in-law to the Emperor, with whom I was joinedin the commission, gave me many distinguishing proofs of hisaffection to me, and of his zeal for the Catholic religion. It was a journey of fifteen days through part of the countrypossessed by the Galles, which made it necessary to take troopswith us for our security; yet, notwithstanding this precaution,the hazard of the expedition appeared so great, that our friendsbid us farewell with tears, and looked upon us as destined tounavoidable destruction.  The viceroy had given orders tosome troops to join us on the road, so that our little army grewstronger as we advanced.  There is no making long marches inthis country; an army here is a great city well peopled and underexact government: they take their wives and children with them,and the camp hath its streets, its market places, its churches,courts of justice, judges, and civil officers.

Before they set forward, they advertise the governors ofprovinces through which they are to pass, that they may take careto furnish what is necessary for the subsistence of thetroops.  These governors give notice to the adjacent placesthat the army is to march that way on such a day, and that theyare assessed such a quantity of bread, beer, and cows.  Thepeasants are very exact in supplying their quota, being obligedto pay double the value in case of failure; and very often whenthey have produced their full share, they are told that they havebeen deficient, and condemned to buy their peace with a largefine.

When the providore has received these contributions, hedivides them according to the number of persons, and the wantthey are in: the proportion they observe in this distribution istwenty pots of beer, ten of mead, and one cow to a hundredloaves.  The chief officers and persons of note carry theirown provisions with them, which I did too, though I afterwardsfound the precaution unnecessary, for I had often two or threecows more than I wanted, which I bestowed on those whoseallowance fell short.

The Abyssins are not only obliged to maintain the troops intheir march, but to repair the roads, to clear them, especiallyin the forests, of brambles and thorns, and by all means possibleto facilitate the passage of the army.  They are, by longcustom, extremely ready at encamping.  As soon as they cometo a place they think convenient to halt at, the officer thatcommands the vanguard marks out with his pike the place for theKing’s or viceroy’s tent: every one knows his rank,and how much ground he shall take up; so the camp is formed in aninstant.

CHAPTER VII

They discover the relics.  Their apprehension of theGalles.  The author converts a criminal, and procures hispardon.

We took with us an old Moor, so enfeebled with age that theywere forced to carry him: he had seen, as I have said, thesufferings and death of Don Christopher de Gama; and a Christian,who had often heard all those passages related to his father, andknew the place where the uncle and nephew of Mahomet were buried,and where they interred one quarter of the Portuguesemartyr.  We often examined these two men, and always apart;they agreed in every circumstance of their relations, andconfirmed us in our belief of them by leading us to the placewhere we took up the uncle and nephew of Mahomet, as they haddescribed.  With no small labour we removed the heap ofstones which the Moors, according to their custom, had thrownupon the body, and discovered the treasure we came in searchof.  Not many paces off was the fountain where they hadthrown his head, with a dead dog, to raise a greater aversion inthe Moors.  I gathered the teeth and the lower jaw.  Nowords can express the ecstasies I was transported with at seeingthe relics of so great a man, and reflecting that it had pleasedGod to make me the instrument of their preservation, so that oneday, if our holy father the Pope shall be so pleased, they mayreceive the veneration of the faithful.  All burst intotears at the sight.  We indulged a melancholy pleasure inreflecting what that great man had achieved for the deliveranceof Abyssinia, from the yoke and tyranny of the Moors; the voyageshe had undertaken; the battles he had fought; the victories hehad won; and the cruel and tragical death he had suffered. Our first moments were so entirely taken up with thesereflections that we were incapable of considering the danger wewere in of being immediately surrounded by the Galles; but assoon as we awoke to that thought, we contrived to retreat as fastas we could.  Our expedition, however, was not so great butwe saw them on the top of a mountain ready to pour down uponus.  The viceroy attended us closely with his little army,but had been probably not much more secure than we, his forceconsisting only of foot, and the Galles entirely of horse, aservice at which they are very expert.  Our apprehensions atlast proved to be needless, for the troops we saw were of anation at that time in alliance with the Abyssins.

Not caring, after this alarm, to stay longer here, we set outon our march back, and in our return passed through a villagewhere two men, who had murdered a domestic of the viceroy, layunder an arrest.  As they had been taken in the fact, thelaw of the country allowed that they might have been executed thesame hour, but the viceroy having ordered that their death shouldbe deferred till his return, delivered them to the relations ofthe dead, to be disposed of as they should think proper. They made great rejoicings all the night, on account of having itin their power to revenge their relation; and the unhappycriminals had the mortification of standing by to behold thisjollity, and the preparations made for their execution.

The Abyssins have three different ways of putting a criminalto death: one way is to bury him to the neck, to lay a heap ofbrambles upon his head, and to cover the whole with a greatstone; another is to beat him to death with cudgels; a third, andthe most usual, is to stab him with their lances.  Thenearest relation gives the first thrust, and is followed by allthe rest according to their degrees of kindred; and they to whomit does not happen to strike while the offender is alive, dip thepoints of their lances in his blood to show that they partake inthe revenge.  It frequently happens that the relations ofthe criminal are for taking the like vengeance for his death, andsometimes pursue this resolution so far that all those who hadany share in the prosecution lose their lives.

I being informed that these two men were to die, wrote to theviceroy for his permission to exhort them, before they enteredinto eternity, to unite themselves to the Church.  Myrequest being granted, I applied myself to the men, and found oneof them so obstinate that he would not even afford me a hearing,and died in his error.  The other I found more flexible, andwrought upon him so far that he came to my tent to beinstructed.  After my care of his eternal welfare had metwith such success, I could not forbear attempting something forhis temporal, and by my endeavours matters were so accommodatedthat the relations were willing to grant his life on condition hepaid a certain number of cows, or the value.  Their firstdemand was of a thousand; he offered them five; they at last weresatisfied with twelve, provided they were paid upon thespot.  The Abyssins are extremely charitable, and the women,on such occasions, will give even their necklaces and pendants,so that, with what I gave myself, I collected in the camp enoughto pay the fine, and all parties were content.

CHAPTER VIII

The viceroy is offended by his wife.  He complains to theEmperor, but without redress.  He meditates a revolt, raisesan army, and makes an attempt to seize upon the author.

We continued our march, and the viceroy having been advertisedthat some troops had appeared in a hostile manner on thefrontiers, went against them.  I parted from him, andarrived at Fremona, where the Portuguese expected me with greatimpatience.  I reposited the bones of Don Christopher deGama in a decent place, and sent them the May following to theviceroy of the Indies, together with his arms, which had beenpresented me by a gentleman of Abyssinia, and a picture of theVirgin Mary, which that gallant Portuguese always carried abouthim.

The viceroy, during all the time he was engaged in thisexpedition, heard very provoking accounts of the bad conduct ofhis wife, and complained of it to the Emperor, entreating himeither to punish his daughter himself, or to permit him todeliver her over to justice, that, if she was falsely accused,she might have an opportunity of putting her own honour and herhusband’s out of dispute.  The Emperor took littlenotice of his son-in-law’s remonstrances; and, the truthis, the viceroy was somewhat more nice in that matter than thepeople of rank in this country generally are.  There arelaws, it is true, against adultery, but they seem to have beenonly for the meaner people, and the women of quality, especiallythe ouzoros, or ladies of the blood royal, are so much abovethem, that their husbands have not even the liberty ofcomplaining; and certainly to support injuries of this kindwithout complaining requires a degree of patience which few mencan boast of.  The viceroy’s virtue was not proofagainst this temptation.  He fell into a deep melancholy,and resolved to be revenged on his father-in-law.  He knewthe present temper of the people, that those of the greatestinterest and power were by no means pleased with the changes ofreligion, and only waited for a fair opportunity to revolt; andthat these discontents were everywhere heightened by the monksand clergy.  Encouraged by these reflections, he was alwaystalking of the just reasons he had to complain of the Emperor,and gave them sufficient room to understand that if they wouldappear in his party, he would declare himself for the ancientreligion, and put himself at the head of those who should takearms in the defence of it.  The chief and almost the onlything that hindered him from raising a formidable rebellion, wasthe mutual distrust they entertained of one another, each fearingthat as soon as the Emperor should publish an act of grace, orgeneral amnesty, the greatest part would lay down their arms andembrace it; and this suspicion was imagined more reasonable ofthe viceroy than of any other.  Notwithstanding thisdifficulty, the priests, who interested themselves much in thisrevolt, ran with the utmost earnestness from church to church,levelling their sermons against the Emperor and the Catholicreligion; and that they might have the better success in puttinga stop to all ecclesiastical innovations, they came to aresolution of putting all the missionaries to the sword; and thatthe viceroy might have no room to hope for a pardon, they obligedhim to give the first wound to him that should fall into hishands.

As I was the nearest, and by consequence the most exposed, anorder was immediately issued out for apprehending me, it beingthought a good expedient to seize me, and force me to build acitadel, into which they might retreat if they should happen tomeet with a defeat.  The viceroy wrote to me to desire thatI would come to him, he having, as he said, an affair of thehighest importance to communicate.

The frequent assemblies which the viceroy held had alreadybeen much talked of; and I had received advice that he was readyfor a revolt, and that my death was to be the first signal of anopen war.  Knowing that the viceroy had made many complaintsof the treatment he received from his father-in-law, I made nodoubt that he had some ill design in hand; and yet could scarcepersuade myself that after all the tokens of friendship I hadreceived from him he would enter into any measures for destroyingme.  While I was yet in suspense, I despatched a faithfulservant to the viceroy with my excuse for disobeying him; andgave the messenger strict orders to observe all that passed, andbring me an exact account.

This affair was of too great moment not to engage my utmostendeavours to arrive at the most certain knowledge of it, and toadvertise the court of the danger.  I wrote, therefore, toone of our fathers, who was then near the Emperor, the bestintelligence I could obtain of all that had passed, of thereports that were spread through all this part of the empire, andof the disposition which I discovered in the people to a generaldefection; telling him, however, that I could not yet believethat the viceroy, who had honoured me with his friendship, and ofwhom I never had any thought but how to oblige him, could nowhave so far changed his sentiments as to take away my life.

The letters which I received by my servant, and the assuranceshe gave that I need fear nothing, for that I was never mentionedby the viceroy without great marks of esteem, so far confirmed mein my error, that I went from Fremona with a resolution to seehim.  I did not reflect that a man who could fail in hisduty to his King, his father-in-law, and his benefactor, might,without scruple, do the same to a stranger, though distinguishedas his friend; and thus sanguine and unsuspecting continued myjourney, still receiving intimation from all parts to take careof myself.  At length, when I was within a few days’journey of the viceroy, I received a billet in more plain andexpress terms than anything I had been told yet, charging me withextreme imprudence in putting myself into the hands of those menwho had undoubtedly sworn to cut me off.

I began, upon this, to distrust the sincerity of theviceroy’s professions, and resolved, upon the receipt ofanother letter from the viceroy, to return directly.  Inthis letter, having excused himself for not waiting for myarrival, he desired me in terms very strong and pressing to comeforward, and stay for him at his own house, assuring me that hehad given such orders for my entertainment as should prevent mybeing tired with living there.  I imagined at first that hehad left some servants to provide for my reception, but beingadvertised at the same time that there was no longer any doubt ofthe certainty of his revolt, that the Galles were engaged to cometo his assistance, and that he was gone to sign a treaty withthem, I was no longer in suspense what measures to take, butreturned to Fremona.

Here I found a letter from the Emperor, which prohibited me togo out, and the orders which he had sent through all these parts,directing them to arrest me wherever I was found, and to hinderme from proceeding on my journey.  These orders came toolate to contribute to my preservation, and this prince’sgoodness had been in vain, if God, whose protection I have oftenhad experience of in my travels, had not been my conductor inthis emergency.

The viceroy, hearing that I was returned to my residence, didnot discover any concern or chagrin as at a disappointment, forsuch was his privacy and dissimulation that the most penetratingcould never form any conjecture that could be depended on, abouthis designs, till everything was ready for the execution ofthem.  My servant, a man of wit, was surprised as well aseverybody else; and I can ascribe to nothing but a miracle myescape from so many snares as he laid to entrap me.

There happened during this perplexity of my affairs anaccident of small consequence in itself, which yet I thinkdeserves to be mentioned, as it shows the credulity and ignoranceof the Abyssins.  I received a visit from a religious, whopassed, though he was blind, for the most learned person in allthat country.  He had the whole Scriptures in his memory,but seemed to have been at more pains to retain them thanunderstand them; as he talked much he often took occasion toquote them, and did it almost always improperly.  Havinginvited him to sup and pass the night with me, I set before himsome excellent mead, which he liked so well as to drink somewhatbeyond the bounds of exact temperance.  Next day, to makesome return for his entertainment, he took upon him to divert mewith some of those stories which the monks amuse simple peoplewith, and told me of a devil that haunted a fountain, and used tomake it his employment to plague the monks that came thither tofetch water, and continued his malice till he was converted bythe founder of their order, who found him no very stubbornproselyte till they came to the point of circumcision; the devilwas unhappily prepossessed with a strong aversion from beingcircumcised, which, however, by much persuasion, he at lastagreed to, and afterwards taking a religious habit, died tenyears after with great signs of sanctity.  He added anotherhistory of a famous Abyssinian monk, who killed a devil twohundred feet high, and only four feet thick, that ravaged all thecountry; the peasants had a great desire to throw the deadcarcase from the top of a rock, but could not with all theirforce remove it from the place, but the monk drew it after himwith all imaginable ease and pushed it down.  This story wasfollowed by another, of a young devil that became a religious ofthe famous monastery of Aba Gatima.  The good father wouldhave favoured me with more relations of the same kind, if I hadbeen in the humour to have heard them, but, interrupting him, Itold him that all these relations confirmed what we had found byexperience, that the monks of Abyssinia were no improper companyfor the devil.

CHAPTER IX

The viceroy is defeated and hanged.  The author narrowlyescapes being poisoned.

I did not stay long at Fremona, but left that town and theprovince of Tigre, and soon found that I was very happy in thatresolution, for scarce had I left the place before the viceroycame in person to put me to death, who, not finding me, as heexpected, resolved to turn all his vengeance against the fatherGaspard Paes, a venerable man, who was grown grey in the missionsof Æthiopia, and five other missionaries newly arrived fromthe Indies; his design was to kill them all at one time withoutsuffering any to escape; he therefore sent for them all, but onehappily being sick, another stayed to attend him; to this theyowed their lives, for the viceroy, finding but four of them, sentthem back, telling them he would see them all together.  Thefathers, having been already told of his revolt, and of thepretences he made use of to give it credit, made no question ofhis intent to massacre them, and contrived their escape so thatthey got safely out of his power.

The viceroy, disappointed in his scheme, vented all his rageupon Father James, whom the patriarch had given him as hisconfessor; the good man was carried, bound hand and foot, intothe middle of the camp; the viceroy gave the first stab in thethroat, and all the rest struck him with their lances, and dippedtheir weapons in his blood, promising each other that they wouldnever accept of any act of oblivion or terms of peace by whichthe Catholic religion was not abolished throughout the empire,and all those who professed it either banished or put todeath.  They then ordered all the beads, images, crosses,and relics which the Catholics made use of to be thrown into thefire.

The anger of God was now ready to fall upon his head for thesedaring and complicated crimes; the Emperor had alreadyconfiscated all his goods, and given the government of thekingdom of Tigre to Keba Christos, a good Catholic, who was sentwith a numerous army to take possession of it.  As botharmies were in search of each other, it was not long before theycame to a battle.  The revolted viceroy Tecla Georgis placedall his confidence in the Galles, his auxiliaries.  KebaChristos, who had marched with incredible expedition to hinderthe enemy from making any intrenchments, would willingly haverefreshed his men a few days before the battle, but finding thefoe vigilant, thought it not proper to stay till he was attacked,and therefore resolved to make the first onset; then presentinghimself before his army without arms and with his head uncovered,assured them that such was his confidence in God’sprotection of those that engaged in so just a cause, that thoughhe were in that condition and alone, he would attack hisenemies.

The battle began immediately, and of all the troops of TeclaGeorgis only the Galles made any resistance, the rest abandonedhim without striking a blow.  The unhappy commander, seeingall his squadrons broken, and three hundred of the Galles, withtwelve ecclesiastics, killed on the spot, hid himself in a cave,where he was found three days afterwards, with his favourite anda monk.  When they took him, they cut off the heads of histwo companions in the field, and carried him to the Emperor; theprocedure against him was not long, and he was condemned to beburnt alive.  Then imagining that, if he embraced theCatholic faith, the intercession of the missionaries, with theentreaties of his wife and children, might procure him a pardon,he desired a Jesuit to hear his confession, and abjured hiserrors.  The Emperor was inflexible both to the entreatiesof his daughter and the tears of his grand-children, and all thatcould be obtained of him was that the sentence should bemollified, and changed into a condemnation to be hanged. Tecla Georgis renounced his abjuration, and at his deathpersisted in his errors.  Adero, his sister, who had bornethe greatest share in his revolt, was hanged on the same treefifteen days after.

I arrived not long after at the Emperor’s court, and hadthe honour of kissing his hands; but stayed not long in a placewhere no missionary ought to linger, unless obliged by the mostpressing necessity: but being ordered by my superiors into thekingdom of Damote, I set out on my journey, and on the road wasin great danger of losing my life by my curiosity of tasting aherb, which I found near a brook, and which, though I had oftenheard of it, I did not know.  It bears a great resemblanceto our radishes; the leaf and colour were beautiful, and thetaste not unpleasant.  It came into my mind when I began tochew it that perhaps it might be that venomous herb against whichno antidote had yet been found, but persuading myself afterwardsthat my fears were merely chimerical, I continued to chew it,till a man accidentally meeting me, and seeing me with a handfulof it, cried out to me that I was poisoned; I had happily notswallowed any of it, and throwing out what I had in my mouth, Ireturned God thanks for this instance of his protection.

I crossed the Nile the first time in my journey to the kingdomof Damote; my passage brought into my mind all that I had readeither in ancient or modern writers of this celebrated river; Irecollected the great expenses at which some Emperors hadendeavoured to gratify their curiosity of knowing the sources ofthis mighty stream, which nothing but their little acquaintancewith the Abyssins made so difficult to be found.  I passedthe river within two days’ journey of its head, near a wideplain, which is entirely laid under water when it begins tooverflow the banks.  Its channel is even here so wide, thata ball-shot from a musket can scarce reach the fartherbank.  Here is neither boat nor bridge, and the river is sofull of hippopotami, or river-horses, and crocodiles, that it isimpossible to swim over without danger of being devoured. The only way of passing it is upon floats, which they guide aswell as they can with long poles.  Nor is even this waywithout danger, for these destructive animals overturn thefloats, and tear the passengers in pieces.  The river horse,which lives only on grass and branches of trees, is satisfiedwith killing the men, but the crocodile being more voracious,feeds upon the carcases.

But since I am arrived at the banks of this renowned river,which I have passed and repassed so many times; and since allthat I have read of the nature of its waters, and the causes ofits overflowing, is full of fables, the reader may not bedispleased to find here an account of what I saw myself, or wastold by the inhabitants.

CHAPTER X

A description of the Nile.

The Nile, which the natives call Abavi, that is, the Father ofWaters, rises first in Sacala, a province of the kingdom ofGoiama, which is one of the most fruitful and agreeable of allthe Abyssinian dominions.  This province is inhabited by anation of the Agaus, who call, but only call, themselvesChristians, for by daily intermarriages they have alliedthemselves to the Pagan Agaus, and adopted all their customs andceremonies.  These two nations are very numerous, fierce,and unconquerable, inhabiting a country full of mountains, whichare covered with woods, and hollowed by nature into vast caverns,many of which are capable of containing several numerousfamilies, and hundreds of cows.  To these recesses the Agausbetake themselves when they are driven out of the plain, where itis almost impossible to find them, and certain ruin to pursuethem.  This people increases extremely, every man beingallowed so many wives as he hath hundreds of cows, and it isseldom that the hundreds are required to be complete.

In the eastern part of this kingdom, on the declivity of amountain, whose descent is so easy that it seems a beautifulplain, is that source of the Nile which has been sought after atso much expense of labour, and about which such variety ofconjectures hath been formed without success.  This spring,or rather these two springs, are two holes, each about two feetdiameter, a stone’s cast distant from each other; the oneis but about five feet and a half in depth—at least wecould not get our plummet farther, perhaps because it was stoppedby roots, for the whole place is full of trees; of the other,which is somewhat less, with a line of ten feet we could find nobottom, and were assured by the inhabitants that none ever hadbeen found.  It is believed here that these springs are thevents of a great subterraneous lake, and they have thiscircumstance to favour their opinion, that the ground is alwaysmoist and so soft that the water boils up under foot as one walksupon it.  This is more visible after rains, for then theground yields and sinks so much, that I believe it is chieflysupported by the roots of trees that are interwoven one withanother; such is the ground round about these fountains.  Ata little distance to the south is a village named Guix, throughwhich the way lies to the top of the mountain, from whence thetraveller discovers a vast extent of land, which appears like adeep valley, though the mountain rises so imperceptibly thatthose who go up or down it are scarce sensible of anydeclivity.

On the top of this mountain is a little hill which theidolatrous Agaus have in great veneration; their priest callsthem together at this place once a year, and having sacrificed acow, throws the head into one of the springs of the Nile; afterwhich ceremony, every one sacrifices a cow or more, according totheir different degrees of wealth or devotion.  The bones ofthese cows have already formed two mountains of considerableheight, which afford a sufficient proof that these nations havealways paid their adorations to this famous river.  They eatthese sacrifices with great devotion, as flesh consecrated totheir deity.  Then the priest anoints himself with thegrease and tallow of the cows, and sits down on a heap of straw,on the top and in the middle of a pile which is prepared; theyset fire to it, and the whole heap is consumed without any injuryto the priest, who while the fire continues harangues thestanders by, and confirms them in their present ignorance andsuperstition.  When the pile is burnt, and the discourse atan end, every one makes a large present to the priest, which isthe grand design of this religious mockery.

To return to the course of the Nile: its waters, after thefirst rise, run to the eastward for about a musket-shot, thenturning to the north, continue hidden in the grass and weeds forabout a quarter of a league, and discover themselves for thefirst time among some rocks—a sight not to be enjoyedwithout some pleasure by those who have read the fabulousaccounts of this stream delivered by the ancients, and the vainconjectures and reasonings which have been formed upon itsoriginal, the nature of its water, its cataracts, and itsinundations, all which we are now entirely acquainted with andeye-witnesses of.

Many interpreters of the Holy Scriptures pretend that Gihon,mentioned in Genesis, is no other than the Nile, whichencompasseth all Æthiopia; but as the Gihon had its sourcefrom the terrestrial paradise, and we know that the Nile rises inthe country of the Agaus, it will be found, I believe, no smalldifficulty to conceive how the same river could arise from twosources so distant from each other, or how a river from so low asource should spring up and appear in a place perhaps the highestin the world: for if we consider that Arabia and Palestine are intheir situation almost level with Egypt; that Egypt is as low, ifcompared with the kingdom of Dambia, as the deepest valley inregard of the highest mountain; that the province of Sacala isyet more elevated than Dambia; that the waters of the Nile musteither pass under the Red Sea, or take a great compass about, weshall find it hard to conceive such an attractive power in theearth as may be able to make the waters rise through theobstruction of so much sand from places so low to the most loftyregion of Æthiopia.

But leaving these difficulties, let us go on to describe thecourse of the Nile.  It rolls away from its source with soinconsiderable a current, that it appears unlikely to escapebeing dried up by the hot season, but soon receiving an increasefrom the Gemma, the Keltu, the Bransu, and other less rivers, itis of such a breadth in the plain of Boad, which is not abovethree days’ journey from its source, that a ball shot froma musket will scarce fly from one bank to the other.  Hereit begins to run northwards, deflecting, however, a littletowards the east, for the space of nine or ten leagues, and thenenters the so much talked of Lake of Dambia, called by thenatives Bahar Sena, the Resemblance of the Sea, or Bahar Dambia,the Sea of Dambia.  It crosses this lake only at one endwith so violent a rapidity, that the waters of the Nile may bedistinguished through all the passage, which is sixleagues.  Here begins the greatness of the Nile. Fifteen miles farther, in the land of Alata, it rushesprecipitately from the top of a high rock, and forms one of themost beautiful water-falls in the world: I passed under itwithout being wet; and resting myself there, for the sake of thecoolness, was charmed with a thousand delightful rainbows, whichthe sunbeams painted on the water in all their shining and livelycolours.  The fall of this mighty stream from so great aheight makes a noise that may be heard to a considerabledistance; but I could not observe that the neighbouringinhabitants were at all deaf.  I conversed with several, andwas as easily heard by them as I heard them.  The mist thatrises from this fall of water may be seen much farther than thenoise can be heard.  After this cataract the Nile againcollects its scattered stream among the rocks, which seem to bedisjoined in this place only to afford it a passage.  Theyare so near each other that, in my time, a bridge of beams, onwhich the whole Imperial army passed, was laid over them. Sultan Segued hath since built here a bridge of one arch in thesame place, for which purpose he procured masons fromIndia.  This bridge, which is the first the Abyssins haveseen on the Nile, very much facilitates a communication betweenthe provinces, and encourages commerce among the inhabitants ofhis empire.

Here the river alters its course, and passes through manyvarious kingdoms; on the east it leaves Begmeder, or the Land ofSheep, so called from great numbers that are bred there, beg, inthat language, signifying sheep, and meder, a country.  Itthen waters the kingdoms of Amhara, Olaca, Choaa, and Damot,which lie on the left side, and the kingdom of Goiama, which itbounds on the right, forming by its windings a kind ofpeninsula.  Then entering Bezamo, a province of the kingdomof Damot, and Gamarchausa, part of Goiama, it returns within ashort day’s journey of its spring; though to pursue itthrough all its mazes, and accompany it round the kingdom ofGoiama, is a journey of twenty-nine days.  So far, and a fewdays’ journey farther, this river confines itself toAbyssinia, and then passes into the bordering countries of Fazuloand Ombarca.

These vast regions we have little knowledge of: they areinhabited by nations entirely different from the Abyssins; theirhair is like that of the other blacks, short and curled.  Inthe year 1615, Rassela Christos, lieutenant-general to SultanSegued, entered those kingdoms with his army in a hostile manner;but being able to get no intelligence of the condition of thepeople, and astonished at their unbounded extent, he returned,without daring to attempt anything.

As the empire of the Abyssins terminates at these deserts, andas I have followed the course of the Nile no farther, I hereleave it to range over barbarous kingdoms, and convey wealth andplenty into Egypt, which owes to the annual inundations of thisriver its envied fertility.  I know not anything of the restof its passage, but that it receives great increases from manyother rivers; that it has several cataracts like the firstalready described, and that few fish are to be found in it, whichscarcity, doubtless, is to be attributed to the river-horses andcrocodiles, which destroy the weaker inhabitants of these waters,and something may be allowed to the cataracts, it being difficultfor fish to fall so far without being killed.

Although some who have travelled in Asia and Africa have giventhe world their descriptions of crocodiles and hippopotamus, orriver-horse, yet as the Nile has at least as great numbers ofeach as any river in the world, I cannot but think my account ofit would be imperfect without some particular mention of theseanimals.

The crocodile is very ugly, having no proportion between hislength and thickness; he hath short feet, a wide mouth, with tworows of sharp teeth, standing wide from each other, a brown skinso fortified with scales, even to his nose, that a musket-ballcannot penetrate it.  His sight is extremely quick, and at agreat distance.  In the water he is daring and fierce, andwill seize on any that are so unfortunate as to be found by himbathing, who, if they escape with life, are almost sure to leavesome limb in his mouth.  Neither I, nor any with whom I haveconversed about the crocodile, have ever seen him weep, andtherefore I take the liberty of ranking all that hath been toldus of his tears amongst the fables which are only proper to amusechildren.

The hippopotamus, or river-horse, grazes upon the land andbrowses on the shrubs, yet is no less dangerous than thecrocodile.  He is the size of an ox, of a brown colourwithout any hair, his tail is short, his neck long, and his headof an enormous bigness; his eyes are small, his mouth wide, withteeth half a foot long; he hath two tusks like those of a wildboar, but larger; his legs are short, and his feet part into fourtoes.  It is easy to observe from this description that hehath no resemblance of a horse, and indeed nothing could giveoccasion to the name but some likeness in his ears, and hisneighing and snorting like a horse when he is provoked or raiseshis head out of water.  His hide is so hard that a musketfired close to him can only make a slight impression, and thebest tempered lances pushed forcibly against him are eitherblunted or shivered, unless the assailant has the skill to makehis thrust at certain parts which are more tender.  There isgreat danger in meeting him, and the best way is, upon such anaccident, to step aside and let him pass by.  The flesh ofthis animal doth not differ from that of a cow, except that it isblacker and harder to digest.

The ignorance which we have hitherto been in of the originalof the Nile hath given many authors an opportunity of presentingus very gravely with their various systems and conjectures aboutthe nature of its waters, and the reason of its overflows.

It is easy to observe how many empty hypotheses and idlereasonings the phenomena of this river have put mankind to theexpense of.  Yet there are people so bigoted to antiquity,as not to pay any regard to the relation of travellers who havebeen upon the spot, and by the evidence of their eyes can confuteall that the ancients have written.  It was difficult, itwas even impossible, to arrive at the source of the Nile bytracing its channel from the mouth; and all who ever attemptedit, having been stopped by the cataracts, and imagining none thatfollowed them could pass farther, have taken the liberty ofentertaining us with their own fictions.

It is to be remembered likewise that neither the Greeks norRomans, from whom we have received all our information, evercarried their arms into this part of the world, or ever heard ofmultitudes of nations that dwell upon the banks of this vastriver; that the countries where the Nile rises, and those throughwhich it runs, have no inhabitants but what are savage anduncivilised; that before they could arrive at its head, they mustsurmount the insuperable obstacles of impassable forests,inaccessible cliffs, and deserts crowded with beasts of prey,fierce by nature, and raging for want of sustenance.  Yet ifthey who endeavoured with so much ardour to discover the springof this river had landed at Mazna on the coast of the Red Sea,and marched a little more to the south than the south-west, theymight perhaps have gratified their curiosity at less expense, andin about twenty days might have enjoyed the desired sight of thesources of the Nile.

But this discovery was reserved for the invincible bravery ofour noble countrymen, who, not discouraged by the dangers of anavigation in seas never explored before, have subdued kingdomsand empires where the Greek and Roman greatness, where the namesof Cæsar and Alexander, were never heard of; who havedemolished the airy fabrics of renowned hypotheses, and detectedthose fables which the ancients rather chose to invent of thesources of the Nile than to confess their ignorance.  Icannot help suspending my narration to reflect a little on theridiculous speculations of those swelling philosophers, whosearrogance would prescribe laws to nature, and subject thoseastonishing effects, which we behold daily, to their idlereasonings and chimerical rules.  Presumptuous imagination!that has given being to such numbers of books, and patrons to somany various opinions about the overflows of the Nile.  Someof these theorists have been pleased to declare it as theirfavourite notion that this inundation is caused by high windswhich stop the current, and so force the water to rise above itsbanks, and spread over all Egypt.  Others pretend asubterraneous communication between the ocean and the Nile, andthat the sea being violently agitated swells the river. Many have imagined themselves blessed with the discovery whenthey have told us that this mighty flood proceeds from themelting of snow on the mountains of Æthiopia, withoutreflecting that this opinion is contrary to the received notionof all the ancients, who believed that the heat was so excessivebetween the tropics that no inhabitant could live there.  Somuch snow and so great heat are never met with in the sameregion; and indeed I never saw snow in Abyssinia, except on MountSemen in the kingdom of Tigre, very remote from the Nile, and onNamera, which is indeed not far distant, but where there neverfalls snow sufficient to wet the foot of the mountain when it ismelted.

To the immense labours and fatigues of the Portuguese mankindis indebted for the knowledge of the real cause of theseinundations so great and so regular.  Their observationsinform us that Abyssinia, where the Nile rises and waters vasttracts of land, is full of mountains, and in its naturalsituation much higher than Egypt; that all the winter, from Juneto September, no day is without rain; that the Nile receives inits course all the rivers, brooks, and torrents which fall fromthose mountains; these necessarily swell it above the banks, andfill the plains of Egypt with the inundation.  This comesregularly about the month of July, or three weeks after thebeginning of a rainy season in Æthiopia.  Thedifferent degrees of this flood are such certain indications ofthe fruitfulness or sterility of the ensuing year, that it ispublicly proclaimed in Cairo how much the water hath gained eachnight.  This is all I have to inform the reader ofconcerning the Nile, which the Egyptians adored as the deity, inwhose choice it was to bless them with abundance, or deprive themof the necessaries of life.

CHAPTER XI

The author discovers a passage over the Nile.  Is sentinto the province of Ligonus, which he gives a descriptionof.  His success in his mission.  The stratagem of themonks to encourage the soldiers.  The author narrowlyescapes being burned.

When I was to cross this river at Boad, I durst not venturemyself on the floats I have already spoken of, but went up higherin hopes of finding a more commodious passage.  I had withme three or four men that were reduced to the same difficultywith myself.  In one part seeing people on the other side,and remarking that the water was shallow, and that the rocks andtrees which grew very thick there contributed to facilitate theattempt, I leaped from one rock to another, till I reached theopposite bank, to the great amazement of the natives themselves,who never had tried that way; my four companions followed me withthe same success: and it hath been called since the passage ofFather Jerome.

That province of the kingdom of Damot, which I was assigned toby my superior, is called Ligonus, and is perhaps one of the mostbeautiful and agreeable places in the world; the air is healthfuland temperate, and all the mountains, which are not very high,shaded with cedars.  They sow and reap here in every season,the ground is always producing, and the fruits ripen throughoutthe year; so great, so charming is the variety, that the wholeregion seems a garden laid out and cultivated only toplease.  I doubt whether even the imagination of a painterhas yet conceived a landscape as beautiful as I have seen. The forests have nothing uncouth or savage, and seem only plantedfor shade and coolness.  Among a prodigious number of treeswhich fill them, there is one kind which I have seen in no otherplace, and to which we have none that bears anyresemblance.  This tree, which the natives call ensete, iswonderfully useful; its leaves, which are so large as to cover aman, make hangings for rooms, and serve the inhabitants insteadof linen for their tables and carpets.  They grind thebranches and the thick parts of the leaves, and when they aremingled with milk, find them a delicious food.  The trunkand the roots are even more nourishing than the leaves orbranches, and the meaner people, when they go a journey, make noprovision of any other victuals.  The word ensete signifiesthe tree against hunger, or the poor’s tree, though themost wealthy often eat of it.  If it be cut down within halfa foot of the ground and several incisions made in the stump,each will put out a new sprout, which, if transplanted, will takeroot and grow to a tree.  The Abyssins report that this treewhen it is cut down groans like a man, and, on this account, callcutting down an ensete killing it.  On the top grows a bunchof five or six figs, of a taste not very agreeable, which theyset in the ground to produce more trees.

I stayed two months in the province of Ligonus, and duringthat time procured a church to be built of hewn stone, roofed andwainscoted with cedar, which is the most considerable in thewhole country.  My continual employment was the duties ofthe mission, which I was always practising in some part of theprovince, not indeed with any extraordinary success at first, forI found the people inflexibly obstinate in their opinions, evento so great a degree, that when I first published theEmperor’s edict requiring all his subjects to renouncetheir errors, and unite themselves to the Roman Church, therewere some monks who, to the number of sixty, chose rather to dieby throwing themselves headlong from a precipice than obey theirsovereign’s commands: and in a battle fought between thesepeople that adhered to the religion of their ancestors, and thetroops of Sultan Segued, six hundred religious, placingthemselves at the head of their men, marched towards the Catholicarmy with the stones of the altars upon their heads, assuringtheir credulous followers that the Emperor’s troops wouldimmediately at the sight of those stones fall into disorder andturn their backs; but, as they were some of the first that fell,their death had a great influence upon the people to undeceivethem, and make them return to the truth.  Many wereconverted after the battle, and when they had embraced theCatholic faith, adhered to that with the same constancy andfirmness with which they had before persisted in theirerrors.

The Emperor had sent a viceroy into this province, whose firmattachment to the Roman Church, as well as great abilities inmilitary affairs, made him a person very capable of executing theorders of the Emperor, and of suppressing any insurrection thatmight be raised, to prevent those alterations in religion whichthey were designed to promote: a farther view in the choice of sowarlike a deputy was that a stop might be put to the inroads ofthe Galles, who had killed one viceroy, and in a little timeafter killed this.

It was our custom to meet together every year about Christmas,not only that we might comfort and entertain each other, butlikewise that we might relate the progress and success of ourmissions, and concert all measures that might farther theconversion of the inhabitants.  This year our place ofmeeting was the Emperor’s camp, where the patriarch andsuperior of the missions were.  I left the place of myabode, and took in my way four fathers, that resided at thedistance of two days’ journey, so that the company, withoutreckoning our attendants, was five.  There happened nothingremarkable to us till the last night of our journey, when takingup our lodging at a place belonging to the Empress, a declaredenemy to all Catholics, and in particular to the missionaries, wemet with a kind reception in appearance, and were lodged in alarge stone house covered with wood and straw, which had stooduninhabited so long, that great numbers of red ants had takenpossession of it; these, as soon as we were laid down, attackedus on all sides, and tormented us so incessantly that we wereobliged to call up our domestics.  Having burnt a prodigiousnumber of these troublesome animals, we tried to composeourselves again, but had scarce closed our eyes before we wereawakened by the fire that had seized our lodging.  Ourservants, who were fortunately not all gone to bed, perceived thefire as soon as it began, and informed me, who lay nearest thedoor.  I immediately alarmed all the rest, and nothing wasthought of but how to save ourselves and the little goods we had,when, to our great astonishment, we found one of the doorsbarricaded in such a manner that we could not open it. Nothing now could have prevented our perishing in the flames hadnot those who kindled them omitted to fasten that door near whichI was lodged.  We were no longer in doubt that theinhabitants of the town had laid a train, and set fire to aneighbouring house, in order to consume us; their measures wereso well laid, that the house was in ashes in an instant, andthree of our beds were burnt which the violence of the flamewould not allow us to carry away.  We spent the rest of thenight in the most dismal apprehensions, and found next morningthat we had justly charged the inhabitants with the design ofdestroying us, for the place was entirely abandoned, and thosethat were conscious of the crime had fled from thepunishment.  We continued our journey, and came to Gorgora,where we found the fathers met, and the Emperor with them.

CHAPTER XII

The author is sent into Tigre.  Is in danger of beingpoisoned by the breath of a serpent.  Is stung by aserpent.  Is almost killed by eating anchoy.  Thepeople conspire against the missionaries, and distress them.

My superiors intended to send me into the farthest parts ofthe empire, but the Emperor over-ruled that design, and remandedme to Tigre, where I had resided before.  I passed in myjourney by Ganete Ilhos, a palace newly built, and made agreeableby beautiful gardens, and had the honour of paying my respects tothe Emperor, who had retired thither, and receiving from him alarge present for the finishing of a hospital, which had beenbegun in the kingdom of Tigre.  After having returned himthanks, I continued my way, and in crossing a desert twodays’ journey over, was in great danger of my life, for, asI lay on the ground, I perceived myself seized with a pain whichforced me to rise, and saw about four yards from me one of thoseserpents that dart their poison at a distance; although I rosebefore he came very near me, I yet felt the effects of hispoisonous breath, and, if I had lain a little longer, hadcertainly died; I had recourse to bezoar, a sovereign remedyagainst these poisons, which I always carried about me. These serpents are not long, but have a body short and thick, andtheir bellies speckled with brown, black, and yellow; they have awide mouth, with which they draw in a great quantity of air, and,having retained it some time, eject it with such force that theykill at four yards’ distance.  I only escaped by beingsomewhat farther from him.  This danger, however, was notmuch to be regarded in comparison of another which my negligencebrought me into.  As I was picking up a skin that lay uponthe ground, I was stung by a serpent that left his sting in myfinger; I at least picked an extraneous substance about thebigness of a hair out of the wound, which I imagined was thesting.  This slight wound I took little notice of, till myarm grew inflamed all over; in a short time the poison infectedmy blood, and I felt the most terrible convulsions, which wereinterpreted as certain signs that my death was near andinevitable.  I received now no benefit from bezoar, the hornof the unicorn, or any of the usual antidotes, but found myselfobliged to make use of an extraordinary remedy, which I submittedto with extreme reluctance.  This submission and obediencebrought the blessing of Heaven upon me; nevertheless, I continuedindisposed a long time, and had many symptoms which made me fearthat all the danger was not yet over.  I then took cloves ofgarlic, though with a great aversion, both from the taste andsmell.  I was in this condition a whole month, always inpain, and taking medicines the most nauseous in the world. At length youth and a happy constitution surmounted themalignity, and I recovered my former health.

I continued two years at my residence in Tigre, entirely takenup with the duties of the mission—preaching, confessing,baptising—and enjoyed a longer quiet and repose than I hadever done since I left Portugal.  During this time one ofour fathers, being always sick and of a constitution which theair of Abyssinia was very hurtful to, obtained a permission fromour superiors to return to the Indies; I was willing to accompanyhim through part of his way, and went with him over a desert, atno great distance from my residence, where I found many treesloaded with a kind of fruit, called by the natives anchoy, aboutthe bigness of an apricot, and very yellow, which is much eatenwithout any ill effect.  I therefore made no scruple ofgathering and eating it, without knowing that the inhabitantsalways peeled it, the rind being a violent purgative; so that,eating the fruit and skin together, I fell into such a disorderas almost brought me to my end.  The ordinary dose is six ofthese rinds, and I had devoured twenty.

I removed from thence to Debaroa, fifty-four miles nearer thesea, and crossed in my way the desert of the province ofSaraoe.  The country is fruitful, pleasant, and populous;there are greater numbers of Moors in these parts than in anyother province of Abyssinia, and the Abyssins of this country arenot much better than the Moors.

I was at Debaroa when the prosecution was first set on footagainst the Catholics.  Sultan Segued, who had been so greata favourer of us, was grown old, and his spirit and authoritydecreased with his strength.  His son, who was arrived atmanhood, being weary of waiting so long for the crown he was toinherit, took occasion to blame his father’s conduct, andfound some reason for censuring all his actions; he evenproceeded so far as to give orders sometimes contrary to theEmperor’s.  He had embraced the Catholic religion,rather through complaisance than conviction or inclination; andmany of the Abyssins who had done the same, waited only for anopportunity of making public profession of the ancient erroneousopinions, and of re-uniting themselves to the Church ofAlexandria.  So artfully can this people dissemble theirsentiments that we had not been able hitherto to distinguish ourreal from our pretended favourers; but as soon as this Princebegan to give evident tokens of his hatred, even in the lifetimeof the Emperor, we saw all the courtiers and governors who hadtreated us with such a show of friendship declare against us, andpersecute us as disturbers of the public tranquillity, who hadcome into Æthiopia with no other intention than to abolishthe ancient laws and customs of the country, to sow divisionsbetween father and son, and preach up a revolution.

After having borne all sorts of affronts and ill-treatments,we retired to our house at Fremona, in the midst of ourcountrymen, who had been settling round about us a long time,imagining we should be more secure there, and that, at leastduring the life of the Emperor, they would not come toextremities, or proceed to open force.  I laid some stressupon the kindness which the viceroy of Tigre had shown to us, andin particular to me; but was soon convinced that those hopes hadno real foundation, for he was one of the most violent of ourpersecutors.  He seized upon all our lands, and, advancingwith his troops to Fremona, blocked up the town.  The armyhad not been stationed there long before they committed all sortsof disorders; so that one day a Portuguese, provoked beyond histemper at the insolence of some of them, went out with his foursons, and, wounding several of them, forced the rest back totheir camp.

We thought we had good reason to apprehend an attack; theirtroops were increasing, our town was surrounded, and on the pointof being forced.  Our Portuguese therefore thought that,without staying till the last extremities, they might lawfullyrepel one violence by another, and sallying out to the number offifty, wounded about three score of the Abyssins, and had putthem to the sword but that they feared it might bring too greatan odium upon our cause.  The Portuguese were some of themwounded, but happily none died on either side.

Though the times were by no means favourable to us, every oneblamed the conduct of the viceroy; and those who did not commendour action made the necessity we were reduced to of self-defencean excuse for it.  The viceroy’s principal design wasto get my person into his possession, imagining that if I wasonce in his power, all the Portuguese would pay him a blindobedience.  Having been unsuccessful in his attempt by openforce, he made use of the arts of negotiation, but with an eventnot more to his satisfaction.  This viceroy being recalled,a son-in-law of the Emperor’s succeeded, who treated useven worse than his predecessor had done.

When he entered upon his command, he loaded us withkindnesses, giving us so many assurances of his protection that,while the Emperor lived, we thought him one of our friends; butno sooner was our protector dead than this man pulled off hismask, and, quitting all shame, let us see that neither the fearof God nor any other consideration was capable of restraining himwhen we were to be distressed.  The persecution thenbecoming general, there was no longer any place of security forus in Abyssinia, where we were looked upon by all as the authorsof all the civil commotions, and many councils were held todetermine in what manner they should dispose of us.  Severalwere of opinion that the best way would be to kill us all atonce, and affirmed that no other means were left ofre-establishing order and tranquillity in the kingdom.

Others, more prudent, were not for putting us to death with solittle consideration, but advised that we should be banished toone of the isles of the Lake of Dambia, an affliction more severethan death itself.  These alleged in vindication of theiropinions that it was reasonable to expect, if they put us todeath, that the viceroy of the Indies would come with fire andsword to demand satisfaction.  This argument made so greatan impression upon some of them that they thought no bettermeasures could be taken than to send us back again to theIndies.  This proposal, however, was not without itsdifficulties, for they suspected that when we should arrive atthe Portuguese territories, we would levy an army, return back toAbyssinia, and under pretence of establishing the Catholicreligion revenge all the injuries we had suffered.  Whilethey were thus deliberating upon our fate, we were imploring thesuccour of the Almighty with fervent and humble supplications,entreating him in the midst of our sighs and tears that he wouldnot suffer his own cause to miscarry, and that, however it mightplease him to dispose of our lives—which, we prayed, hewould assist us to lay down with patience and resignation worthyof the faith for which we were persecuted—he would notpermit our enemies to triumph over the truth.

Thus we passed our days and nights in prayers, in affliction,and tears, continually crowded with widows and orphans thatsubsisted upon our charity and came to us for bread when we hadnot any for ourselves.

While we were in this distress we received an account that theviceroy of the Indies had fitted out a powerful fleet against theKing of Mombaza, who, having thrown off the authority of thePortuguese, had killed the governor of the fortress, and hadsince committed many acts of cruelty.  The same fleet, as wewere informed, after the King of Mombaza was reduced, was to burnand ruin Zeila, in revenge of the death of two Portuguese Jesuitswho were killed by the King in the year 1604.  As Zeila wasnot far from the frontiers of Abyssinia, they imagined that theyalready saw the Portuguese invading their country.

The viceroy of Tigre had inquired of me a few days before howmany men one India ship carried, and being told that thecomplement of some was a thousand men, he compared that answerwith the report then spread over all the country, that there wereeighteen Portuguese vessels on the coast of Adel, and concludedthat they were manned by an army of eighteen thousand men; thenconsidering what had been achieved by four hundred, under thecommand of Don Christopher de Gama, he thought Abyssinia alreadyravaged, or subjected to the King of Portugal.  Manydeclared themselves of his opinion, and the court took itsmeasures with respect to us from these uncertain and ungroundedrumours.  Some were so infatuated with their apprehensionsthat they undertook to describe the camp of the Portuguese, andaffirmed that they had heard the report of their cannons.

All this contributed to exasperate the inhabitants, andreduced us often to the point of being massacred.  At lengththey came to a resolution of giving us up to the Turks, assuringthem that we were masters of a vast treasure, in hope that afterthey had inflicted all kinds of tortures on us, to make usconfess where we had hid our gold, or what we had done with it,they would at length kill us in rage for thedisappointment.  Nor was this their only view, for theybelieved that the Turks would, by killing us, kindle such anirreconcilable hatred between themselves and our nation as wouldmake it necessary for them to keep us out of the Red Sea, ofwhich they are entirely masters: so that their determination wasas politic as cruel.  Some pretend that the Turks wereengaged to put us to death as soon as we were in their power.

CHAPTER XIII

The author relieves the patriarch and missionaries, andsupports them.  He escapes several snares laid for him bythe viceroy of Tigre.  They put themselves under theprotection of the Prince of Bar.

Having concluded this negotiation, they drove us out of ourhouses, and robbed us of everything that was worth carrying away;and, not content with that, informed some banditti that were thenin those parts of the road we were to travel through, so that thepatriarch and some missionaries were attacked in a desert bythese rovers, with their captain at their head, who pillaged hislibrary, his ornaments, and what little baggage the missionarieshad left, and might have gone away without resistance orinterruption had they satisfied themselves with only robbing; butwhen they began to fall upon the missionaries and theircompanions, our countrymen, finding that their lives could onlybe preserved by their courage, charged their enemies with suchvigour that they killed their chief and forced the rest to aprecipitate flight.  But these rovers, being acquainted withthe country, harassed the little caravan till it was past theborders.

Our fathers then imagined they had nothing more to fear, buttoo soon were convinced of their error, for they found the wholecountry turned against them, and met everywhere new enemies tocontend with and new dangers to surmount.  Being not fardistant from Fremona, where I resided, they sent to me forsuccour.  I was better informed of the distress they were inthan themselves, having been told that a numerous body ofAbyssins had posted themselves in a narrow pass with an intent tosurround and destroy them; therefore, without long deliberation,I assembled my friends, both Portuguese and Abyssins, to thenumber of fourscore, and went to their rescue, carrying with meprovisions and refreshments, of which I knew they were in greatneed.  These glorious confessors I met as they were justentering the pass designed for the place of their destruction,and doubly preserved them from famine and the sword.  Agrateful sense of their deliverance made them receive me as aguardian angel.  We went together to Fremona, and being inall a patriarch, a bishop, eighteen Jesuits, and four hundredPortuguese whom I supplied with necessaries, though the revenuesof our house were lost, and though the country was disaffected tous, in the worst season of the year.  We were obliged forthe relief of the poor and our own subsistence to sell ourornaments and chalices, which we first broke in pieces, that thepeople might not have the pleasure of ridiculing our mysteries byprofaning the vessels made use of in the celebration of them, forthey now would gladly treat with the highest indignities whatthey had a year before looked upon with veneration.

Amidst all these perplexities the viceroy did not fail tovisit us, and make us great offers of service in expectation of alarge present.  We were in a situation in which it was verydifficult to act properly; we knew too well the ill intentions ofthe viceroy, but durst not complain, or give him any reason toimagine that we knew them.  We longed to retreat out of hispower, or at least to send one of our company to the Indies withan account of persecution we suffered, and could without hisleave neither do one nor the other.

When it was determined that one should be sent to the Indies,I was at first singled out for the journey, and it was intendedthat I should represent at Goa, at Rome, and at Madrid thedistresses and necessities of the mission of Æthiopia; butthe fathers reflecting afterwards that I best understood theAbyssinian language, and was most acquainted with the customs ofthe country, altered their opinions, and, continuing me inÆthiopia either to perish with them or preserve them,deputed four other Jesuits, who in a short time set out on theirway to the Indies.

About this time I was sent for to the viceroy’s camp toconfess a criminal, who, though falsely, was believed a Catholic,to whom, after a proper exhortation, I was going to pronounce theform of absolution, when those that waited to execute him toldhim aloud that if he expected to save his life by professinghimself a Catholic, he would find himself deceived, and that hehad nothing to do but prepare himself for death.  Theunhappy criminal had no sooner heard this than, rising up, hedeclared his resolution to die in the religion of his country,and being delivered up to his prosecutors was immediatelydispatched with their lances.

The chief reason of calling me was not that I might hear thisconfession: the viceroy had another design of seizing my person,expecting that either the Jesuits or Portuguese would buy myliberty with a large ransom, or that he might exchange me for hisfather, who was kept prisoner by a revolted prince.  Thatprince would have been no loser by the exchange, for so much wasI hated by the Abyssinian monks that they would have thought noexpense too great to have gotten me into their hands, that theymight have glutted their revenge by putting me to the mostpainful death they could have invented.  Happily I foundmeans to retire out of this dangerous place, and was followed bythe viceroy almost to Fremona, who, being disappointed, desiredme either to visit him at his camp, or appoint a place where wemight confer.  I made many excuses, but at length agreed tomeet him at a place near Fremona, bringing each of us only threecompanions.  I did not doubt but he would bring more, and sohe did, but found that I was upon my guard, and that my companyincreased in proportion to his.  My friends were resolutePortuguese, who were determined to give him no quarter if he madeany attempt upon my liberty.  Finding himself once morecountermined, he returned ashamed to his camp, where a monthafter, being accused of a confederacy in the revolt of thatprince who kept his father prisoner, he was arrested, and carriedin chains to the Emperor.

The time now approaching in which we were to be delivered tothe Turks, we had none but God to apply to for relief: all themeasures we could think of were equally dangerous. Resolving, nevertheless, to seek some retreat where we might hideourselves either all together or separately, we determined atlast to put ourselves under the protection of the Prince JohnAkay, who had defended himself a long time in the province of Baragainst the power of Abyssinia.

After I had concluded a treaty with this prince, the patriarchand all the fathers put themselves into his hands, and beingreceived with all imaginable kindness and civility, wereconducted with a guard to Adicota, a rock excessively steep,about nine miles from his place of residence.  The event wasnot agreeable to the happy beginning of our negotiation, for wesoon began to find that our habitation was not likely to be verypleasant.  We were surrounded with Mahometans, or Christianswho were inveterate enemies to the Catholic faith, and wereobliged to act with the utmost caution.  Notwithstandingthese inconveniences we were pleased with the presenttranquillity we enjoyed, and lived contentedly on lentils and alittle corn that we had; and I, after we had sold all our goods,resolved to turn physician, and was soon able to support myselfby my practice.

I was once consulted by a man troubled with asthma, whopresented me with two alquieres—that is, about twenty-eightpounds weight—of corn and a sheep.  The advice I gavehim, after having turned over my books, was to drink goats’urine every morning; I know not whether he found any benefit byfollowing my prescription, for I never saw him after.

Being under a necessity of obeying our acoba, or protector, wechanged our place of abode as often as he desired it, though notwithout great inconveniences, from the excessive heat of theweather and the faintness which our strict observation of thefasts and austerities of Lent, as it is kept in this country, hadbrought upon us.  At length, wearied with removing so often,and finding that the last place assigned for our abode was alwaysthe worst, we agreed that I should go to our sovereign andcomplain.

I found him entirely taken up with the imagination of aprodigious treasure, affirmed by the monks to be hidden under amountain.  He was told that his predecessors had beenhindered from discovering it by the demon that guarded it, butthat the demon was now at a great distance from his charge, andwas grown blind and lame; that having lost his son, and beingwithout any children except a daughter that was ugly andunhealthy, he was under great affliction, and entirely neglectedthe care of his treasure; that if he should come, they could callone of their ancient brothers to their assistance, who, being aman of a most holy life, would be able to prevent his making anyresistance.  To all these stories the prince listened withunthinking credulity.  The monks, encouraged by this, fellto the business, and brought a man above a hundred years old,whom, because he could not support himself on horseback, they hadtied on the beast, and covered him with black wool.  He wasfollowed by a black cow (designed for a sacrifice to the demon ofthe place), and by some monks that carried mead, beer, andparched corn, to complete the offering.

No sooner were they arrived at the foot of the mountain thanevery one began to work: bags were brought from all parts toconvey away the millions which each imagined would be hisshare.  The Xumo, who superintended the work, would notallow any one to come near the labourers, but stood by, attendedby the old monk, who almost sang himself to death.  Atlength, having removed a vast quantity of earth and stones, theydiscovered some holes made by rats or moles, at sight of which ashout of joy ran through the whole troop: the cow was brought andsacrificed immediately, and some pieces of flesh were thrown intothese holes.  Animated now with assurance of success, theylose no time: every one redoubles his endeavours, and the heat,though intolerable, was less powerful than the hopes they hadconceived.  At length some, not so patient as the rest, wereweary, and desisted.  The work now grew more difficult; theyfound nothing but rock, yet continued to toil on, till theprince, having lost all temper, began to inquire with somepassion when he should have a sight of this treasure, and afterhaving been some time amused with many promises by the monks, wastold that he had not faith enough to be favoured with thediscovery.

All this I saw myself, and could not forbear endeavouring toconvince our protector how much he was imposed upon: he was notlong before he was satisfied that he had been too credulous, forall those that had so industriously searched after this imaginarywealth, within five hours left the work in despair, and Icontinued almost alone with the prince.

Imagining no time more proper to make the proposal I was sentwith than while his passion was still hot against the monks, Ipresented him with two ounces of gold and two plates of silver,with some other things of small value, and was so successful thathe gratified me in all my requests, and gave us leave to returnto Adicora, where we were so fortunate to find our huts yetuninjured and entire.

About this time the fathers who had stayed behind at Fremonaarrived with the new viceroy, and an officer fierce in thedefence of his own religion, who had particular orders to deliverall the Jesuits up to the Turks, except me, whom the Emperor wasresolved to have in his own hands, alive or dead.  We hadreceived some notice of this resolution from our friends atcourt, and were likewise informed that the Emperor, their master,had been persuaded that my design was to procure assistance fromthe Indies, and that I should certainly return at the head of anarmy.  The patriarch’s advice upon this emergency wasthat I should retire into the woods, and by some other road jointhe nine Jesuits who were gone towards Mazna.  I could thinkof no better expedient, and therefore went away in the nightbetween the 23rd and 24th of April with my comrade, an old man,very infirm and very timorous.  We crossed woods nevercrossed, I believe, by any before: the darkness of the night andthe thickness of the shade spread a kind of horror round us; ourgloomy journey was still more incommoded by the brambles andthorns, which tore our hands; amidst all these difficulties Iapplied myself to the Almighty, praying him to preserve us fromthose dangers which we endeavoured to avoid, and to deliver usfrom those to which our flight exposed us.  Thus wetravelled all night, till eight next morning, without takingeither rest or food; then, imagining ourselves secure, we made ussome cakes of barley-meal and water, which we thought afeast.

We had a dispute with our guides, who though they hadbargained to conduct us for an ounce of gold, yet when they sawus so entangled in the intricacies of the wood that we could notpossibly get out without their direction, demanded seven ouncesof gold, a mule, and a little tent which we had; after a longdispute we were forced to come to their terms.  We continuedto travel all night, and to hide ourselves in the woods all day:and here it was that we met the three hundred elephants I spokeof before.  We made long marches, travelling without anyhalt from four in the afternoon to eight in the morning.

Arriving at a valley where travellers seldom escape beingplundered, we were obliged to double our pace, and were so happyas to pass it without meeting with any misfortune, except that weheard a bird sing on our left hand—a certain presage amongthese people of some great calamity at hand.  As there is noreasoning them out of superstition, I knew no way of encouragingthem to go forward but what I had already made use of on the sameoccasion, assuring them that I heard one at the same time on theright.  They were happily so credulous as to take my word,and we went on till we came to a well, where we stayed awhile torefresh ourselves.  Setting out again in the evening, wepassed so near a village where these robbers had retreated thatthe dogs barked after us.  Next morning we joined thefathers, who waited for us.  After we had rested ourselvessome time in that mountain, we resolved to separate and go twoand two, to seek for a more convenient place where we might hideourselves.  We had not gone far before we were surrounded bya troop of robbers, with whom, by the interest of some of thenatives who had joined themselves to our caravan, we came to acomposition, giving them part of our goods to permit us to carryaway the rest; and after this troublesome adventure arrived at aplace something more commodious than that which we had quitted,where we met with bread, but of so pernicious a quality that,after having ate it, we were intoxicated to so great a degreethat one of my friends, seeing me so disordered, congratulated mygood fortune of having met with such good wine, and was surprisedwhen I gave him an account of the whole affair.  He thenoffered me some curdled milk, very sour, with barley-meal, whichwe boiled, and thought it the best entertainment we had met witha long time.

CHAPTER XIV

They are betrayed into the hands of the Turks; are detainedawhile at Mazna; are threatened by the Bassa of Suaquem. They agree for their ransom, and are part of them dismissed.

Some time after, we received news that we should prepareourselves to serve the Turks—a message which filled us withsurprise, it having never been known that one of these lords hadever abandoned any whom he had taken under his protection; and itis, on the contrary, one of the highest points of honour amongstthem to risk their fortunes and their lives in the defence oftheir dependants who have implored their protection.  Butneither law nor justice was of any advantage to us, and thecustoms of the country were doomed to be broken when they wouldhave contributed to our security.

We were obliged to march in the extremity of the hot season,and had certainly perished by the fatigue had we not entered thewoods, which shaded us from the scorching sun.  The daybefore our arrival at the place where we were to be delivered tothe Turks, we met with five elephants, that pursued us, and ifthey could have come to us would have prevented the miseries weafterwards endured, but God had decreed otherwise.

On the morrow we came to the banks of a river, where we foundfourscore Turks that waited for us, armed with muskets. They let us rest awhile, and then put us into the hands of ournew masters, who, setting us upon camels, conducted us toMazna.  Their commander, seeming to be touched with ourmisfortunes, treated us with much gentleness and humanity; heoffered us coffee, which we drank, but with little relish. We came next day to Mazna, in so wretched a condition that wewere not surprised at being hooted by the boys, but thoughtourselves well used that they threw no stones at us.

As soon as we were brought hither, all we had was taken fromus, and we were carried to the governor, who is placed there bythe Bassa of Suaquem.  Having been told by the Abyssins thatwe had carried all the gold out of Æthiopia, they searchedus with great exactness, but found nothing except two chalices,and some relics of so little value that we redeemed them for sixsequins.  As I had given them my chalice upon their firstdemand, they did not search me, but gave us to understand thatthey expected to find something of greater value, which either wemust have hidden or the Abyssins must have imposed on them. They left us the rest of the day at a gentleman’s house,who was our friend, from whence the next day they fetched us totransport us to the island, where they put us into a kind ofprison, with a view of terrifying us into a confession of theplace where we had hid our gold, in which, however, they foundthemselves deceived.

But I had here another affair upon my hands which was nearcosting me dear.  My servant had been taken from me and leftat Mazna, to be sold to the Arabs.  Being advertised by himof the danger he was in, I laid claim to him, without knowing thedifficulties which this way of proceeding would bring uponme.  The governor sent me word that my servant should berestored to me upon payment of sixty piastres; and being answeredby me that I had not a penny for myself, and therefore could notpay sixty piastres to redeem my servant, he informed me by arenegade Jew, who negotiated the whole affair, that either I mustproduce the money or receive a hundred blows of thebattoon.  Knowing that those orders are without appeal, andalways punctually executed, I prepared myself to receive thecorrection I was threatened with, but unexpectedly found thepeople so charitable as to lend me the money.  By severalother threats of the same kind they drew from us about sixhundred crowns.

On the 24th of June we embarked in two galleys for Suaquem,where the bassa resided.  His brother, who was his deputy atMazna, made us promise before we went that we would not mentionthe money he had squeezed from us.  The season was not veryproper for sailing, and our provisions were but short.  In alittle time we began to feel the want of better stores, andthought ourselves happy in meeting with a gelve, which, thoughsmall, was a much better sailer than our vessel, in which I wassent to Suaquem to procure camels and provisions.  I was notmuch at my ease, alone among six Mahometans, and could not helpapprehending that some zealous pilgrim of Mecca might lay hold onthis opportunity, in the heat of his devotion, of sacrificing meto his prophet.

These apprehensions were without ground.  I contracted anacquaintance, which was soon improved into a friendship, withthese people; they offered me part of their provisions, and Igave them some of mine.  As we were in a place aboundingwith oysters—some of which were large and good to eat,others more smooth and shining, in which pearls arefound—they gave me some of those they gathered; but whetherit happened by trifling our time away in oyster-catching, orwhether the wind was not favourable, we came to Suaquem laterthan the vessel I had left, in which were seven of mycompanions.

As they had first landed, they had suffered the firsttransports of the bassa’s passion, who was a violent,tyrannical man, and would have killed his own brother for theleast advantage—a temper which made him fly into the utmostrage at seeing us poor, tattered, and almost naked; he treated uswith the most opprobrious language, and threatened to cut off ourheads.  We comforted ourselves in this condition, hopingthat all our sufferings would end in shedding our blood for thename of Jesus Christ.  We knew that the bassa had often madea public declaration before our arrival that he should diecontented if he could have the pleasure of killing us all withhis own hand.  This violent resolution was not lasting; hiszeal gave way to his avarice, and he could not think of losing solarge a sum as he knew he might expect for our ransom: hetherefore sent us word that it was in our choice either to die,or to pay him thirty thousand crowns, and demanded to know ourdetermination.

We knew that his ardent thirst of our blood was now cold, thattime and calm reflection and the advice of his friends had allconspired to bring him to a milder temper, and thereforewillingly began to treat with him.  I told the messenger,being deputed by the rest to manage the affair, that he could notbut observe the wretched condition we were in, that we hadneither money nor revenues, that what little we had was alreadytaken from us, and that therefore all we could promise was to seta collection on foot, not much doubting but that our brethrenwould afford us such assistance as might enable us to make him ahandsome present according to custom.

This answer was not at all agreeable to the bassa, whoreturned an answer that he would be satisfied with twentythousand crowns, provided we paid them on the spot, or gave himgood securities for the payment.  To this we could onlyrepeat what we had said before: he then proposed to abate fivethousand of his last demand, assuring us that unless we came tosome agreement, there was no torment so cruel but we shouldsuffer it, and talked of nothing but impaling and flaying usalive; the terror of these threatenings was much increased by hisdomestics, who told us of many of his cruelties.  This iscertain, that some time before, he had used some poor paganmerchants in that manner, and had caused the executioner to beginto flay them, when some Brahmin, touched with compassion,generously contributed the sum demanded for their ransom. We had no reason to hope for so much kindness, and, havingnothing of our own, could promise no certain sum.

At length some of his favourites whom he most confided in,knowing his cruelty and our inability to pay what he demanded,and apprehending that, if he should put us to the death hethreatened, they should soon see the fleets of Portugal in theRed Sea, laying their towns in ashes to revenge it, endeavouredto soften his passion and preserve our lives, offering to advancethe sum we should agree for, without any other security than ourwords.  By this assistance, after many interviews with thebassa’s agents, we agreed to pay four thousand threehundred crowns, which were accepted on condition that they shouldbe paid down, and we should go on board within two hours: but,changing his resolution on a sudden, he sent us word by histreasurer that two of the most considerable among us should staybehind for security, while the rest went to procure the moneythey promised.  They kept the patriarch and two morefathers, one of which was above fourscore years old, in whoseplace I chose to remain prisoner, and represented to the bassathat, being worn out with age, he perhaps might die in his hands,which would lose the part of the ransom which was due on hisaccount; that therefore it would be better to choose a younger inhis place, offering to stay myself with him, that the good oldman might be set at liberty.

The bassa agreed to another Jesuit, and it pleased Heaven thatthe lot fell upon Father Francis Marquez.  I imagined that Imight with the same ease get the patriarch out of his hand, butno sooner had I begun to speak but the anger flashed in his eyes,and his look was sufficient to make me stop and despair ofsuccess.  We parted immediately, leaving the patriarch andtwo fathers in prison, whom we embraced with tears, and went totake up our lodging on board the vessel.

CHAPTER XV

Their treatment on board the vessel.  Their reception atDiou.  The author applies to the viceroy for assistance, butwithout success; he is sent to solicit in Europe.

Our condition here was not much better than that of theillustrious captives whom we left behind.  We were in anArabian ship, with a crew of pilgrims of Mecca, with whom it wasa point of religion to insult us.  We were lodged upon thedeck, exposed to all the injuries of the weather, nor was therethe meanest workman or sailor who did not either kick or strikeus.  When we went first on board, I perceived a humour in myfinger, which I neglected at first, till it spread over my handand swelled up my arm, afflicting me with the most horridtorture.  There was neither surgeon nor medicines to be had,nor could I procure anything to ease my pain but a little oil,with which I anointed my arm, and in time found somerelief.  The weather was very bad, and the wind almostalways against us, and, to increase our perplexity, the wholecrew, though Moors, were in the greatest apprehension of meetingany of those vessels which the Turks maintain in the strait ofBabelmandel; the ground of their fear was that the captain hadneglected the last year to touch at Moca, though he hadpromised.  Thus we were in danger of falling into acaptivity perhaps more severe than that we had just escapedfrom.  While we were wholly engaged with theseapprehensions, we discovered a Turkish ship and galley were comeupon us.  It was almost calm—at least, there was notwind enough to give us any prospect of escaping—so thatwhen the galley came up to us, we thought ourselves lost withoutremedy, and had probably fallen into their hands had not a breezesprung up just in the instant of danger, which carried us downthe channel between the mainland and the isle ofBabelmandel.  I have already said that this passage isdifficult and dangerous, which, nevertheless, we passed in thenight, without knowing what course we held, and were transportedat finding ourselves next morning out of the Red Sea and half aleague from Babelmandel.  The currents are here so violentthat they carried us against our will to Cape Guardafui, where wesent our boats ashore for fresh water, which we began to be ingreat want of.  The captain refused to give us any when wedesired some, and treated us with great insolence, till, comingnear the land, I spoke to him in a tone more lofty and resolutethan I had ever done, and gave him to understand that when hetouched at Diou he might have occasion for our interest. This had some effect upon him, and procured us a greater degreeof civility than we had met with before.

At length after forty days’ sailing we landed at Diou,where we were met by the whole city, it being reported that thepatriarch was one of our number; for there was not a gentlemanwho was not impatient to have the pleasure of beholding that goodman, now made famous by his labours and sufferings.  It isnot in my power to represent the different passions they wereaffected with at seeing us pale, meagre, without clothes—ina word, almost naked and almost dead with fatigue andill-usage.  They could not behold us in that miserablecondition without reflecting on the hardships we had undergone,and our brethren then underwent, in Suaquem and Abyssinia. Amidst their thanks to God for our deliverance, they could nothelp lamenting the condition of the patriarch and the othermissionaries who were in chains, or, at least, in the hands ofprofessed enemies to our holy religion.  All this did nothinder them from testifying in the most obliging manner their joyfor our deliverance, and paying such honours as surprised theMoors, and made them repent in a moment of the ill-treatment theyhad shown us on board.  One who had discovered somewhat morehumanity than the rest thought himself sufficiently honoured whenI took him by the hand and presented him to the chief officer ofthe custom house, who promised to do all the favours that were inhis power.

When we passed by in sight of the fort, they gave us threesalutes with their cannon, an honour only paid to generals. The chief men of the city, who waited for us on the shore,accompanied us through a crowd of people, whom curiosity haddrawn from all parts of our college.  Though our place ofresidence at Diou is one of the most beautiful in all the Indies,we stayed there only a few days, and as soon as we had recoveredour fatigues went on board the ships that were appointed toconvoy the northern fleet.  I was in theadmiral’s.  We arrived at Goa in some vessels boundfor Camberia: here we lost a good old Abyssin convert, a man muchvalued in his order, and who was actually prior of his conventwhen he left Abyssinia, choosing rather to forsake all forreligion than to leave the way of salvation, which God had somercifully favoured him with the knowledge of.

We continued our voyage, and almost without stopping sailed bySurate and Damam, where the rector of the college came to see us,but so sea-sick that the interview was without any satisfactionon either side.  Then landing at Bazaim we were received byour fathers with their accustomed charity, and nothing wasthought of but how to put the unpleasing remembrance of our pastlabours out of our minds.  Finding here an order of theFather Provineta to forbid those who returned from the missionsto go any farther, it was thought necessary to send an agent toGoa with an account of the revolutions that had happened inAbyssinia and of the imprisonment of the patriarch.  Forthis commission I was made choice of; and, I know not by whathidden degree of Providence, almost all affairs, whatever thesuccess of them was, were transacted by me.  All the coastswere beset by Dutch cruisers, which made it difficult to sailwithout running the hazard of being taken.  I went thereforeby land from Bazaim to Tana, where we had another college, andfrom thence to our house of Chaul.  Here I hired a narrowlight vessel, and, placing eighteen oars on a side, went close bythe shore from Chaul to Goa, almost eighty leagues.  We wereoften in danger of being taken, and particularly when we touchedat Dabal, where a cruiser blocked up one of the channels throughwhich ships usually sail; but our vessel requiring no great depthof water, and the sea running high, we went through the littlechannel, and fortunately escaped the cruiser.  Though wewere yet far from Goa, we expected to arrive there on the nextmorning, and rowed forward with all the diligence we could. The sea was calm and delightful, and our minds were at ease, forwe imagined ourselves past danger; but soon found we hadflattered ourselves too soon with security, for we came withinsight of several barks of Malabar, which had been hid behind apoint of land which we were going to double.  Here we hadbeen inevitably taken had not a man called to us from the shoreand informed us that among those fishing-boats there, somecrusiers would make us a prize.  We rewarded our kindinformer for the service he had done us, and lay by till nightcame to shelter us from our enemies.  Then putting out ouroars we landed at Goa next morning about ten, and were receivedat our college.  It being there a festival day, each hadsomething extraordinary allowed him; the choicest part of ourentertainments was two pilchers, which were admired because theycame from Portugal.

The quiet I began to enjoy did not make me lose theremembrance of my brethren whom I had left languishing among therocks of Abyssinia, or groaning in the prisons of Suaquem, whomsince I could not set at liberty without the viceroy’sassistance, I went to implore it, and did not fail to make use ofevery motive which could have any influence.

I described in the most pathetic manner I could the miserablestate to which the Catholic religion was reduced in a countrywhere it had lately flourished so much by the labours of thePortuguese; I gave him in the strongest terms a representation ofall that we had suffered since the death of Sultan Segued, how wehad been driven out of Abyssinia, how many times they hadattempted to take away our lives, in what manner we had beenbetrayed and given up to the Turks, the menaces we had beenterrified with, the insults we had endured; I laid before him thedanger the patriarch was in of being either impaled or flayedalive; the cruelty, insolence and avarice of the Bassa ofSuaquem, and the persecution that the Catholics suffered inÆthiopia.  I exhorted, I implored him by everything Ithought might move him, to make some attempt for the preservationof those who had voluntarily sacrificed their lives for the sakeof God.  I made it appear with how much ease the Turks mightbe driven out of the Red Sea, and the Portuguese enjoy all thetrade of those countries.  I informed him of the navigationof that sea, and the situation of its ports; told him which itwould be necessary to make ourselves masters of first, that wemight upon any unfortunate encounter retreat to them.  Icannot deny that some degree of resentment might appear in mydiscourse; for, though revenge be prohibited to Christians, Ishould not have been displeased to have had the Bassa of Suaquemand his brother in my hands, that I might have reproached themwith the ill-treatment we had met with from them.  This wasthe reason of my advising to make the first attack upon Mazna, todrive the Turks from thence, to build a citadel, and garrison itwith Portuguese.

The viceroy listened with great attention to all I had to say,gave me a long audience, and asked me many questions.  Hewas well pleased with the design of sending a fleet into thatsea, and, to give a greater reputation to the enterprise,proposed making his son commander-in-chief, but could by no meansbe brought to think of fixing garrisons and building fortressesthere; all he intended was to plunder all they could, and lay thetowns in ashes.

I left no art of persuasion untried to convince him that sucha resolution would injure the interests of Christianity, that toenter the Red Sea only to ravage the coasts would so enrage theTurks that they would certainly massacre all the Christiancaptives, and for ever shut the passage into Abyssinia, andhinder all communication with that empire.  It was myopinion that the Portuguese should first establish themselves atMazna, and that a hundred of them would be sufficient to keep thefort that should be built.  He made an offer of only fifty,and proposed that we should collect those few Portuguese who werescattered over Abyssinia.  These measures I could notapprove.

At length, when it appeared that the viceroy had neitherforces nor authority sufficient for this undertaking, it wasagreed that I should go immediately into Europe, and represent atRome and Madrid the miserable condition of the missions ofAbyssinia.  The viceroy promised that if I could procure anyassistance, he would command in person the fleet and forcesraised for the expedition, assuring that he thought he could notemploy his life better than in a war so holy, and of so great animportance, to the propagation of the Catholic faith.

Encouraged by this discourse of the viceroy, I immediatelyprepared myself for a voyage to Lisbon, not doubting to obtainupon the least solicitation everything that was necessary tore-establish our mission.

Never had any man a voyage so troublesome as mine, orinterrupted with such variety of unhappy accidents; I wasshipwrecked on the coast of Natal, I was taken by the Hollanders,and it is not easy to mention the danger which I was exposed toboth by land and sea before I arrived at Portugal.

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