TRAVELS
TO DISCOVER THE
SOURCE OF THE NILE,
In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773.
IN FIVE VOLUMES.
BY JAMES BRUCE OF KINNAIRD, ESQ. F.R.S.
VOL. II.
Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi, sed omnes illachrymabiles
Urgentur ignotique longâ
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
Horat.


EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY J. RUTHVEN,
FOR G. G. J. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW,
LONDON.

M.DCC.XC. i

CONTENTS
OF THE
SECOND VOLUME.

TRAVELS
TO DISCOVER
THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
BOOK III.
ANNALS OF ABYSSINIA,
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL: CONTAINING THE HISTORY OF THE ABYSSINIANS, FROM THE RESTORATION OF THE LINE OF SOLOMON TO THE DEATH OF SOCINIOS, AND THE DOWNFALL OF THE ROMISH RELIGION.

ICON AMLAC.
From 1268 to 1283.

Line of Solomon restored under this Prince—He continues the Royal Residence in Shoa—Tecla Haimanout dies—Reasons for the Fabrication of the supposed Nicene Canon.

Although the multiplicity of names assumed by the kings of Abyssinia, and the confusion occasioned by this custom, has more than once been complained of in the foregoing sheets, we have here a prince that is an exception 2 to this practice, otherwise almost general. Icon Amlac is the only name by which we know this first prince of the race of Solomon, restored now fully to his dominions, after a long exile his family had suffered by the treason of Judith. The signification of his name is, “Let him be made our sovereign,” and is apparently that which he took upon his inauguration or accession to the throne; and his name of baptism, and bye-name or popular name given him, are both therefore lost.

Although now restored to the complete possession of his ancient dominions, he was too wise all at once to leave his dutiful kingdom of Shoa and return to Tigré. He continued to make Tegulat, the capital of Shoa, his seat of the empire, and there reigned fifteen years.

In the 14th year of the reign of this prince, his great benefactor, Abuna Tecla Haimanout, founder of the Order of Monks of Debra Libanos, and restorer of the Royal family, died at that monastery in great reputation and very advanced age. He was the last Abyssinian ordained Abuna; and this sufficiently shews the date of that canon I have already spoken of, falsely said to be a canon of the council of Nicea.

Though Le Grande and some others have pretended to be in doubt at what time, and for what reason, this canon could have been made, I think the reason very plain, which fixes it to the time of Tecla Haimanout, as well as shews it to be a forgery of the church of Alexandria, no doubt with the council and advice of this great statesman Tecla Haimanout. Egypt was fallen under the dominion of the 3 Saracens; the Coptic patriarch, and all the Christians of the church of Alexandria, were their slaves or servants; but the Abyssinians were free and independent, both in church and state, and a mortal hatred had followed the conquest from variety of causes, of which the persecution of the Christians in Egypt was not one of the least. As it was probable that these reasons would increase daily, the consequence which promised inevitably to follow was, that the Abyssinians would not apply to Alexandria, or Cairo, for a metropolitan sent by the Mahometans, but would choose a head of their own, and so become independent altogether of the chair of St Mark. As they were cut off from the rest of the world by seas and deserts almost inaccessible, as they wanted books, and were every day relaxing in discipline, total ignorance was likely to follow their separation from their primitive church, and this could not end but in a relapse into Paganism, or in their embracing the religion of Mahomet.

This prohibition of making any of their countrymen Abuna, secured them always a foreigner, and a man of foreign education and attachments, to fill the place of Abuna, and by this means assured the dependence of the Abyssinians upon the patriarch of Alexandria. This is what I judge probable, for I have already invincibly shewn, that it is impossible this canon could be one of the first general Council; and its being in Arabic, and conceived in very barbarous terms, sufficiently evinces that it was forged at this period. 4

IGBA SION.
From 1283 to 1312.

Quick Succession of Princes—Memoirs of these Reigns deficient.

To Icon Amlac succeeded Igba Sion, and after him five other princes, his brothers, Bahar Segued, Tzenaf Segued, Jan Segued, Haseb Araad, and Kedem Segued, all in five years. So quick a succession in so few years seems to mark very unsettled times. Whether it was a civil war among themselves that brought these reigns to so speedy a conclusion, or whether it was that the Moorish states in Adel had grown in power, and sought successfully against them, we do not know. One thing only we are certain of, that no molestation was offered by the late royal family of Lasta, who continued in peace, and firm in the observation of their treaty. I therefore am inclined to think, that a civil war among the brothers was the occasion of the quick succession of so many princes; and that in the time when the kingdom was weakened by this calamity, the states of Adel, grown rich and powerful, had improved the occasion, and seized upon all that territory from Azab to Melinda, and cut off the Abyssinians entirely from the sea-coast, and from an opportunity of trading directly with India from the ports situated upon the ocean. And my reason is, that, in a reign which speedily follows, we find the kingdom of 5 Adel increased greatly in power, and Moorish princes from Arabia established in little principalities, exactly corresponding with the southern limits of Abyssinia, and placed between them and the ocean; and we see, at the same time, a rancour and hatred firmly rooted in the breasts of both nations, one of the causes of which is constantly alledged by the Abyssinian princes to be, that the Moors of Adel were anciently their subjects and vassals, had withdrawn themselves from their allegiance, and owed their present independence to rebellion only.

To these princes succeeded Wedem Araad, their youngest brother, who reigned fifteen years, probably in peace, for in this state we find the kingdom in the days of his successor; but then it is such a peace that we see it only wanted any sort of provocation from one party to the other, for both to break out into very cruel, long, and bloody wars.

AMDA SION.
From 1312 to 1342.

Licentious beginning of this King’s Reign—His rigorous Conduct with the Monks of Debra Libanos—His Mahometan Subjects rebel—Mara and Adel declare War—Are defeated in several Battles, and submit.

Amda Sion succeeded his father, Wedem Araad, who was youngest brother of Icon Amlac, and came to the crown upon the death of his uncles. He is generally known 6 by this his inauguration name; his Christian name was Guebra Mascal. His reign began with a scene as disgraceful to the name of Christian as it was new in the annals of Ethiopia, and which promised a character very different from what this prince preserved ever afterwards. He had for a time, it seems, privately loved a concubine of his father, but had now taken her to live with him publicly; and, not content with committing this sort of incest, he, in a very little time after, had seduced his two sisters.

Tegulat1 (the capital of Shoa) was then the royal residence; and near it the monastery of Debra Libanos, founded by Tecla Haimanout restorer of the line of Solomon. To this monastery many men, eminent for learning and religion, had retired from the scenes of war that desolated Palestine and Egypt. Among the number of these was one Honorius, a Monk of the first character for piety, who, since, has been canonized as a saint. Honorius thought it his duty first to admonish, and then publicly excommunicate the king for these crimes.

It should seem that patience was as little among this prince’s virtues as chastity, as he immediately ordered Honorius to be apprehended, stripped naked, and severely whipped through every street of his capital. That same night the town took fire, and was entirely consumed, and the clergy lost no time to persuade the people, that it was the blood of Honorius that turned to fire whenever it had dropt upon the ground, and so had burnt the city. The 7 king, perhaps better informed, thought otherwise of this, and supposed the burning of his capital was owing to the Monks themselves. He therefore banished those of Debra Libanos out of the province of Shoa. The mountain of Geshen had been chosen for the prison wherein to guard the princes of the male-line of the race of Solomon, after the massacre by Esther2, upon the rock Damo in Tigré.

Geshen is a very steep and high rock, in the kingdom of Amhara, adjoining to, and under the jurisdiction of Shoa. Hither the king sent Philip the Itchegué, chief of the monastery of Debra Libanos, and he scattered the rest through Dembea, Tigré, and Begemder, (whose inhabitants were mostly Pagans and Jews), where they greatly propagated the knowledge of the Christian religion.

This instance of severity in the king had the effect to make all ranks of people return to their duty; and all talk of Honorius and his miracles was dropt. The town was rebuilt speedily, more magnificently than ever, and Amda Sion found time to turn his thoughts to correct those abuses, to efface the unfavourable impression which they had made upon the minds of his people at home, and which, besides, had gained considerable ground abroad.

It has been before mentioned, and will be further inculcated in the course of this history as a fact, without the remembrance of which the military expeditions of Abyssinia cannot be well understood, that two opposite seasons 8 prevail in countries separated by a line almost imperceptible; that during our European winter months, that is, from October to March, the winter or rainy season prevails on the coast of the ocean and Red Sea, but that these rains do not fall in our summer, (the rainy season in Abyssinia), which was the reason why Amda Sion said to his mutinous troops, he would lead them to Adel or Aussa, where it did not rain, as we shall presently observe.

The different nations that dwell along the coast, both of the Red Sea and of the ocean, live in fixed huts or houses. We shall begin at the northmost, or nearest Atbara. The first is Ageeg, so named from a small island on the coast, opposite to the mountains of the Habab, Agag, or Agaazi, the principal district of the noble or governing Shepherds, as is before fully explained, different in colour and hair from the Shepherds of the Thebaid living to the northward. Then follow the different tribes of these, Tora, Shiho, Taltal, Azimo, and Azabo, where the Red Sea turns eastward, towards the Straits, all woolly-headed, the primitive carriers of Saba, and the perfume and gold country. Then various nations inhabit along the ocean, all native blacks, remnants of the Cushite Troglodyte, but who do not change their habitations with the seasons, but live within land in caves, and some of them now in houses.

In Adel and Aussa the inhabitants are tawny, and not black, and have long hair; they are called Gibbertis, which some French writers of voyages into this country say, mean Slaves, from Guebra, the Abyssinian word for slave or servant. But as it would be very particular that a nation like these, so rich and so powerful, who have made themselves 9 independent of their ancient masters the Abyssinians, have wrested so many provinces from them, and, from the difference of their faith, hold them in such utter contempt, should nevertheless be content to call themselves their slaves, so nothing is more true, than that this name of Gibberti has a very different import. Jabber, in Arabic, the word from which it is derived, signifies the faith, or the true faith; and Gibberti consequently means the faithful, or the orthodox, by which name of honour these moors, inhabiting the low country of Abyssinia, call each other, as being constant in their faith amidst Christians with whom they are at perpetual war.

There is no current coin in Abyssinia. Gold is paid by weight; all the revenues are chiefly paid in kind, viz. oxen, sheep, and honey, which are the greatest necessaries of life. As for luxuries, they are obtained by a barter of gold, myrrh, coffee, elephants teeth, and a variety of other articles which are carried over to Arabia; and in exchange for these is brought back whatever is commissioned.

Every great man in Abyssinia has one of these Gibbertis for his factor. The king has many, who are commonly the shrewdest and most intelligent of their profession. These were the first inhabitants of Abyssinia, whom commerce connected with the Arabians on the other side of the Straits of Babelmandeb, with whom they intermarry, or with one another, which preserves their colour and features, resembling both the Abyssinians and Arabians. In Arabia, they are under the protection of some of their own countrymen, who being sold when young as slaves, are brought up in the Mahometan religion, and enjoy all the principal posts 10 under the Sherriffe of Mecca and the Arabian princes. These are the people who at particular times have appeared in Europe, and who have been straightway taken for, and treated as Ambassadors.

More southward and westward are the kingdoms of Mara, Worgla, and Pagoma, small principalities of fixed habitations by the sea, at times free, at others dependent upon Adel; and, to the south of these, in the same flat country, is Hadea, whose capital is Harar, and governed by a prince, who is a Gibberti likewise; and who, by marrying a Sherriffa, or female descendant of Mahomet, is now reckoned a Sherriffe or noble of Mahomet’s family, distinguished by his wearing habits, for the most part green, and above all a grass-green turban, a mark of hatred to Christianity.

The Gibbertis, then, are the princes and merchants of this country, converted to the Mahometan faith soon after the death of Mahomet, when the Baharnagash (as we have already stated) revolted from the empire of the Abyssinians, in whose hands all the riches of the country are centered. The black inhabitants are only their subjects, hewers of wood and drawers of water, who serve them in their families at home, take care of their camels when employed in caravans abroad, and who make the principal part of their forces in the field.

But there are other inhabitants still besides these Gibbertis and native blacks, whom we must not confound with the indigenous of this country, how much soever they may resemble them. The first of these are by the Portuguese historians called Moors, who are merchants from the west of 11 Africa. Many of these, expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella, fixed their residence here, and were afterwards joined by others of their Moorish brethren, either exiles from Spain, or inhabitants of Morocco, whom the desire of commerce induced first to settle in Arabia, till the great oppressions that followed the conquest of Egypt and Arabia, under Selim and Soliman, interrupted their trade, and scattered them here along the coast. These are the Moors that Vasques de Gama3 met at Mombaza, Magadoxa, and Melinda; at all places, but the last of which, they endeavoured to betray him. These also were the Moors that he found in India, having no profession but trade, in every species of which they excelled.

The fourth sort are Arabian merchants, who come over occasionally to recover their debts, and renew correspondences with the merchants of this country. These are the richest of all, and are the bankers of the Gibbertis, who furnish them funds and merchandise, with which they carry on a most lucrative and extensive trade into the heart of Africa, through all the mountains of Abyssinia to the western sea, and through countries which are inaccessible to camels, where the ass, the mule, and, in some places, oxen, are the only beasts used in carriage.

There is a fifth sort, almost below notice, unless it is for the mischief they have constantly done their country; they are the Abyssinian apostates from Christianity, the most inveterate enemies it has, and who are employed chiefly as soldiers. While in that country they are not much esteemed, 12 though, when transported to India, they have constantly turned out men of confidence and trust, and the best troops those eastern nations have.

There is a sixth, still less in number than even these, and not known on this Continent till a few years before. These were the Turks who came from Greece and Syria, and who were under Selim, and Soliman his son, the instruments of the conquest of Egypt and Arabia; small garrisons of whom were everywhere left by the Turks in all the fortresses and considerable towns they conquered. They are an hereditary kind of militia, who, marrying each other’s daughters, or with the women of the country, continue from father to son to receive from Constantinople the same pay their forefathers had from Selim. These, though degenerate in figure and manners into an exact resemblance to the natives of the countries in which they since lived, do still continue to maintain their superiority by a constant skill and attention to fire-arms, which were, at the time of their first appearance here, little known or in use among either Abyssinians or Arabians, and the means of first establishing this preference.

It has been already observed, that the Mahometan Moors and Arabs possessed all the low country on the Indian Ocean, and opposite to Arabia Felix; and being, by their religion, obliged to go in pilgrimage to Mecca, as also by their sole profession, which was trade, they became, by consequence, the only carriers and directors of the commerce of Abyssinia. All the country to the east and north of Shoa was possessed and commanded chiefly by Mahometan merchants 13 appointed by the king; and they had established a variety of marts or fairs from Ifat, all the way as far as Adel.

Adel and Mara were two of the most powerful kingdoms which lie on the Indian Ocean; and, being constantly supported by soldiers from Arabia, were the first to withdraw themselves from obedience to the king of Abyssinia, and seldom paid their tribute unless when the prince came to raise it there with an army. Ifat, Fatigar, and Dawaro, were indeed originally Christian provinces; but, in weak reigns, having been ceded to Moorish governors, for sums of money, they, by degrees, renounced both their religion and allegiance.

From what has been observed, the reader will conceive, that where it is said the king, from his capital in Shoa, marched down into Dawaro, Hadea, or Adel, that he then descended from the highest mountains down to the flat country on the level with the sea. That this country, from Hadea to Dawaro, having been the seat of war for ages, was, partly by the soldier for the use of the camp, partly by the husbandman for the necessaries of life, cleared of wood, where the water stood constantly in pools throughout the year; and, being all composed of fat black earth, which the torrents bring down from the rainy country of Abyssinia, was sown with millet and different kinds of grain in the driest ground, while, nearer the mountains, they pastured numerous herds of cattle. Notwithstanding, however, the country was possessed of these advantages, the climate was intensely hot, feverish, and unhealthy, and, for the most part, from these circumstances, fatal to strangers, and hated by the Abyssinians. 14

Again, when it is said that the king had marched to Samhar, it is meant that he had passed this fruitful country, and is come to that part of the zone, or belt, (nearest the sea) composed of gravel; which, though it enjoys neither the water nor the fruitfulness of the black earth, is in a great measure free from its attendant diseases, and here the cities and towns are placed, while the crop, oxen, and cattle, are in the cultivated part near the mountains, which in the language of the country is called Mazaga, signifying black mould.

Lastly, when he hears the army murmuring at being kept during the rainy season in the Kolla below, he is to remember, that all was cool, pleasant, and safe in Upper Abyssinia. The soldiers, therefore, languished for the enjoyment of their own families, without any other occupation but merriment, festivity, and every species of gratification that wine, and the free and uncontrouled society of the female-sex, could produce.

Having now sufficiently explained and described the various names and inhabitants, the situation, soil, and climate of those provinces about to be the theatre of the war, I shall proceed to declare the occasion of it, which was nothing more than the fruit of those prejudices which, I have already said, the loose behaviour of the king in the beginning of his reign had produced among his neighbours, and the calamities which had enfeebled the kingdom in the preceding reigns.

It happened that one of those Moorish factors, whom I have already described, having in charge the commercial 15 interests of the king, had been assassinated and robbed in the province of Ifat, when the King was busied with Honorius and his Monks. Without complaining or expostulating, he suddenly assembled his troops, having ordered them to rendezvous at Shugura upon the frontiers, and, to shew his impatience for revenge, with seven4 horsemen he fell upon the nearest Mahometan settlements, who were perfectly secure, and put all he found in his way to the sword without exception. Then placing himself at the head of his army, he marched, by a long day’s journey, straight to Ifat, burning Hungura, Jadai, Kubat, Fadise, Calise, and Argai, towns that lye in the way, full of all sorts of valuable merchandise, and, finding no where a force assembled to oppose him, he divided his army into small detachments, sending them different ways, with orders to lay the whole countries, where they came, waste with fire and sword, while he himself remained in the camp to guard the spoil, the women, and the baggage.

The Moors, astonished at this torrent of desolation, which so suddenly had broken out under a prince whom they had considered as immersed in pleasure, flew all to arms; and being informed that the king was alone, and scarcely had soldiers to guard his camp, they assembled in numbers under the command of Hak-eddin, governor of Ifat, who had before plundered and murdered the king’s servant. They then determined to attack Amda Sion early in the morning, but luckily two of his detachments had returned to the camp to his assistance, and joined him the very night before. 16

It was scarcely day when the Moors presented themselves; but, far from surprising the Abyssinians buried in sleep, they found the king with his army ranged in battle, who, without giving them time to recover from their surprise, attacked them in person with great fury; and singling out Derdar, brother to Hak-eddin, animating his men before the ranks, he struck him so violently with his lance that he fell dead among his horse’s feet, in the sight of both armies; whilst the Abyssinian troops pressing every where briskly forward, the Moors took to flight, and were pursued with great slaughter into the woods and fastnesses.

After this victory, the king ordered his troops to build huts for themselves, at least such as could not find houses ready built. He ordered, likewise, a great tract of land contiguous to be plowed and sown, meaning to intimate, that his intention was to stay there with his army all the rainy season.

The Mahometans, from this measure, if it should be carried into execution, saw nothing but total extirpation before their eyes; they, therefore, with one consent, submitted to the tribute imposed upon them; and the king having removed Hak-eddin, placed his brother Saber-eddin in his stead, and the rainy season being now begun, dismissed his army, and returned to Tegulat in Shoa.

Though the personal gallantry of the king was a quality sufficient of itself to make him a favourite of the soldiers, his liberality was not less; all the plunder got by his troops in the field was faithfully divided among those who had fought for him; nor did he ever pretend to a share himself, 17 unless on occasions when he was engaged in person, and then he shared upon an equal footing with the principal officers.

When returned to the capital, he shewed the same disinterestedness and generosity which he had done in the field, and he distributed all he had won for his share among the great men, whom the necessary duties of government had obliged to remain at home, as also amongst the poor, and priests for the maintenance of churches; and, as well by this, as by his zeal and activity against the enemies of Christianity, he became the greatest favourite of all ranks of the clergy, notwithstanding the unpromising appearances at the beginning of his reign.

The rainy season in Abyssinia generally puts an end to the active part of war, as every one retires then to towns and villages to screen themselves from the inclemency of the climate, deluged now with daily rain. The soldier, the husbandman, and, above all, the women, dedicate this season to continued festivity and riot. These villages and towns are always placed upon the highest mountains. The valleys that intervene are soon divided by large and rapid torrents. Every hollow foot-path becomes a stream, and the valleys between the hills become so miry as not to bear horse; and the waters, both deep and violent, are too apt to shift their direction to suffer any one on foot to pass safely. All this season, and this alone, people sleep in their houses in safety; their lances and shields are hung up on the sides of their hall, and their saddles and bridles taken off their horses; for in Abyssinia, at other times, the horses are always bridled, and are accustomed to eat and drink with this 18 incumbrance. It is not, indeed, the same sort of bridle they use in the field, but a small bit of iron like our hunting-bridles, on purpose merely to preserve them in this habit. The court, and the principal officers of government, retire to the capital, and there administer justice, make alliances, and prepare the necessary funds and armaments, which the present exigencies of the state require on the return of fair weather.

Amda Sion was no sooner returned to Tegulat, than the Moors again entered into a conspiracy against him. The principal were Amano king of Hadea, Saber-eddin, whom the king had made governor of Fatigar, and privately, without any open declaration, Gimmel-eddin governor in Dawaro. But this conspiracy could not be hid from a prince of Amda Sion’s vigilance and penetration. He concealed, however, any knowledge of the matter, lest it should urge the Moors to commence hostilities too early. He continued, therefore, with diligence, and without ostentation of any particular design, to make the ordinary preparations to take the field on the approaching season. This, however, did not impose upon the enemy. Whether from intelligence, or impatience of being longer inactive, Saber-eddin began the first hostilities, by surprising some Christian villages, and plundering and setting fire to the churches before the rains had yet entirely ceased.

Those that have written accounts of Abyssinia seem to agree in extolling the people of that country for giving no belief to the existence or reality of witchcraft or sorcery. Why they have fixed on this particular nation is hard to determine. But, as for me, I have no doubt in asserting, that there is not a barbarous or ignorant people that I ever knew of which 19 this can be truly said; but certainly it never was less true than when said of Abyssinians. There is scarce a monk in any lonely monastery, (such as those in the hot and unwholesome valley of Waldubba), not a hermit of the many upon the mountains, not an old priest who has lived any time sequestered from society, that does not pretend to possess charms offensive and defensive, and several methods by which he can, at will, look into futurity. The Moors are all, to a man, persuaded of this: their arms and necks are loaded with amulets against witchcraft. Their women are believed to have all the mischievous powers of fascination; and both sexes a hundred secrets of divination. The Falasha are addicted to this in still a greater degree, if possible. It is always believed by every individual Abyssinian, that the number of hyænas the smell of carrion brings into the city of Gondar every night, are the Falasha from the neighbouring mountains, transformed by the effect and for the purposes of inchantment. Even the Galla, a barbarous and stranger nation, hostile to the Abyssinians, and differing in language and religion, still agree with them in a hearty belief of the possibility of practising witchcraft, so as to occasion sickness and death at a very great distance, to blast the harvests, poison the waters, and render people incapable of propagating their species.

Amano, king of Hadea, had one of these conjurers, who, by his knowledge of futurity, was famous among all the Mahometans of the low country. The king of Hadea himself had gone no further than to determine to rebel; but whether he was to go up to fight with Amda Sion in Shoa, or whether greater success would attend his expecting him in Hadea, this was thought a doubt wholly within 20 the province of the conjurer, who assured Amano, his master, that if he did remain below, and wait for Amda Sion, in Hadea, that prince would come down to him, and in one battle lose his kingdom and his life.

The king, whose principal view was to prevent the conjunction of the confederates, and, if possible, to fight them separately, did not stay till his whole army was assembled, but, as soon as he got together a body of troops sufficient to make head against any one of the rebels, he sent that body immediately on the service it was destined for, in order to disappoint the general combination.

A large number of horse and foot (whose post was in the van of the royal army when the king marched at the head of it) was the first ready, and, without delay, was sent against Amano into Hadea, under the command of the general of the cavalry. This officer executed the service on which he was sent with the greatest diligence possible, having the best horses, and strongest and most active men in the army; by long marches, he came upon the king of Hadea, surprised him before his troops were all assembled, gave him an entire defeat, and made him prisoner. However ill the conjurer had provided for the king’s safety, he seems to have been more attentive to his own; great search was made for him by order of Amda Sion, but he was not to be found, having very early, upon the first sight of the king’s troops, fled and hid himself in Ifat.

The next detachment was sent against Saber-eddin in Fatigar. The governor of Amhara commanded this, with 21 orders to lay the whole country waste, and by all means provoke Saber-eddin to risk a battle, either before or after the junction of the troops which were to march thither from Hadea. But when the king was thus busy with the Moors, news were brought him that the Falasha had rebelled, and were in arms, in very great numbers. The king ordered Tzaga Christos, governor of Begemder, to assemble his troops with those of Gondar, Sacalta, and Damot, and march against these rebels before they had time to ruin the country; and having thus made provision against all his enemies, Amda Sion proceeded with the remainder of his army to Dawaro.

Hydar was governor in this province for the king, who, though he shewed outwardly every appearance of duty and fidelity, was, notwithstanding, deep in the conspiracy with Saber-eddin, and had close correspondence with the king of Adel, whose capital, Aussa, was not at a great distance from him.

The king kept his Easter at Gaza, immediately upon the verge of the desert; and, being willing to accustom his troops to action and hardship, he left his tents and baggage behind with the army; and, secretly taking with him but twenty-six horsemen, he made an incursion upon Samhar, destroying all before him, and staying all night, tho’ he had no provisions, in the middle of his enemies, without so much as lying down to sleep, slacking his belt, or taking off any part of his armour.

The king was no sooner gone than the army missed him, and was all in the greatest uproar. But, having finished his expedition, he joined them in the morning, and encamped 22 again with them. On his arrival, he found waiting for him a messenger from Tzaga Christos, with accounts that he had fought successfully with the Falasha, entirely defeated them, slain many, and forced the rest to hide themselves in their inaccessible mountains. Immediately after this intelligence, Tzaga Christos, with his victorious army, joined the king also.

These good tidings were followed by others equally prosperous from Hadea and Fatigar. They were, that the king’s army in those parts had forced Saber-eddin to a battle, and beaten him, taken and plundered his house, and brought his wife and children prisoners; and that the troops had found that country full of merchandise and riches of all kinds; that they were already laden and incumbered with the quantity to such a degree, that they were all speaking of disbanding and retiring to their houses with riches sufficient for the rest of their lives, although a great part of the country remained as yet untouched, and, therefore, it was requested of the king in all diligence to enter it on his side also, and march southward till both armies met. Immediately upon this message, the king, having refreshed his troops, and informed them of the good prospects that were before them, decamped with his whole army, and entered the province of Ifat.

When Saber-eddin saw the king’s forces were joined, that he had no allies, and that it was, in the situation of his army, equally dangerous to stay or to fly, he took a resolution of submitting himself to the king’s mercy; but, first, he endeavoured to soften his anger, and obtain some assurances 23 through the mediation of the queen. The king, however, having publicly reproved the queen for offering to intermeddle in such matters, and growing more violent and inflexible upon this application, there remained no alternative but that of surrendering himself at discretion. Whereupon Saber-eddin threw himself at the king’s feet. The soldiers and by-standers, far from being moved at such a sight, with one voice earnestly besought the king, that the murderer of so many priests, and the profaner and destroyer of so many Christian churches, should instantly meet the death his crimes had merited. The king, however, whose mercy seems to have been equal to his bravery, after having reproved him with great asperity, and upbraided him with his cruelty, presumption, and ingratitude, ordered him only to be put in irons, and committed to a close prison. At the same time, he displaced Hydar, governor of the province of Dawaro, of whose treason he had been long informed; and he invested Gimmel-eddin, Saber-eddin’s brother, with the government of the Mahometan provinces, who, as he pretended, had not been present at the beginning of the war, but had preserved his allegiance to the king, and dissuaded his brother from the rebellion.

While the king was thus settling the government of the rebellious provinces, he received intelligence that the kings of Adel and Mara had resolved to march after him into Shoa when he returned, and give him battle.

At this time the king was encamped on the river Hawash, at the head of the whole army, now united. This news of the hostile intentions of the kings of Adel and Mara, so exasperated 24 him, that he determined to enlarge his scheme of vengeance beyond the limits he had first prescribed to it. With this view, he called the principal officers of his army together, while he himself stood upon an eminence, the soldiers surrounding him on all sides. Near him, on the same eminence, was a monk, noted for his holiness, in the habit in which he celebrated divine service. The king, in a long speech pronounced with unusual vehemence, described the many offences committed against him by the Mahometan states on the coast. The ringleaders of these commotions, he declared, were the kings of Adel and Mara. He enumerated various instances of cruelty, of murder, and sacrilege, of which they had been guilty; the number of priests that they had slain, the churches that they had burned, and the Christian women and children that they had carried into slavery, which was now become a commerce, and a great motive of war. They, and they only, had stirred up his Mahometan subjects to infest the frontiers both in peace and war. He said, that, considering the immense booty which had been taken, it might seem that avarice was the motive of his being now in arms, but this, for his own part, he totally disclaimed. He neither had nor would apply the smallest portion of the plunder to his own use, but considered it as unlawful, as being purchased with the blood and liberty of his subjects and brethren, the meanest of whom he valued more than the blood and riches of all the infidels in Adel. He, therefore, called them together to be witnesses that he dedicated himself a soldier to Jesus Christ; and he did now swear upon the holy eucharist, that, though but twenty of his army should join with him, he would not turn his back upon Adel or Mara, till he had either forced them to tribute and 25 submission, or extirpated them, and annihilated their religion.

He then entered the tent-door, and took the sacrament from the hands of the monk, in presence of the whole army. All the principal officers did the same, and every individual of the army, with repeated shouts, declared, that they acceded to, and were bound by, the oath the king then had made. A violent fury spread in this instant through the whole army; they considered that part of the king’s speech as a reproach, which mentioned the spoils they had taken to have been bought by the blood of Christians, their brethren. Every hand laid hold of a torch, and, whether the plunder was his own or his fellow-soldiers, each man set fire, without interruption, to the merchandise that was next him. The whole riches of Ifat and Hadea, Fatigar and Dawaro, were consumed in an instant by these fanatics, who, satisfied now that they were purged from the impurity which the king had attributed to their plunder, returned poor to their standards, but convinced in their own conscience of having now, by their sacrament and expiation, become the soldiers of Christ, they thirsted no longer after any thing but the blood of the inhabitants of Adel and Mara.

Soon after, Amda Sion heard that the Moors had attacked his army in Ifat two several nights, and that his troops had suffered greatly, and with difficulty been able to maintain themselves in their camp. The king was then upon his march when he heard these disagreeable news; he hastened, therefore, immediately to their relief, and encamped at night in an advantageous post, short of his main army, with a view of taking advantage of this situation, if the Moors, 26 as he expected, renewed their attack that night for the third time.

The Abyssinians, to a man, are fearful of the night, unwilling to travel, and, above all, to fight in that season, when they imagine the world is in possession of certain genii, averse to intercourse with men, and very vindictive, if even by accident they are ruffled or put out of their way by their interference. This, indeed, is carried to so great a height, that no man will venture to throw water out of a bason upon the ground, for fear that, in ever so small a space the water should have to fall, the dignity of some elf, or fairy, might be violated. The Moors have none of these apprehensions, and are accustomed in the way of trade to travel at all hours, sometimes from necessity, but often from choice, to avoid the heat. They laugh, moreover, at the superstitions of the Abyssinians, and not unfrequently avail themselves of them. A verse of the Koran, sewed up in leather, and tied round their neck or their arms, secures them from all these incorporeal enemies; and, from this known advantage, if other circumstances are favourable, they never fail to fight the Abyssinians at or before the dawn of the morning, for in this country there is no twilight.

The Moors did not, in this instance, disappoint the king’s expectation; as they, with all possible secrecy, marched to the attack of the camp, while the king, having refreshed his troops, put himself in motion to intercept them; and they were now arrived, and engaged in several places with very great vigour. The camp was in apparent danger, though vigorously defended. At this moment the king, with his fresh troops, fell violently upon their rear; and, it 27 being known to the Moors that this was the king, they withdrew their army with all possible speed, carrying with them a very considerable booty.

The success which had followed these night expeditions, above all, the small loss that had attended the pursuit, even after they were defeated, from the perfect knowledge they had of the country, inspired them with a resolution to avoid pitched battles, but to distress and harrass the king’s army every night. They accordingly brought their camp nearer than usual to the king’s quarters. This began to be felt by the army, which was prevented from foraging at a great distance; but provisions could not be dispensed with. The king, therefore, detached a large body of horse and foot that had not been engaged or fatigued. The greatest part of the foot he ordered to return with the cattle they should have taken, but the horse, with each a foot-soldier behind him, he directed to take post in a wood near a pool of water, where the Moorish troops, after an assault in the night, retired, and took refreshments and sleep by the time the sun began to be hot. The Moors again appeared in the night, attacked the camp in several places, and alarmed the whole army; but, by the bravery and vigour of the king, who every where animated his troops by his own example, they were obliged to retreat a little before morning, more fatigued, and more roughly handled, than they had hitherto been in any such expedition.

The king, as if equally tired, followed them no further than the precincts of his camp; and the Moors, scarcely comforted by this forbearance after so great a loss, retreated to receive succour of fresh troops as usual, and enjoy their repose in the neighbourhood of shade and water. They had, however, 28 scarce thrown aside their arms, disposed of their wounded in proper places, and begun to assuage their thirst after the toils of the assault, when the Abyssinian horse, breaking through the covert, came swiftly upon them, unable either to fight or to fly, and the whole body of them was cut to pieces without one man escaping.

The king, upon return of his troops, began to consider, and, by combining various circumstances in his mind, to suspect strongly, that, from the Moors attacking him, as they had for some time lately done, always in the most unfavourable circumstances, there must be some intelligence between his camp and that of the enemy. Upon examining more particularly into the grounds of this suspicion, three men of Harar (who had long attended the army as spies) were discovered, and being convicted, were carried out, and their heads cut off at the entrance of the camp; after which the king, who now found himself without an enemy in these parts, struck his tents, and returned to Gaza in Dawaro.

This movement of Amda Sion’s had more the appearance of opening a campaign than the closing of one, and occasioned great discontent among the soldiers, who had done their business, and were without an enemy, just at that time that the rains fall so heavy, and the country becomes so unwholesome as to make it unadvisable to keep the field. They, therefore, remonstrated by their officers to the king, that they must return to their houses for the several months of winter which were to follow; and that, after the fatigues, dangers, and hardships they had undergone for so many 29 months, to persist in staying longer at such a season in this country was equal to the condemning them to death.

Gimmel-eddin, moreover, the new-appointed governor, insisted with Amda Sion, that he was able enough himself to keep all the tributary provinces in peace, and true allegiance to the king; but if, on the contrary, the king chose to eat them up with a large army living constantly among them, as well as upon every pretence laying them waste with the sword in the manner he was now doing, he could not be answerable for, nor did he believe they would be able to pay him, the tribute he expected from them. But the king, who saw the motives both of his officers and of the Moorish governor, continued firm in his resolutions. He sharply reproved both Gimmel-eddin and his army for their want of discipline, and desire of idleness, and ordered the officers to acquaint their men, that, if they were afraid of rains, he would carry them to Adel, where there were none; that, for his part, he made a resolution, which he would keep most steadily, never to leave his camp and the field while there was one village in his own dominions that did not acknowledge him for its sovereign.

Accordingly on the 13th day of June 1316, immediately after this declaration, he struck his tents, and marched into Samhar, to disappoint, if possible, the confederacy that some of the principal Moorish states had entered into against him, which were agreed, one by one, to harrass his camp by night, and, after having obliged him to retreat to Shoa in disorder, to give him battle there before he had time to refresh his troops. The authors of this conspiracy were seven in number, Adel, 30 Mara, Tico, Agwama, Bakla5, Murgar, and Gabula, and they had already collected a considerable army. The king, who saw they persisted in their nightly attacks, rode out, thinly accompanied, to choose a post for an encampment that was to give him the greatest advantage over his enemy; and, whilst thus occupied, he was suddenly surrounded by a body of troops of Adel lying in ambush for him. A soldier (in appearance an Abyssinian) came so close to the king as to strike him with his sword on the back with such violence that it cut his belt in two, and, having wounded him thro’ his armour, was ready to repeat the blow, when the king pierced him through the forehead with his lance, upon which his party fled.

But the Moors, for five successive nights, did not fail in their attempts upon his camp, which wearied and greatly contributed to discontent his men; and the more so, because the enemy declined coming to any general engagement, though the king frequently offered it to them. Amda Sion, therefore, decamped the 28th of June, and, leaving this disadvantageous station, advanced a day’s march nearer Mara, pointing, as it were, to the very center of that kingdom. But here, again, he was stopt by the discontent of his soldiers, who absolutely refused to go farther, or spend the whole season in arms, in this inclement climate, while the rest of his subjects, in full enjoyment of health and plenty, were rioting at home.

This disposition of his army was no sooner known to the king than he called the principal of them together, 31 and, planting himself on a rising ground, he began to harangue his soldiers with so much eloquence and force of reasoning, that they who before had only learned to admire their king as a soldier, were obliged to confess that, as an orator, he as much excelled every man in his state, as he did the lowest man of his kingdom in dignity. He put his soldiers in mind, “that this was not a common expedition, like those of his predecessors, marching through the country for the purpose of levying their revenue; that the intention of the present war was to avenge the blood of so many innocent Christians slain in security and full peace, from no provocation but hatred of their religion: that they were instruments in the hand of God to revenge the death of so many priests and monks who had been wantonly offered as sacrifices upon their own altars: that they were not a common army, but one confederated upon oath, having sworn upon the sacrament, at the passage of the river Hawash, that they would not return into Abyssinia till they had beat down and ruined the strength of the Mahometans in those kingdoms; so that now, when every thing had succeeded to their wishes, when every Mahometan army had been defeated as soon as it presented itself, and the whole country lay open to the chastisements they pleased to inflict, to talk of a retreat or forbearance was to make a mockery at once of their oath, and the motive of their expedition. He shewed, by invincible reasonings, the great hardships and danger that would attend his retreat through a country already wasted and unable to maintain his army; what an alarm it would occasion in Shoa, to find him returning with an enemy at his heels, following him to his very capital; that such, however, must be the consequence; 32 for it was plain, that, though the enemy declined fighting, yet there was no possibility of hindering them from following him so near as to give his retreat every appearance of flight, and to bring an expedition, begun with success, to an ignominious and a fatal end.

“He upbraided them with his own example, that early their prophets had foretold he was a prince fond of luxury and ease, which, in the main, he did not deny, but confessed that he was so; and that they all should have an attachment to their pleasures and enjoyments, he thought but reasonable. He desired, however, in this, they would do as much as he did, and only suspend their love of ease and rest as long as their duty to God, to their country, and their murdered brethren, required; for, till these duties were fulfilled, ease and enjoyment to a Christian, and especially to them bound by oath to accomplish a certain purpose, was, in his eyes, little short of apostacy.” A loud acclamation now followed from the whole army. They declared again, that they renewed their sacrament taken at the passage of the Hawash, that they were Christ’s soldiers, and would follow their sovereign unto death.

Though the great personal merit of the king, and the grace, force, and dignity with which he spoke, had, of themselves, produced a very sudden change in the mind of the soldiers, yet, to the increase of this good disposition it had very much contributed, that a monk, of great holiness and austerity of manners, living in a cell on the point of a steep rock, had come down from Shoa to the camp, declaring that he had found it written in the Revelation of St John, that this year the religion of Mahomet was to be 33 utterly extirpated throughout the world. Full of this idea, on the feast of Ras Werk, in the month of July, the army passed the Yass, a large river of the kingdom of Mara, and encamped there. The troops were alarmed, the night after their arrival, by a piece of intelligence which proved a falsehood.

A woman, whose father had been a Christian, said, that she had very lately left the Moorish camp; that the enemy were at no great distance, and only waited a night of storm and rain to make a general attack upon the king’s army; and the clouds threatening then a night of foul weather, it was not doubted but the engagement was thereupon immediately to follow. It blew, then, so violent a storm, that the king’s tent, and most of those in the camp, were thrown down, and the soldiers were in very great confusion, imagining, every moment, the Moors ready to fall on them. But whether the story was a falsehood, or the storm too great for the Moors to venture out, nothing happened that night, nor, indeed, during their stay in that station.

At this time a number of priests and others came out of curiosity to see their king making conquests of provinces and people till then unknown to them even by name: several large detachments of fresh troops from Abyssinia also arrived, and joined the army. Upon this, Amda Sion advanced a day’s journey farther into Mara, and took a strong post, resolving to maintain himself there, and, by detachments, lay the whole country desolate. This place is called Dassi. There was neither river, however, nor spring near it, but only water procured by digging in the sand, being what comes down from the sides of the mountains in the rainy 34 season, and, having filtered through the loose earth, has reached the sand and gravel, where it stagnates, or finds slowly its level to the sea. Here the king was taken dangerously ill with the fever of the Kolla.

The altercations between Amda Sion and his soldiers, and the resolutions taken in consequence of these, were faithfully carried to the king of Adel. The march of the king forward at such a season of the year, the slow pace with which he advanced towards the very heart of the country, the care he took of providing all necessaries for his army, and his reinforcing it at such a season, all shewed this was no partial, sudden incursion, but that it was meant as a decisive blow, fatal to the independence of these petty sovereigns and states. To this it may be added, that Gimmel-eddin, whom the king had released from prison, and set over the Moorish provinces of Abyssinia, conveyed to them, in the most direct manner, that such were the king’s purposes. He told them, moreover, this march into their country was not either to increase their tribute, or for the sake of plunder, or to force them to be his subjects; that Amda Sion’s main design was against their religion, which he and his soldiers had vowed they were to destroy; that it was not their time to think of peace or tribute upon any terms; for, were they even to sell their wives and children, the price would not be accepted, unless they forsook the religion of their fathers, and embraced Christianity. He further added, that his resolution was already taken, that he would die firm in the faith, a good Mahometan, as he had lived; not tamely, however, but in the middle of his enemies; and that he was now making every sort of preparation to resist to the latest breath. 35

No sooner was this intelligence from Gimmel-eddin published, than a kind of frenzy seized the people of Adel; they ran tumultuously to arms, and, with shrieks and adjurations, demanded to be led immediately against the Abyssinians, for they no longer desired to live upon such terms.

There was among the leading men of the Moors one Saleh, chief of a small district called Cassi, by birth a Sherriffe, i. e. one of the race of Mahomet, and who, to the nobility of his birth, joined the holiness of his character. He was Imam, as it is called, or high priest of the Moors, and, for both these reasons, held in the greatest estimation among them. This man undertook, by his personal influence, to unite all the Moorish states in a common league. For it is to be observed, that, though religion was very powerful in uniting these Moors against the Christians, yet the love of gain, and jealousies of commerce, perpetually kept a party alive that favoured the king for their own interest, in the very heart of the Moorish confederacies and councils. To overcome this was the object of Saleh, and he succeeded beyond expectation, as sixteen kings brought 40,000 men into the field under their several leaders; but the chief command was given to the king of Adel.

I MUST put the reader in mind that I am translating an Abyssinian historian. These, then, whom this chronicle stiles Kings, must be considered as being only hereditary and independent chiefs, not tributary to Abyssinia. Their names are Adel, Mara, Bakla, Haggara, Fadise, Gadai, Nagal, Zuba, Harlar, Hobal, Hangila, Tarshish, Ain, Ilbiro, Zeyla, and Eftè. Now, when we consider that these sixteen kings brought 36 only 40,000 men, and that they were commanded under these sixteen by 2712 leaders, or governors of districts, all which are set down by name, we must have a very contemptible opinion of the extent and populousness of these newly-erected kingdoms.

It appears to me unnecessary to repeat, after my historian, the names of each of these villages, which probably do not now exist, and are, perhaps, utterly unknown. I shall only observe in passing, that here we find Tarshis, or Tarshish, a kingdom on the coast of the ocean, directly in the way to Sofala; another strong presumption that Sofala and Ophir were the same, and that this is the Tarshish where Solomon’s fleet stopt when going to Ophir.

Amda Sion’s fever hindering him to march forward, and being unwilling to risk a battle where he was not able himself to command, he continued close in his strong camp at Dassi, waiting his recovery; but, in the mean time, he made considerable detachments on all sides to lay the country waste around him, till he should be able to advance farther into it.

Of all the royal army, as it stood upon the establishment, the king had only with him the troops from the provinces of Amhara, Shoa, Gojam, and Damot, and these were what composed the rear, when the whole, called the royal army, was assembled; all his troops were regularly paid, well armed, and cloathed, and were not only provided with every necessary, but were become exceedingly rich, and, therefore, the more careless of discipline, and difficult to manage, on account of the repeated conquests that had followed one 37 another ever since the king had crossed the river Hawash, and come into the desert kingdom of Mara, unfruitful in its soil, but flourishing by trade, and rich in India commodities. The soldiers had here so loaded themselves with spoils and merchandise, that they began rather to think of returning home, and enjoying what they had got, than of pushing their conquests still farther to the destruction of Adel and Mara. The putrid state of the water, in this sultry and unwholesome climate, had afflicted the king with the fever of the country, which he thought not by any means to remedy or prevent. No consideration could keep him from exposing himself to the most violent sun-beams, and to the more noxious vapours of the night; and it was now the seventh day his fever had been increasing, although he neither ate nor drank. The army expecting, from the king’s illness, a speedy order to return, conversed of nothing else within their camp, with that kind of security as if they had already received orders to return home.

The Mahometan army had assembled, and no news had been brought of it to the king. Saleh’s influence had united them all; and the king’s sickness had made this easier than it otherwise would have been. It happened, then, that, the king’s fever abating the ninth day, he sent out to procure himself venison, with which this country abounds, and which is believed, by people of all ranks in Abyssinia, to be the only proper food and restorative after sickness. After having killed sufficiently for the king’s immediate use, the huntsmen returned; two only remained, who continued the pursuit of the game through the woods, till they were four days journey distant from their camp, when, being in search of water for their dogs, they met a Moor engaged 38 in the same business with themselves, who shewed them his army encamped at no considerable distance, and in very great numbers. Upon this they returned in all haste to the king to apprize him of his danger, and he sent immediately some horse to discover the number, situation, and designs of the enemy; above all, if possible, to take a prisoner, for the huntsmen had put theirs to death, that he might be no incumbrance to them upon their return.

The king’s fever was now gone, but his strength was not returned; and, the necessity of the case requiring it, he attempted to rise from his bed and put on his armour, but, fainting, fell upon his face with weakness, while his servant was girding his sword.

The horse now returned, and confirmed the tidings the huntsmen had brought; they had found the Moorish army in the same place it was first discovered, by the water-side; but the account of their number and appearance was such that the whole army was struck with a panic. The king’s wives (as the historian says, by which it should appear he had more than one) endeavoured to persuade him not to risk a battle in the weak state of health he then was, but to retire from this low, unwholesome country, and occupy the passes that lead into Upper Abyssinia, so as to make it impossible for the enemy to follow him into Shoa.

The king having washed and refreshed himself, with a countenance full of confidence, sat down at the door of his tent: whilst officers and soldiers crowded about him, he calmly, in the way of conversation, told them,—“That, being men of experience as they were, he was surprised they 39 should be liable, at every instant, to panic and despondency, totally unworthy the character of a veteran army. You know,” said he, “that I came against the king of Adel, and to recover that province, one of the old dependencies of my crown. And though it has happened that, in our march, you have loaded yourselves with riches, which I have permitted, as well out of my love to you, as because it distresses the enemy, yet my object was not to plunder merchants. If in battle to-morrow I be beaten, for God forbid that I should decline it when offered, I shall be the first to set you the example how to die like men in the middle of your enemies. But while I am living, it never shall be said that I suffered the standard of Christ to fly before the profane ensigns of infidels. As to what regards our present circumstances, my sickness, and the number of the Moorish troops, these make no alteration in my good hopes that I shall tread upon the king of Adel’s neck to-morrow. For as it was never my opinion that it was my own strength and valour, or their want of it, which has so often been the means of preserving me from their hands, so I do not fear at present that my accidental weakness will give them any advantage over me, as long as I trust in God’s strength as much as ever I have done.”

The army, hearing with what confidence and firmness the king spake, began to look upon his recovery as a miracle. They all, therefore, with one accord, took to their arms, and desired to be led forward to the enemy, without waiting till they should come to them. They only beseeched the king that he would not expose his person as usual, but trust to the bravery of his troops, eager for action, without being lavish of that life, the loss of which would be to 40 the Mahometans a greater victory than the regaining all he had conquered. The king hereon, bidding his troops to be of good courage, take rest and refreshment, sent away the women, children, and other incumbrances, to a small convent on the side of the mountain, called Debra Martel6; and, being informed of the situation of the country in general, and the particular posts where he could get water in greater plenty, he advanced with his army by a slow march towards the enemy.

The next day he received intelligence by a Moor, that the Mahometans had not only thrown poison into all the wells, but had also corrupted all the water in the front of the army by various spells and inchantments; that they were not advancing, but were waiting for troops from some of the small districts of Adel that had not yet joined the army. Hereupon the king ordered his Fit-Auraris to advance a day before him, and sent a priest, called Tecla Sion, with him, that he might bless and consecrate the water, and thereby free it from the inchantments of the Moors. He himself followed with his army, and sat down by a small river a short way distant from the enemy.

The Fit-Auraris is an officer that commands a party of men, who go always advanced before the front of an Abyssinian army, at a greater or smaller distance, according as circumstances require. His office will be described more at large in the sequel.

The king being arrived at the river, the army began to bathe themselves, their mules, and their horses, in the same 41 manner as is usual throughout all Abyssinia on the feast of the Epiphany. This lustration was in honour of Tecla Sion, who had consecrated the water, broken all the magic spells, and changed its name to that of the river Jordan. But, while they were thus employed, the Fit-Auraris had come up with a large party of the enemy, and, with them, a number of women, provided with drugs to poison and inchant the water; and this numerous body of fanatics had fallen so rudely on the Fit-Auraris that it beat him back on the main body, to whom he brought the news of his own defeat.

A violent panic immediately seized the whole Abyssinian army, and they refused to advance a step farther. The tents had been left standing on the side of the river they first came to, and they then passed to the other side. But, upon sight of the Fit-Auraris, they returned to the tents, that, having the river on their front, they might fight the enemy with more advantage if they came to attack them. They did not continue long in this resolution; the greatest part of them were for leaving their tents, and retiring to Abyssinia for assistance, and, when the numbers should be more upon an equality, return to fight the enemy. The Moorish army at this instant coming in sight, increased the number of converts to this opinion.

The king, in the utmost agony, galloping through the ranks, continued to use all manner of arguments with his mutinous soldiers. He told them, that retiring to their camp was to put themselves in prison; that, being mostly composed of horse, their advantage was in a plain like that before them; that retreating to join the main body, at such a distance, was a vain idea, as the enemy was so close at their 42 heels. Finally, all he desired of them was, that those who would not fight should only stand as spectators, but not leave their places. As no sign of content or conviction was returned, the king, seeing that all was lost if they disbanded, the enemy being just ready to engage, ordered his master of the horse, and five others, to attack the left wing of the enemy, while he, with a small part of his servants and household, did the same on the right.

The Abyssinian history, seldom just to the memory of individuals, hath yet, in this instance, (almost a single one), preserved the names of these brave men. The first was Zana Asferi; the second, Tecla; the third, Wanag Araad; the fourth, Saif Segued, (one of the king’s sons;) the fifth, Badel Waliz; and the sixth, Kedami. These, as is supposed with their attendants and servants, (though history is silent but as to the six) fell furiously on the left of the Mahometan army.

The king, at the first onset, killed, with his own hand, the two leaders of the right wing; and his son, Saif Segued, having also slain another considerable officer on the left, a panic seized both these bodies of Moors, and the army apparently began, at one and the same time, to waver: On which the Abyssinians, now ashamed of their conduct, and perceiving the king’s danger, with a great shout fell furiously upon the enemy. The whole Moorish army having, by this time, joined, the battle was fought with great obstinacy on both sides, till first the center, then the left wing of the Moors, was broken and dispersed; but the right, consisting chiefly of strangers from Arabia, kept together, and, not knowing the country, retired into a narrow deep valley 43 surrounded by steep perpendicular rocks, covered thick with wood.

The Abyssinian army, thinking all at an end by the flight of the Moors, began, after their usual custom, to plunder, by stripping and mangling the bodies of the killed and wounded. But the king, who, from the mistake of the Arabians, saw the destruction of this right wing certain, if immediately pursued, ordered it every where to be proclaimed through the field, that the whole army should repair to the royal standard, which he had set up on an eminence, and give over plundering, under pain of death. Finding this order, however, slackly obeyed, he himself, scouring the field at the head of a few horse, with his own hand slew two of his soldiers whom he found stripping the dead without regard to his proclamation. This example from a prince, exceedingly sparing of the blood of his soldiers, had the effect to recal them all to the royal standard displayed on a rising ground.

He then separated his army into two divisions; all the foot, and those of his horse that had principally suffered in the severe engagement of the day, he led up to the mouth of the valley where the right wing of the Arabians had shut themselves up; and, having beset all access to the entrance of it, he ordered the foot to climb up through the woods, and on every side surround the valley above the heads of those unhappy people thus devoted to certain destruction.

While this was doing, the king ordered those of the cavalry that had suffered least in the fatigue of the day, to refresh themselves and their horses. He knew no time was 44 lost by this, as the Moorish army that escaped from the engagement, worn out with fatigue, thirst, and hunger, would only retire a short day’s march to the water, where, finding themselves not pursued, and incumbered with the number of their wounded, they would necessarily rest themselves; and this was precisely the situation, in which his huntsmen first found them by the side of a large pool of water.

The king gave the command of this part of his army to the master of the horse, with orders to pursue them one day farther; whilst he, having taken a short refreshment, began to attack the right wing of the Arabians shut up in the valley. The king, dismounting, led the attack against the front of the Arabians, who, seeing their situation now desperate, began to make every effort to get from the valley into the plain. But they did not know yet upon what disadvantageous ground they were engaged, till the soldiers from the rocks above, every way surrounding them, rolled down immense stones which passed through them in all directions. Pressed, therefore, violently, by the king in their front, and in the rear destroyed by an enemy they neither could see nor resist, they fell immediately into confusion, and were, to a man, slaughtered upon the spot; upon which the king, giving to his troops orders for a general plunder, retired himself to his camp, and in his tent received from the master of the horse an account of his expedition.

This officer had proceeded slowly, spreading his troops as wide as possible upon the tract of the retreating enemy, to give a smaller chance for any to escape. All directed their flight towards the pool of water, and were there destroyed without mercy, till a little after sun-set. The pursuers had then 45 advanced to the ground where Saleh king of Mara had gathered the scattered remains of his once powerful army, but now overcome with heat, dispirited by their defeat, and worn out by the fatigues of a long and obstinate engagement, all that remained of these unfortunate troops were strowed upon the ground, lapping water like beasts, their only comfort that remained, equally incapable of fighting or flying. The master of the horse, in great vigour and strength from his late refreshments and recent victory, had no trouble with these unfortunate people but to direct their execution, and this was performed by the soldiers with all the rage and cruelty that a difference of religion could possibly inspire. For, after the king’s speech of the 9th of June, in which he upbraided them with breach of their oath, and that they were slow in avenging the blood of their brethren and priests wantonly slain by the Moors, every man in the army measured the exactness with which he acquitted himself of the sacrament at the Hawash, only by the quantity of blood that he could shed. Weary at last with butchery, a few were taken prisoners, and among these was Saleh king of Mara. It was evening before the king returned from the slaughter of the right wing; and it was night when the soldiers, as fatigued with plundering as with fighting, returned to the camp.

The next morning, he heard of the success of his cavalry under the master of the horse, who joined him before mid-day. The unfortunate Saleh was, in sight of the whole army, brought before the king, cloathed in the distinguished habit and marks of his dignity in which he had fought the day before at the head of his troops; gold chains were about his arms, and a gold collar, enriched with precious 46 stones about his neck. The king scarcely deigned to speak to him, whilst the royal prisoner likewise observed a profound silence. When the army had satisfied their curiosity with the sight of this prince, (once the object of their fear), the king, by a motion of his hand, ordered him to be hanged upon a tree at the entrance of the camp, with all the ornaments he had upon him. After this the queen of Mara, concerning whom so many surprising stories had been told of her poisoning the waters by drugs and inchantments, was, notwithstanding the known partiality of this king for the fair sex, ordered to be hewn in pieces by the soldiers, and her body given to the dogs.

Amda Sion then dispatched a messenger with the news of his victory to the queens his wives, and the rest of the ladies he had left with the main army at Debra Martel, when the monks of the convent immediately began a solemn procession and thanksgiving, attended by the exercise of every sort of work of charity and piety.

It was now the end of July, when the rains in Abyssinia become both constant and violent, that the king called a council of the principal nobility, officers, and priests, to determine whether he should go straight home, or send their wives, children, and baggage before them the direct road, when the light and unincumbered army should take a compass, and lay waste a part of the kingdom of Adel they had already invaded, and return in another direction. The majority of the army, and the priests above all, were for the first proposal; but the king and principal officers thought the advantages gained by so much blood were to be followed, and not deserted, till they should either have reduced the 47 Mahometans to a state of weakness that should make them no longer formidable to Abyssinia, or, if prosperous fortune still attended them further, extirpate the people and religion together.—This opinion prevailed.

The king, therefore, dismissed his baggage, his women, children, servants, and useless people. He retained an army of veteran soldiers only, more formidable than six times the number that could be brought against them; and, trusting now to the country into which he marched for support, he advanced, and entered a town called Zeyla, and there took up his quarters. He had scarce taken possession of the town, when that very night he sent a detachment to surprise a large and rich village called Taraca, where he put all the men to the sword, making the women slaves for the service of the army, instead of those whom he had sent home.

The king’s views, by such small expeditions, were to accustom his soldiers to fight out of his presence, and wean them from a persuasion, now become general, that victory could not be obtained but where he commanded.

On the 10th of July, the king continued his march, without opposition, to Darbè, whence, the next morning, he sent different parties to the right and left, to burn and destroy the country. They accordingly laid waste all the province of Gassi, slaying Abdullah the Sherriffe, who was the governor and son of Saruch the Imam, author of the conspiracy against him. From thence he fell suddenly upon Abalgé and Talab, a large district belonging to the king of Adel. 48

This prince, hearing that Amda Sion, instead of returning, as was usual in the rainy season, into Abyssinia, had determined to continue to ravage his whole country, had not, on his part, been remiss in preparing means to resist him; and he had assembled, from every province, all the forces they could raise, to make one last effort against their common enemy.

Amda Sion, therefore, had scarcely retired from the destruction of Talab, when the king of Adel (become now desperate by being so long a spectator of the ruin of his kingdom) marched hastily to meet him, with much less precaution than his own situation, and the character of his enemy, required. Amda Sion, whose whole wish was to bring the Moors to an engagement as often as occasion presented, left off his plundering upon the first news that the king of Adel had taken the field, and, allowing him to choose the ground on which he was to fight, the next day he marched against him, having (as sure of victory) first detached bodies of horse to intercept those of the Moors that should fly when defeated; For no general was more provident than this king for the destruction of his enemy. He then led his troops against the king of Adel, and, spurring his horse, was already in the midst of the Moorish army before the most active of his soldiers had time to follow him. The Abyssinians, as usual, threw themselves like madmen upon the Moors, at the sight of the king’s danger. The king of Adel was defeated with little resistance: that unfortunate prince himself was slain upon the spot, and the greatest part of his army destroyed (after they thought themselves safe) by the ambushes of fresh horse the king had placed in their rear before the battle. 49

The three children of the king of Adel, and his brother, who had all been in the engagement, seeing the great inferiority of their troops, and terrified at the approaching fate of their country, loading themselves with the most valuable of their effects, (which, in token of humility, they carried upon their heads, shoulders, and in their hands,) came with these presents before the king, who was sitting armed at the door of his tent, and, without further apology, or assurance given, threw themselves, as is the custom of Abyssinia, at his feet, with their foreheads in the dust, intreating pardon for what had hitherto been done amiss; submitting to him as his subjects, professing their readiness to obey all his commands, provided only that he would proceed no further, nor waste and destroy their country, but spare what still remained, which was, for the most part, the property of Arabian merchants who had done him no injury.

But the king seemed little disposed to credit these assurances. He told them plainly, “That they, and all Ethiopia, knew the time was when they were under his dominion, paid him the same tribute, and owed him the same allegiance with the rest of his subjects; that neither he, nor his predecessors, at that time, had ever oppressed them, but returned them present for present, gold for gold, apparel for apparel, and dismissed them contentedly home whenever they came to pay their duty to them: That lately, from supposed weakness in him, when he was young in the beginning of his reign, and encouraged by the great addition of their brethren, who flocked to them from Arabia, they had, without provocation, thrown off their allegiance to him, upbraiding him as a eunuch, fit only to take care of the women of their seraglio, with many such 50 taunting messages, equally unworthy the majesty and memory of a prince like him: That, could this be passed over, still there was a crime that all the blood of Adel could not atone for: They had, without provocation, murdered his priests, burnt their churches, and destroyed his defenceless people in their villages, merely from a vain belief that they were too far to be under his protection: That, to punish them for this, he was now in the midst of their country, and, if his life was spared, never would he turn his back upon Adel while he had ten men with him capable of drawing their swords. He, therefore, ordered them to return, and expect the approach of his army.”

The two eldest children and the brother were so struck with the fierce manner and countenance with which the king spoke, that they remained perfectly silent. But the youngest son (a youth of great spirit, and who, with the utmost difficulty, had been forced by his parents to fly after the battle) answered the king with great resolution:—

“It is a truth known to the whole kingdom, that Adel has never belonged to any sovereign on earth but to ourselves. Violence and power, which destroy and set up kingdoms, have at times done so with ours; but that you are not otherwise, than by these means, king of our country, our colour, stature7, and complexion sufficiently shew. We have been free, and were conquered; we now have attempted to regain our freedom, and we have failed: We 51 have not been inferior to you in every kind of civility, receiving you and your predecessors when you came into our country, singing before you, and rejoicing, because we knew that you had always among you men of great worth and bravery.

“As to the accusation against us, that we robbed the Christians, you yourself see the riches of our country, which we get by our own industry and commerce, whilst the Abyssinians were naked shepherds and robbers. In the days of your predecessors, a handful of us would have chased an army of them, and it would be so now, were it not for the personal valour and conduct of you their prince. But you, better than any one, can be the judge of this; and I can appeal to you, how often they have been upon the point of deserting you, in return for all the victories and riches they have shared with you; while there is not a Moor in Adel but would have willingly died in the presence of such a prince as you. It is then you, not your army, that we fear; we know perfectly the value of both. You have already enjoyed all the merit and profit of conquest; but utterly destroying defenceless people is unworthy of any king, and still more of a prince of your character.”

The king, without any sign of displeasure at the freedom of this speech, answered him calmly: “Words and resolutions like these occasioned your father to lose his life in battle. I come not to argue with you what you are to do, nor did I send for you to preach to you; but if the queen your mother, the rest of your father’s family, and the principal people who, after your father’s death, are now 52 to govern Adel, do not, by to-morrow evening, surrender themselves to me at my tent-door, as you have done, I will lay the province of Adel waste, from the place where I now sit, to the borders of the ocean.”

This unpromising interview with the king was faithfully communicated by the young princes to their mother, earnestly desiring her to trust the king’s mercy, and to throw herself at his feet the next morning without reserve. But those who had been the persuaders of the war (for the late king of Adel was but a weak prince) reckoned themselves in much greater danger with Amda Sion than was the royal family. They, therefore, agreed to try their fortune again in battle, binding themselves to live and die with each other, by mutual oaths and promises. They also sent to the princes this resolution, by an old enemy of Amda Sion, persuading them to make their escape as soon as possible, and come and head their forces that were then raised, and ready to conquer or die together, when the family should be out of the enemy’s hands.

The king, well informed of what had passed, decamped immediately from the station where he was, exceedingly irritated; and, having passed the great river called Aco, he took post in the town of Marmagab; and the next day, dividing his army, he sent two bodies by different routes into the enemy’s territories, with a strict command to leave nothing undestroyed that had the breath of life; he himself, with the third division, burning and laying waste the whole country before him, proceeded straight to the place where he heard the chiefs of Adel were assembling an army. There he found some troops, mostly infantry, who kept a 53 good countenance, and seemed perfectly prepared and disposed to engage him. But an immense multitude of useless people covered the plain, old men, women, and children, with the parents, wives, and families of those he had already slain; and these were determined, with the remnant of their countrymen, to conquer this invader, or to perish.

The king, upon perceiving this strange mixture, halted for a time in great surprise and astonishment. He could not penetrate into the motive of assembling such an army; and sending a party of horse, as it were, to disperse them, he found everywhere a stout resistance; soldiers well provided with swords and shields, and a multitude of archers, who rained showers of arrows upon him, while the women, with clubs, poles, stakes, and stones, damped the ardour of his soldiers, who, when they first charged, scarcely expected resistance. The king, seeing the battle every minute become more doubtful, and having but few troops, began to repent that he had weakened his army by detachments; he instantly dispatched orders to them to advance, and fall upon the enemy in the nearest direction possible. At the same time, he himself made an extraordinary effort with his horse, but all in vain; and he found, on every side, people who presented themselves willingly to death, but who would not quit their station while they had power to defend themselves in it.

Conspicuous above all these for his dress, his youth, his many acts of valour, and his graceful figure, was the young king of Wypo, who, encouraging his troops, presented himself wherever Amda Sion was in person. The remarkable resistance that this young prince made, soon drew the attention 54 of the king of Abyssinia; who, sheathing his sword, took a bow in his hand, and, as my historian says, choosing the broadest arrow he could find, struck this young hero through the middle of his neck, so that, half being cut through, his head inclined to one shoulder, and soon after he fell dead among his horse’s feet.

This sight was one just calculated to strike such an army as this with terror. They immediately turned their backs, and, unluckily falling in with the two detachments marching to the king’s relief, they were all cut to pieces to the number of 5000; a great proportion of which were women and aged persons, unskilled in war, further than as they were prompted by a long sufferance of injuries, accumulated now to a mass, that made them weary of life. My historian further says, that three only of the Moorish army escaped. On the king’s side many principal officers were killed; and there was scarce one horseman that was not wounded. Amda Sion, therefore, when speaking of this campaign, after his return, among his nobility at Shoa, used to say, “Deliver me from fighting with old women;” alluding to this battle, where he was in the greatest danger. The fate of the unfortunate king of Wypo was particularly hard. He had lately married the king of Adel’s daughter; and it was the staying for him, and his marriage, that lost the favourable opportunity of fighting the Abyssinians, when the army was in despondency upon the king’s being taken ill of the fever.

The next campaign the king began, by a march first to Sassogade, where he assisted at the celebration of the feast of St John the Baptist; and he gave orders, that day, to raze all 55 the Mahometan mosques to the ground, to destroy all the grain, burn the villages, and put the people to the sword, which was executed accordingly. The king then decamped the fourth of July; and, passing the great river (Zorat) came to the country of the Oritii, and took up his quarters there. The people of this province were in the very worst reputation for cruelty, and hatred of the Christian name. They were perpetually making incursions into the Christian villages, and those that fell alive into their hands, they either castrated, cut off their nose or ears, or otherwise mangled them.

The king, to vindicate the severity he was about to exercise, ordered all those people, who had suffered in this manner, to be collected and brought before him. The number appeared very considerable; and, having inquired in what occupations they had been employed, they answered, that their business was to cut down wood, draw and fetch water, and some of them to take care of the Moorish women. Violently affected with this, he called his principal officers, and commanded them, that, when he decamped with his army the next day, small parties should remain in ambush on each side of the town. The king, early in the morning, marched out with sound of trumpet; and the Moors, thinking the army gone, returning to their houses, were set upon by the parties, and destroyed.

The next place the king came to was Haggara, where he staid eight days, and celebrated there the feast of the Cross; surrounding his camp with palisades, as if he was to stay there a considerable time. Here he made his soldiers deposit all their plunder, leaving it under the care of a weak 56 guard, and marched out with sound of trumpet, as if he was going upon some expedition. There was a large body of troops in ambush, and the Moors, concealed in woods, and hiding-places, attacked the intrenchment as soon as the king was gone, and had forced the palisades, when they were every where surrounded by the parties left behind, and were all cut to pieces, excepting the old men and women, whose noses and lips the king ordered to be cut off, by way of retaliation, and then dismissed them. Great store of bows, good arms and cloathing, were taken here, lately brought from Arabia for the use of the confederates.

The king now turned his face homewards, marched off in seven days to Begul in the Sahara, and thence sent a message to the governor of Ifat, commanding him to send to him all those Christians who had apostatized from their faith in his or his brother’s time; with notice, that, if he did not comply, he would put him and all his family to death, and give his command to another family. The king ordered these apostates, when delivered, to be severely whipped, and, fettering them with heavy irons, imprisoned them.

From Begul the army marched to Waz, thence to Gett, and from Gett to Harla, still laying waste the country. From Harla they marched five days to Delhoya, being determined to make a severe example of this place, because the inhabitants had killed the governor the king had left with them, and, making large fires for the purpose, had burnt and tormented the Christians residing there. He came, therefore, upon this town, and surrounded it in the night; and, after putting men, women, and children to the sword, he razed it to the ground. 57

From Delhoya he proceeded to Degwa, from thence to Warga, which he treated in the same manner as Delhoya, and then entered the province of Dawaro, where he understood that Hydar, governor of that province, with Saber-eddin, and a very valuable convoy coming to him, under their conduct, from Shoa, were intercepted by Hydar’s people, and their guard cut to pieces. Instead, therefore, of proceeding to Shoa, as his intention was, he encamped at Bahalla, and there kept the feast of Christmas, laying the whole province, by parties, under military execution; and hearing there that Joseph, governor of Serca, was in understanding with those of Dawaro, he put him in prison, carrying off all his horses, asses, mules, and a prodigious quantity of other cattle, which he drove before him, and ended his expedition by his entry into Shoa.

This is the Abyssinian account of the reign of their prince Amda Sion, a little abridged, and made more conformable to the manner of writing English history. The historian, contrary to the usual practice, gives no account of himself; but he seems to have lived in the time of Zara Jacob, the third reign after this. Though he wrote in Shoa, his book is in pure Geez, there being scarcely an Amharic word in it.

There are three things which I would now observe; not because they are single instances, but, on the contrary, because, though first mentioned here, they are uniformly confirmed throughout the whole Abyssinian history.

The first is, that the king of Abyssinia is, in all matters ecclesiastical and civil, supreme; that he punishes all offences committed by the clergy in as absolute and direct a manner as 58 if these offences were committed by a layman. Of this the treatment of Honorius is an example, who made use only of spiritual weapons against offences, that surely deserved the censure of all churches.

With whatever propriety this sentence might have been inflicted upon individuals, and, perhaps, without any bad consequence to the public in general, the law of the land, in Abyssinia, could not suffer this to be inflicted on their king, because very bad effects must have followed it towards the common-weal; for excommunication there is really a capital punishment if executed with rigour. It is a kind of interdictio aquæ et ignis, for you yourself are expressly prohibited from kindling a fire, and every body else is laid under a prohibition from supplying either fire or water. No one can speak, eat, or drink with you, enter your house, or suffer you to enter theirs. You cannot buy nor sell, nor recover debts. If under this situation you should be violently slain by robbers, no inquisition is made into the cause of your death, and your body is not suffered to be buried.

I would submit now to the judgment of any one, what sort of government there would be in Abyssinia, if a priest was suffered to lay the king under such interdict or restriction. The kings of that country do not pretend to be saints; indeed, it may be said, they are the very contrary, leading very free lives. Pretences are never wanting, and it is only necessary to find a fanatic priest (which, God knows, is not a rarity in that country) to unhinge government perpetually, and throw all into anarchy and confusion. But nothing of this kind occurs in their history, though the bigotted Le 59 Grande, and some of the Jesuits, less bigotted than him, have asserted, that such a practice prevailed in the Abyssinian church, to shew its conformity with the church of Rome; which we shall see, however, contradicted almost in every prince’s reign.

The second thing I shall observe is, that there is no ground for that prejudice, so common in the writers concerning this country, who say that these people are Nomades, perpetually roving about in tents. If they had ever so little reflected upon it, there is not a country in the world where this is less possible than in Abyssinia, a country abounding with mountains, where every flat piece of ground is, once a-day, during six months rain, cut through by a number of torrents, sweeping cattle, trees, and every thing irresistibly before them; where no field, unless it has some declivity, can be sown, nor even passed over by a traveller, without some danger of being swept away, during the hours of the day when the rain is most violent; in such a country it would be impossible for 30 or 40,000 men to encamp from place to place, and to subsist without some permanent retreat. Accordingly they have towns and villages perched upon the pinnacles of sharp hills and rocks, and which are never thought safe if commanded by any ground above them; in these they remain, as we do in cities, all the rainy season: Nor is there a private person (not a soldier) who hath a tent more than in Britain. In the fair season, the military encamp in all directions cross the country, either to levy taxes, or in search of their enemy; but nothing in this is particular to Abyssinia; in most parts of Africa and Asia they do the same. 60

The third particular to be observed here is, that, in this prince’s reign, the king’s sons were not imprisoned in the mountain. For Saif Araad was present with his father at the defeat of Saleh king of Mara, and yet the mountain of Geshen was then set apart as a prison. For the Itchegué of Debra Libanos was banished there; from which I infer, that after the massacre of the royal family by Judith, on the mountain of Damo, and the flight of the prince Del Naad, to Shoa, the king’s children were not confined, nor yet till long after their restoration and return to Tigré, as will appear in the sequel.

Amda Sion died of a natural death at Tegulat in Shoa, after a reign of 30 years, which were but a continued series of victories, no instance being recorded of his having been once defeated.

SAIF ARAAD.
From 1342 to 1370.

This Prince enjoys a peaceable Reign—Protects the Patriarch of Cophts at Cairo from the Persecution of the Soldan.

Saif Araad succeeded his father Amda Sion; and it should seem that, in his time, all was peaceable on the side of Adel, as nothing is mentioned relative to that war. 61 Indeed, if the increase of trade and power in that corner of Abyssinia arose from the troubles and want of security which the merchants laboured under in Arabia, we cannot but suspect, from a parity of reasoning, that the violent manner in which war had been carried on by Amda Sion, must have occasioned a great many inhabitants to repass the Straits, and return to their own homes.

At this time, news were brought from Cairo, that the Soldan had thrown the Coptic patriarch, Marcus, into prison. There was then a constant trade carried on between Cairo and Abyssinia, through the desert; and also from Cairo and Suakem on the Red Sea. Besides, great caravans, formerly composed of Pagans, now of Mahometans, passed from west to east, in the same manner as in ancient times, to buy and disperse India goods through Africa. Saif Araad, not having it in his power to give the patriarch other assistance, seized all the merchants from Cairo, and sent horse to interrupt and terrify the caravans. As the cause of this was well known, and that the patriarch was in prison for the sake only of extorting money from him, people on all sides cried out upon the bad policy of the Soldan, who thereupon ordered Abuna Marcus to be set at liberty, without any other condition, than that he should make peace with Saif Araad on the part of Egypt, which was done through the mediation of that prelate. 62

WEDEM ASFERI.
From 1370 to 1380.

Memoirs of this and the following Reign defective.

We know nothing of this prince, only that he succeeded his father Saif Araad, and reigned ten years; yet his name, which signifies lover of war, seems to indicate an active reign. It is remarkable, that in this reign is first mentioned an æra of Abyssinian chronology, which has very much puzzled several learned writers, and the origin of which is not, perhaps, yet fully known. This is that epoch, called that of Maharat, or Mercy, which Scaliger and Ludolf have called the æra of grace. Scaliger says, he has toiled much before he found out what it was; and I doubt his toil has not been blessed with all the success we could wish. That it is not the æra of redemption, is plain upon a hundred trials, nor of the conversion, nor of Dioclesian. What it alludes to we know not, but it is first quoted in the Abyssinian history in this reign, and answers to the year 1348 of Christ; but from what event it had its origin we cannot positively say, nor further, than that all which Scaliger has said concerning it is merely visionary. 63

DAVID II.
From 1380 to 1409.

Wedem Asferi was succeeded by his brother David, Saif Araad’s second son. This prince’s reign is remarkable in the annals of the church of Abyssinia, because, at this time, a piece of the true cross, on which our Saviour died, was brought hither from Jerusalem; and, in memory of this great event, the king ordered the sacerdotal vest, or capa, which was before plain, to be embroidered with flowers.

This king, after reigning twenty-nine years, one day viewing a favourite, but vicious horse, received so violent a kick upon his head that it fractured his skull, so that he died upon the spot, and was buried in the great island of Dek in the lake Dembea, or Tzana. 64

THEODORUS.
From 1409 to 1412.

Memoirs of this Reign, though held in great Esteem in Abyssinia, defective; probably mutilated by the Ecclesiastics.

David was succeeded by his eldest son Theodorus. He is called Son of the Lion, by the poet, in the Ethiopic encomium upon him, still extant in the liturgy. A miracle is mentioned to have happened, (which would lead us to suspect that he was a saint), during the celebration of his festival, by his mother, who is called Mogessa8. This lady had contented herself with providing great quantity of flesh for the feast; but, to make it more complete, the heavens in a shower supplied it with store of fine fish, ready roasted.

He was buried in the church of Tedba Mariam in Amhara, after having reigned three years. There must have been something very brilliant that happened under this prince, for though the reign is so short, it is before all others the most favourite epoch in Abyssinia. It is even confidently believed, that he is to rise again, and to reign in 65 Abyssinia for a thousand years, and in this period all war is to cease, and every one, in fulness, to enjoy happiness, plenty, and peace. Foolish as these legends are, and distant the time, this one was the source of great trouble and personal danger to me, as will be seen in the sequel. What we know certain in this prince’s history is, that he abrogated the treaty of partition made by Icon Amlac in favour of the Abuna Tecla Haimanout and his successors, by which one third of the kingdom of Abyssinia was for ever to be set apart as a revenue for the Abuna. This wise prince modified so excessive a provision, reserving to the Abuna for his maintenance a sufficient territory in every province of the kingdom. It is still judged immoderate, and has suffered many defalcations under later princes, who, perhaps, not acting upon the principles of Theodorus, have not been commended by posterity in the manner he has been.

ISAAC.
From 1412 to 1429.

No Annals of this nor the four following Reigns.

Theodorus was succeeded by Isaac his brother, second son of David. In his reign the Falasha, who, since their overthrow in the time of Amda Sion, had been quiet, broke out into rebellion. We do not know the particulars, but 66 apprehend some injustice was at that time done, or attempted, against the Jews; for 24 Judges, 12 from Shoa and 12 from Tigré, (the number having been doubled when there were two kings reigning9), were of a different opinion, and would not comply with the king’s will, who thereupon deprived them all of their office. The king, coming upon the army of the Falasha in Woggora, entirely defeated them at Kossogué, and, in memory thereof, built a church on the place, and called it Debra Isaac, which remains there to this day.

Isaac reigned near 17 years, was a prince of great piety and courage. The annals of his reign, probably during the troublesome time that followed, have been lost, and with them great part of his atchievements.

ANDREAS I. or AMDA SION.

Isaac was succeeded by his son Andreas, who reigned only seven months, and they were both buried at Tedba Mariam. 67

TECLA MARIAM, or HASEB NANYA.
From 1429 to 1433.

This prince was third son of David, and succeeded his nephew. He reigned four years, and took for his inauguration name, Haseb Nanya.

SARWE YASOUS.

This prince was son of Tecla Mariam, he reigned only four months; his inauguration name was Maharak Nanya. He has been omitted in some of the lists of kings.

AMDA YASOUS.

Sarwe Yasous was succeeded by his brother Amda Yasous, whose inauguration name was Badel Nanya. He was second son of Tecla Mariam, and reigned nine months. 68

ZARA JACOB.
From 1434 to 1468.

Sends Ambassadors from Jerusalem to the Council of Florence—First Entry of the Roman Catholics into Abyssinia, and Dispute about Religion—King persecutes the Remnants of Sabaism and Idolatry—Mahometan Provinces rebel, and are subdued—The King dies.

These very short reigns were followed by one of an extraordinary length. Zara Jacob, fourth son of David II. succeeded his nephew, and reigned 34 years, and, at his inauguration, took the name of Constantine. He is looked upon in Abyssinia to have been another Solomon; and a model of what the best of sovereigns should be. From what we know of him, he seems to have been a prince who had the best opportunity, and with that the greatest inclination to be instructed in the politics, manners, and religion of other countries.

A convent had been long before this established at Jerusalem for the Abyssinians, which he in part endowed, as appears by his letters still extant10, written to monks of that 69 convent. He also obtained from the Pope11 a convent for the Abyssinians at Rome, which to this day is appropriated to them, though it is very seldom that either there, or even at Jerusalem, there are now any Abyssinians. By his desire, and in his name, ambassadors (i. e. priests from Jerusalem) were sent by Abba Nicodemus, the then Superior, who assisted at the council of Florence, where, however, they adhered to the opinion of the Greek church about the proceeding of the Holy Ghost, which created a schism between the Greek and Latin churches. This embassy was thought of consequence enough to be the subject of a painting in the Vatican, and to this picture we owe the knowledge of such an embassy having been sent.

The mild reign of the last Soldan of Egypt seems greatly to have favoured the disposition of Zara Jacob, in maintaining an intercourse with Europe and Asia. And it is for the first time now in this reign that we read of a dispute upon religion with the Franks, or Frangi, a name which afterwards became more odious and fatal to whomsoever it was applied. Abba George is said to have disputed before the king upon some point of his religion, and to have confuted his opponent even to conviction. We are not informed of the name of Abba George’s antagonist, but he is thought to have been a Venetian painter12, who lived many years after in Abyssinia, and, it is believed, died there. From this time, however, in almost every reign, there appear marks of a party formed in favour of the church of Rome, which probably had its first rise from the Abyssinian embassy to the council of Florence. 70

Although the established religion in Abyssinia was that of the Greek church of Alexandria, yet many different superstitions prevailed in every part of the country. On the coast of the Red Sea, as well as the Ocean, that is in the low provinces adjoining to the kingdom of Adel, the greatest part of the inhabitants were Mahometans; and the conveniencies of trade had occasioned these to disperse themselves through many villages in the high country, especially in Woggora, and in the neighbourhood of Gondar. Dembea on the south, and the rugged district of Samen on the east, were crowded with many deformed sects, while the people of the low valleys, towards Nubia, the Agows at the head of the Nile, and those of the same name, though of a different nation and language, at the head of the Tacazzé, in Lasta, were, for the greatest part, Pagans, i. e. of the old religion of Sabeans, worshipping the planets, stars, the wind, trees, and such like. But a more abominable worship than this seemed especially predominant among some of the Agows at the source of the Nile, and the people bordering upon Nubia, as they adored the cow and serpents for their gods, and supposed that, by the latter, they could divine all that was to happen to them in futurity.

Whether it was that a long war had thrown a veil over these abuses, or whether (which is more probable) a spirit of toleration had still prevailed in this country, which had at first been converted to Christianity without blood-shed, it is not easy at this time to say. Only their history does not mention, that, before the reign of this prince, idolatry had been considered as a capital crime, or judicially inquired into, and tried as such. An accusation, however, at this time, being brought against some families for worshipping the 71 cow and the serpent, they were, by the king’s orders, seized and brought before himself sitting in judgment, with the principal of his clergy, and with his officers of state, with whom he associated some strangers, lately come from Jerusalem; a custom which prevails to this day. These criminals were all capitally convicted, and executed. A proclamation from the king followed, declaring, That any person who did not, upon his right hand, carry an amulet, with these words, I renounce the devil for Christ our Lord, should forfeit his personal estate, and be liable to corporal punishment.

It has been the custom of all Pagan nations to wear amulets upon their arms, and different parts of their bodies. From the Gentiles this usage was probably first learned by the Jews. Amulets were adopted by the Mahometans, but, till now, not worn in Abyssinia by any Christians.

These executions, which at first consisted of seven people only, began to be repeated in different places, and at different times. The person employed as inquisitor, and the manner this examination was made, tended to make it still more odious. Amda Sion, the Acab Saat, was the man to whom this persecution was committed. He was the king’s principal confident; of very austere manners: he neither shaved his head nor changed his cloaths; had no connection with women, nor with any great man in court; never saw the king but alone, and, when he appeared abroad, was constantly attended by a number of soldiers, with drums and trumpets, and other equipage, not at all common for a clergyman. He had under him a number of spies, who brought him intelligence of any steps taken in idolatry or treason; and, after being, as he supposed, well informed, he 72 went to the house of the delinquent, where he first refreshed himself and his attendants, then ordered those of the house he came for, and all that were with them, to be executed in his presence.

Among those that suffered were the king’s two sons-in-law, married to his daughters Medehan Zamidu, and Berhan Zamidu, having been accused by their wives, the one of adultery, the other of incest: they were both put to death in their own houses, in a very private and suspicious manner. This execution being afterwards declared by the king in an assembly of the clergy and states, certain priests, or others, from Jerusalem, in public, condemned this procedure of the king, as contrary to law, sound policy, and the first principles of justice, which seems to have had such an effect that we hear no more of these persecutions, nor of Amda Sion the persecutor, during the whole of this reign.

The king now turned his thoughts upon a nobler object, which was that of dividing his country into separate governments, assigning to each the tax it should pay, at what time, and in what manner, according to the situation and capacity of each province. The prosperity of the Moorish states, from the extensive trade constantly carried on there, the bad use they made of their riches by employing them in continual rebellions, made it necessary that the king should see and inquire into each person’s circumstances, which he proposed to do, as was usual, before the time of their several investitures.

The chief of the rich district of Gadai, was the first called on by the king, as it is on this occasion that considerable 73 presents (seldom less than two years rent of the province) are given, about one half to the king, the other among his courtiers. There was, at this period, a Moorish woman of quality in court, called the queen of Zeyla. She had been brought to the palace with a view that the king should marry her, but he disliking her for the length, as is said, or some other defect, in her foreteeth, had married her to a nobleman.

This injury had sunk very deep in the breast of the queen of Zeyla, though she was only nominally so, having been expelled from her kingdom before her coming into Abyssinia. But it happened that she was sister to Mihico son of Mahomet, chief of Gadai, whom she earnestly persuaded to stay at home, and she succeeded so far, as not only to prevail upon him to be absent, but also to withdraw himself entirely from his allegiance.

At this very time, the king was informed by a faithful servant, a nobleman of Hadea, that the chief of Gadai had long been meditating mischief, and endeavouring to prevail with the king of Adel to march with his army, while great part of the principal people of Hadea, whom he had seduced, were to fall, on the opposite side, upon Dawaro and Bali.

The king, however, received certain accounts from Adel, that all was quiet there; and inquiring who of his Moorish servants were of the conspiracy in Hadea, he found them to be Goodalu, Alarea, Ditho, Hybo, Ganzè, Saag, Gidibo, Kibben, Gugulé, and Haleb. As there were still forces enough in the province to resist this confederacy, the 74 king, instead of levying an army against them, thought the proper way was to send them a governor, who should divide the interest and strength of the enemy. There was then an uncle of Mihico remaining in exile at Dejan13, whither he had been sent formerly into banishment at the instance of his nephew, but he still preserved the command of a small district called Bomo, as well as the good inclinations of his own subjects of Gadai, who held his memory in great veneration. The king, therefore, sent for this governor of Bomo, and, setting before him the behaviour of his nephew, he gave him the investiture of his government, with many presents both useful and honourable; and, having ordered some troops from Amhara to attend him, he dismissed him, to punish and expel his nephew from the province of Gadai.

The fair of Adel was nigh, and thither all the inhabitants of Bali and Dawaro go. It was at this time the conspirators of Hadea had agreed to fall upon the provinces; while, probably, those at the fair had been likewise destined to cut off the inhabitants which might be found there. To counteract these designs, the king, by proclamation, expressly forbade any of the inhabitants of Bali or Dawaro to go to the fair, but all to join the governor of Bomo, who no sooner presented himself in his district, than the people of all ranks flocked to him and submitted.

Mihico saw himself undone by this address of the king, of which he was quite uninformed. He fled immediately 75 with his family, endeavouring, if possible, to reach Adel; and having come the length of Bawa Amba, a high mountain, where is one of the narrowest and most difficult passes between the high country and the Kolla, here he strowed about, in different places, all the riches that he had brought along with him, in hopes that his pursuers, wearied by the time they came there, should, by the difficulty of the ground, and the booty everywhere to be found, be induced to proceed no further. But this stratagem did not succeed; for he was so closely followed that he was overtaken and slain, his head, hands, and feet were cut off, and immediately sent to the king, who, after public rejoicings, gave the government of Gadai to the person who first informed him of Mihico’s conspiracy, and confirmed the governor of Bomo in the province of Hadea likewise, which he made hereditary in his family. In order also to be more in readiness to suppress such insurrections for the future, he gave his Christian soldiers lands adjacent to each other, forming a line all along the frontiers of the Mahometan provinces of Bali, Fatigar, Wadge, and Hadea, that they might be ready at an instant to suppress any tumult in the provinces themselves, or resist any incursions from the kingdom of Adel.

The king now set about fulfilling another duty of his reign, that of repairing the several churches in Abyssinia which had been destroyed in the late war by the Mahometans, and of building new ones, which it is their constant custom to vow and to erect where victories had been obtained over an infidel enemy. While thus employed, news were sent him from the patriarch of Alexandria, that the church of the Virgin had been destroyed at that city by fire. Full, therefore, of grief for this misfortune, he immediately 76 founded another in Abyssinia, to repair that loss which Christianity had suffered in Egypt.

Being now advanced in life, he would willingly have dedicated the remainder of it to these purposes, when he was awakened from his religious employments by an alarm of war. The rebels of Hadea, by changing their chief, had not altered their dispositions to rebel, and, seeing the king given to other pursuits, they began to associate and to arm. The governor, whom the king had created after the death of Mihico, gave the king a very late notice of this, which he dissembled, as he was the queen Helena’s father: but having, under pretence of consecrating the church of St Cyriacos, assembled a sufficient number of men whom he could trust, he made a sudden irruption into the rebel provinces before they had united their forces. The first that the king met to oppose him was an officer of the rebel governor of Fatigar, who imagined he was engaging only the van of a separate body of Zara Jacob’s troops, not believing him to be yet come up in person with so small a number: But being undeceived, he bestirred himself so courageously, that he reached the king’s person, and broke his lance upon him; but, in return, received a blow from the lance of the king which threw him to the ground; at the sight of which his whole party took flight, but were overtaken and put to the sword almost to a man; nor was the king’s loss considerable, his number being so small.

Upon this defeat, Hiradin, the governor’s brother, declared his revolt, and advanced to fight the king at the passage of the river Hawash. Zara Jacob, much offended at this fresh delinquency, sent an officer, called Han Degna, who 77 found him at the watering-place unsuspecting an enemy; and, before he could put his army in order, he was surrounded, slain, and his head sent to the king, who rejoiced much at the sight, it being brought him on Christmas day.

After this the king collected his dead, and buried them with great honour and shew of grief. He then summoned the governor of Hadea, who professed himself willing to submit his loyalty and conduct to the strictest inquiry. Above all the reasons which hindered him from attending the king, one was known to be, that the queen was not without reason suspected to favour the Mahometans, being originally of that faith herself, and, therefore, for fear of revealing his secret to the enemy, the king did not choose to make her father, the governor of Hadea, partaker in his expedition, but, from jealousy to the queen, ordered him to stay at home. Notwithstanding which it was found, that all in his government were in their allegiance, and ready to march upon the shortest notice had the king required it; therefore he extended his command over the conquered provinces, in room of the rebel governors whom he had removed. 78

BÆDA MARIAM.
From 1468 to 1478.

Revives the Banishment of Princes to the Mountain—War with Adel—Death of the King—Attempts by Portugal to discover Abyssinia and the Indies.

Bæda Mariam succeeded to the throne (as his historian says) against his father’s inclination, after having received much ill usage during the earlier part of his life, of which this was the occasion. His mother took so violent and irregular a longing to see her son king, that she formed a scheme, by the strength of a party of her relations and friends, trusting to the weakness of an old man, to force him into a partnership with his father. Examples of two kings, at the same time, and even in this degree of relation, were more than once to be found in the Abyssinian annals, but those times were now no more. A strong jealousy had succeeded to an unreasonable confidence, and had thrown both the person and pretensions of the heirs-apparent of this age to as great a distance as was possible.

The queen, whose name was Sion Magass, or the Grace of Sion, first began to tamper with the clergy, who, though 79 they did not absolutely join her in her views, shewed her, however, more encouragement than was strictly consistent with their allegiance. From these she applied to some of the principal officers of state, and to those about the king, the best affected to her son and his succession. These, aware of the evil tendency of her scheme, first advised her, by every means, to lay it aside; and afterwards, seeing she still persisted, and afraid of a discovery that would involve her accomplices in it, they disclosed the matter to the king himself, who resented the intention so heinously, that he ordered the queen to be beaten with rods till she expired. Her body afterwards was privately buried in a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, not far from Debra Berhan14.

Nothing had hitherto appeared to criminate the young prince. But it was soon told the king, that, after the death of the queen, her son Bæda Mariam had taken frankincense and wax-tapers from the churches, which he employed, at stated times, in the observation of the usual solemnities over his mother’s grave. The king, having called his son before him, began to question him about what he had heard; while the prince, without hesitation, gave him a full account of every circumstance, glorying in what, he said, was his duty, and denying that he was accountable to any man on earth for the marks of affection which he shewed to his mother.

The king, considering his son’s justification as a reproach made to himself for cruelty, ordered the prince, and, with 80 him, his principal friend Meherata Christos, to be loaded with irons, and banished to the top of a mountain; and it is hard to say where this punishment would have ended, had not the monks of Debra Kosso and Debra Libanos, and all those of the desert, (who thought themselves in some measure accomplices with his mother), by exhortations, pretended prophecies, dreams and visions, convinced the king, that Providence had decreed unalterably, that none but his son, Bæda Mariam, should succeed him. To this ordinance the old king bowed, as it gave him a prospect of the long continuance of his family on the throne of Abyssinia.

Zara Jacob was no sooner dead, than his son, Bæda Mariam, who succeeded him, began to apply himself seriously to the affairs of government. From the reign of Judith, (in the tenth century), when so many of the princes of the royal family were massacred, the custom of sending the royal children to confinement on the top of a mountain had been discontinued. These children all lived at home with their respective fathers and mothers, like private persons; and the kings seemed to connive at abolishing their former practice, for no mountain had been yet chosen as a substitute to the unfortunate Damo. The disagreement between Zara Jacob and his queen, with the cause of it, and the prince’s frankness and resolution, seemed to point out the necessity of reviving the salutary severity of the ancient laws. Bæda Mariam gave orders, therefore, to arrest all his brethren, and send them prisoners for life to the high mountain of Geshen, on the confines of Amhara and Begemder, which ever after continued the state-prison for the royal children, till a 81 slaughter, like to that made upon mount Damo, was the occasion, as we shall see, of deserting Geshen likewise.

The king applied himself next to measures for the better government of his country. He ordered a general pardon to be proclaimed to all who, by the severity of the late reign, lay under sentence of death, banishment, or any other punishment; and, convoking the states of the kingdom, he met them with a chearfulness and openness which inspired confidence into every rank, while, at the same time, he filled all the places he found vacant, or that he thought proper to change, with men of the greatest integrity. He then reviewed the whole cavalry that were in his service, which he distributed into bodies, and stationed them in places where they could be readiest called, to execute those designs he had then in contemplation.

The next year the king went to Debra Libanos in Shoa. It was, however, observed, that his preparations were not such as were usual in these short journies, nor such as were made in peaceable times. On the contrary, orders were sent to the borders of Tigré to receive the royal army, which was soon to arrive in those parts. The rumour of this was quickly spread abroad, and affected all the neighbouring states, according to their several interests. Mahomet king of Adel was the first that took the alarm. Tho’ a kind of peace had subsisted for several years between Adel and Abyssinia, yet inroads had been made from each country into the other; and these might have served them as pretexts for war, had that been the inclination of the times. Yet, as both countries happened to be disposed for peace, these outrages passed unnoticed. 82

But, to prevent surprise upon this last movement of the troops, the king of Adel thought he had a right to be informed of Bæda Mariam’s intentions, and, with this view, he sent some of the principal people of his country as ambassadors, under pretext of congratulating the king upon his accession to the throne. They met the king in Shoa, and had carried with them very considerable presents. They were received in a very distinguished manner; and the presents which Bæda Mariam returned to the king of Adel were nothing inferior to those he accepted. After having entertained the ambassadors several days with feasting and diversions, he confirmed a peace under the same duties upon trade that had formerly subsisted.

The king of Dancali also, old, infirm, yet constant in his attachment to the Abyssinians, was not without his inquietudes, though he was not afraid they intended to attack his poor territory with an army. He dreaded lest the army in its march should drink up that little quantity of water which remained to him in summer, and, without which, his kingdom would become uninhabited. It is a low, sandy district, lying on the Red Sea, just where the coast, after bearing a little to the east of north from Suez to Dancali, makes an elbow, and stretches nearly east, as far as the Straits of Babelmandeb. It has the mines of fossile-salt immediately on the north and north-west, a desert part of the province of Dawaro to the south, and the sea on the north. But it has no port, excepting a spacious bay, with tolerable anchorage, called the Bay of Bilur15, in lat. 13° 3´, 83 and, corruptly in vulgar maps and writings, the Bay of Bayloul.

The kingdom of Dancali is bounded on the east at Azab by part of the kingdom of Adel, and the myrrh country. The king is a Mahometan, as are all his subjects. They are called Taltal, are all black, and only some of them woolly-headed; a circumstance which probably arises from a mixture with the Abyssinians, whose hair is long. There are but two small rivers of fresh water in the whole kingdom; and even these are not visible above ground in the hot season, but are swallowed up in the sand, so as to be dug for when water is wanted. In the rainy season, these are swollen by rain falling from the sides of the mountains and from the high lands of Abyssinia, and then only they run with a current into the sea. All the rest of the water in this country is salt, or brackish, and not fit for use, unless in absolute necessity and dry years. Even these sometimes fail, and they are obliged to seek, far off in the rainy frontiers of Abyssinia, water for themselves, and pasture for their miserable goats and sheep.

When the Indian trade flourished, this prince’s revenue arose chiefly from furnishing camels for the transport of merchandise to all parts of Africa. Their commerce is now confined to the carrying bricks of solid, or fossile salt, dug from pits in their own country, which, in Abyssinia, pass instead of silver currency; these they deliver at the nearest market in the high lands at a very moderate profit, after having carried them from the sea-side through the dry and burning deserts of their own country, at the great risk of being murdered by Galla. 84

The presents sent to Bæda Mariam from Dancali did not make a great figure when compared with those of Adel. They consisted of one horse, a mule, a shield of elephant’s hide, a poisoned lance, two swords, and some dates. Poor as these presents were, they were much more respected than those of Adel, because they came from a loyal heart; while the others were from a nation distinguished every year by some premeditated action of treachery and bloodshed. The king, having first sent for the Abuna, Imaranha Christos, and called the ambassadors of Dancali and Adel into his presence, declared to them, that neither of these states was to be the scene of war, but that he was instantly to march against the Dobas16, whose constant inroads into his country, and repeated cruelties, he was resolved no longer to suffer. He required the ambassadors to warn their masters to keep a strict neutrality, otherwise they would be infallibly involved in the same calamities with that nation.

Lent being now near, the king returned to Ifras, there to keep his fast, and distributed his horse on the side of Ambasanet, having sent orders to the governor of Amhara to join him immediately, who was then at Salamat besieging a party of rebels upon Mount Gehud, which signifies the Mountain of Manifestation. It was the intention of the king, that the troops of Amhara, Angot, and Tigré should press upon the enemy from the high country, while he with his own troops (chiefly horse) should cut off their retreat to the plains of salt; and it was here that the king of Dancali was afraid that they would interfere with his fresh water. 85

This prince kept strictly his promise of secrecy made to Bæda Mariam, while the king of Adel observed a very different line of conduct; for he not only discovered the king’s intention, but he invited the Dobas to send their wives, children, and effects into Adel, while his troops should cut off the king’s provision, and fight him wherever they saw that it could be done with advantage. The plan was speedily embraced. Twelve clans of Dobas marched with their cattle, as privately as possible, for Adel; but the king’s intelligence was too good, and his motions too rapid, to allow their schemes to be carried into execution. With a large body of horse, he took possession of a strong pass, called Fendera; and when that unhappy people, fatigued with their march, and incumbered with baggage, arrived at this spot, they were cut to pieces without resistance, and without distinction of age or sex.

The king, at the beginning of this campaign, declared, that his intention was not to carry on war with the Dobas as with an ordinary enemy, but totally to extirpate them as a nuisance; and, to shew himself in earnest in the declaration, he now made a vow never to depart from the country till he had plowed and sown the fields, and ate the crop on the spot with his army. He, therefore, called the peasants of two small neighbouring districts, Wadge and Ganz, and ordered them to plow and sow that part; which having seen done, the king went to Axum, but returned again to the Dobas, by the feast of the Epiphany. That cruel, restless nation, saw now the king’s real intent was their utter destruction, and that there was no possibility of avoiding it but by submission. This prudent conduct they immediately adopted; and, great part of them renouncing the Pagan 86 religion, they so satisfied Bæda Mariam that he decamped from their country, after having, at his own expence, restored to them a number of cattle equal to that which he had taken away, having also given up, untouched, the crop which had been sown, and recompensed the peasants of Wadge and Ganz for their corn and labour.

Having resolved to chastise the king of Adel for his treacherous conduct, he retired southward into the provinces Dawaro and Ifat; and, as if he had had no other views but those of peace, he crossed over to Begemder, where he directed the Abuna to meet him with his young son Iscander, of whom his queen, Romana Werk17, had been lately delivered. From this he proceeded to Gojam, everywhere leaving orders with the proper officers to have their troops in readiness against his return; and having delivered the young prince to Ambasa David, governor of that province, he proceeded to Gimbota, a town lying on the banks of the Nile, which, in honour of his son’s governor, he changed to David Harasa18. Having thus settled the prince to his mind, he sent orders to the army in Tigré and Dawaro to advance into the southernmost frontier of Adel. He himself returned by the way he went to Gojam, and collecting the troops, and the nobility who flocked to him on that occasion, he marched straight for the same country.

Whilst the king was occupied in these warlike preparations, a violent commotion arose among his clergy at home. In the reign of Zara Jacob, a number of strangers, after the 87 council of Florence, had come into Abyssinia with the Abuna Imaranha Christos. Among these were some monks from Syria, or Egypt, who had propagated a heresy which had found many disciples. They denied the consubstantiality of Christ, whom they admitted to be perfect God and likewise perfect man, but maintained that what we call his humanity was a precious substance, or nature, not composed of flesh, blood, and arteries, (like ours), but infinitely more noble, perfect, peculiar to, and only existing in himself. An assembly of the clergy was called, this heresy condemned, and those who had denied the perfect manhood of our Saviour were put to death by different kinds of torture. Some were sent to die in the Kolla, others exposed, without the necessaries of life, to perish with cold on the tops of the highest mountains.

There was another motive of discontent which appeared in that assembly, and which affected the king himself. A Venetian, whose name was Branca Leon, was one of the strangers that arrived in Ethiopia at the time above mentioned. He was a limner by profession, and exceedingly favoured by the late king, for whom he had painted, with great applause, the pictures of Abyssinian saints for the decoration of the churches. It happened that this man was employed for an altar-piece of Atronsa Mariam; the subject was a common one in Italy, Christ in his mother’s arms; where the child, according to the Italian mode, is held in his mother’s left arm. This is directly contrary to the usage of the East, where the left hand is reserved for the purpose of washing the body when needful, and is therefore looked upon with dishonour, so much, indeed, that at table the right hand only is put into the plate. 88

The fanatic and ignorant monks, heated with the last dispute, were fired with rage at the indignity which they supposed was offered to our Saviour. But the king, struck with the beauty of the picture, and thinking blood enough had been already shed upon religious scruples, was resolved to humour the spirit of persecution no farther. Some of the ringleaders of these disturbances privately disappearing, the rest saw the necessity of returning to their duty; and the picture was placed on the altar of Atronsa Mariam, and there preserved, notwithstanding the devastation of the country by the Moors under the reigns of David III. and Claudius, till many years afterwards, together with the church, it was destroyed by an inroad of the Galla.

In the mean time, the army from Dawaro had entered the kingdom of Adel under Betwudet19 Adber Yasous, and, expecting to find the Moors quite unprepared, they had begun to waste every thing with fire and sword. But it was not long before they found the inhabitants of Adel ready to receive them, and perfectly instructed of the king’s intentions, from the moment he left Dawaro, to go to meet his son in Gojam. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, from the multitude of Moors constantly in his army, who, though they put on the appearance of loyalty, never ceased to have a warm heart towards their own religion and countrymen. Advanced parties appeared as soon as the Abyssinian army entered the frontiers; and these were followed by the main body in good order, determined to fight their enemy before they had time to ravage the country. 89

A battle immediately followed, very bloody, as might be expected from the mutual hatred of the soldiers, from the equality in numbers, and the long experience each had in the other’s manner of fighting. The battle, often on the point of being lost, was as often retrieved by the personal exertion of the Moorish officers, upon whom the loss principally fell. Sidi Hamet, the king’s son, the chiefs of Arar, Nagal, Telga, Adega, Hargai, Gadai, and Kumo, were slain, with several other principal men, who had either revolted from the king of Abyssinia, or whom friendship to the king of Adel had brought from the opposite coast of Arabia.

The king was still advancing with diligence, when he was overtaken by an express, informing him that his queen Romana was delivered of another prince, christened by the name of Anquo Israel. Upon which good tidings he halted at once to rest and feast his army; and, in the middle of the festivity, an express from Adber Yasous brought him news of the complete victory over the Moors, and that there was now no army in Adel of consequence enough to keep the field. Hereupon the king detached a sufficient number of troops to reinforce Adber Yasous in Adel, and continued himself recruiting his army, and making greater preparations than before, that, during the first of the season, he might utterly lay waste the whole Moorish country, or so disable them that they might, for many years, be content to enjoy peace under the condition of becoming his tributaries.

While planning these great enterprises, the king was seized with a pain in his bowels, whether from poison or otherwise 90 is not known, which occasioned his death. Having, a few moments before he died, recollected that his face was turned on a different side from the kingdom of Adel, he ordered himself to be shifted in his bed, and placed so as to look directly towards it, (a token how much his heart was set upon its destruction) and in that posture he expired.

He was a prince of great bravery and conduct; very moderate in all his pleasures; of great devotion; zealous for the established church, but steady in resisting the monks and other clergy in all their attempts towards persecution, innovation, and independency. Many stories have been propagated of his inclination to the Catholic religion, and of his aversion to having an Abuna from Egypt; and it is said, that, during his whole reign, he obstinately persisted in refusing to suffer any Abuna in his kingdom. But these are fables invented by the Portuguese priests, who came into Abyssinia some time afterwards, and forged anecdotes to serve their own purposes; for, unless we except the story of the Venetian, Branca Leon, there is not a word said of any connection Bæda Mariam ever had with the few Catholics that then were in his country, and even that was a connection of his father’s. And as to the other story, we find in history, that the Abuna had been in the country ever since his father Zara Jacob’s time; and that, at his desire, the Abuna, Imaranha Christos, came and received, in the field of battle, large donations in gold, almost as often as the king gained a victory. Bæda Mariam died at the age of forty, after reigning ten years, which were spent in continual war; during the whole course of which he was successful, and might (if he had lived) have very much weakened the Moorish states, and prevented the terrible retaliation 91 that fell afterwards from that quarter upon his country.—It will be proper now to look back into the transactions in Europe, which are partly connected with the history of this kingdom.

The conquest of the north part of Africa followed the reduction of Egypt, and the whole coast of Barbary was crowded with Mahometans, from Alexandria to the western ocean, and from the Mediterranean to the edge of the desert. Even the desert itself was filled with them; and trade, security, and good faith, were now everywhere disseminated in regions, a few years before the seat of murder and pillage.

Tarik and his Moors had invaded Spain; Musa followed him, and conquered it. The history of Count Julian is in every one’s hand; unfortunate in having had the provocation, still more so in having had the power to revenge it, by sacrificing at once his sovereign, his country, religion, and life, to the private injuries done to his daughter. As often as I have read the history of this catastrophe, so often have I regretted to see with how little ceremony this young lady hath been treated by authors of all languages and nations. They call her Caaba, with the same ease and indifference as they would have called her Anne, or Margaret. This must be from mere ignorance. Caaba could not be the name of the daughter of Count Julian before her seduction. Caaba means Harlot, in the broadest way possible to express the term, and very cruelly and improperly, it seems to be given her, even after her misfortune; for she was a daughter of the first family in Spain, of unexceptionable virtue. 92 She was not seduced, but forced by the king, while in the palace, and under protection of the queen.

A great influx of trade followed the conquest; and the religion, that contained little restraint and great indulgence, was every where embraced by the vanquished, who long had been Christians in name only. On the other side, the conquerors were now no longer that brutish set of madmen, such as they were under the Khalifat of the fanatic Omar. They were now men eminent for their rank and attainments in every species of learning. This was a dangerous crisis for Christianity, and nothing else was threatened than its total subversion. The whole world, without the help of England, had not virtue enough to withstand this torrent. That nation, the favourite weapon in the hand of Heaven for chastising tyranny and extirpating false religion, now lent its assistance, and the scale was quickly turned.

At that time Europe saw with surprise an inconsiderable number of fishermen, very inconveniently placed at the farthest end of the Adriatic Gulf, applying themselves with unwearied care and patience to cultivate, gather together, and improve the remnants and gleanings of the Indian trade by Alexandria, under all the cruelties and oppressions of those ignorant and barbarous conquerors the Turks, whom no prospect of gain, no change of place, no frequency of commerce, could ever civilize or subject to the rules of justice. Venice became at once the great market for spices and perfumes, and consequently the most considerable maritime power that had appeared in Europe for ages. 93

Genoa followed, but sunk, after great efforts, under the power of her rival; while Venice remained mistress of the sea, of a large dominion upon the continent, and of the Indian spice trade, the origin and support of all her greatness.

Rhodes, and the ships of the Military Order of St John of Jerusalem, to whom that island belonged, greatly harrassed the maritime trade carried on by the Moors in their own vessels from Alexandria, who were every day more discouraged by the unexpected progress of these once petty Christian states. Trade again began to be carried on by caravans in the desert. Large companies of merchants from Arabia, passed in safety to the western ocean, and were joined by other traders from the different parts of Barbary while passing to the southward of them, and that with such security and expedition, that the Moors began to set little value on their manner of trading by sea, content now again with the labours and conveniencies of their ancient, faithful friend, and servant, the camel.

Ormus, a small island in the Persian Gulf, had, by its convenient situation, become the market for the spice trade, after the discouragements it had received in the Mediterranean. All Asia was supplied from thence, and vessels, entering the Straits of Babelmandeb, had renewed the old resort to the temple of Mecca. From hence all Africa, too, was served by caravans, that never since have forsaken that trade, but continue to this day, and cross the continent, in various directions. 94

John I. king of Portugal, after many successful battles with the Moors, had at last forced them to cross the sea, and return vanquished to their native country. By this he had changed his former dishonourable name of bastard to the more noble and much more popular one of John the avenger. This did not satisfy him. Assisted by some English navigators, he passed over to Barbary, laid siege to Ceuta, and speedily after made himself master of the city. This early connection with the English arose by his having married Philipina of Lancaster, sister of Henry IV. king of England, by whom he had five sons, all of them heroes, and, at the taking of Ceuta, capable of commanding armies. Henry, the youngest, scarce twenty years of age, was the first that mounted the walls of that city in his father’s presence, and was thereupon created Master of the Order of Christ, a new institution, whose sole end and view was the extirpation of the Mahometan religion.

Although every thing promised fair to John in the war of Africa, yet it early occurred to prince Henry, that a small kingdom like Portugal never could promise to do any thing effectual against the enormous power of the Mahometans, then in possession of extensive dominions in the richest parts of the globe. The sudden rise of Venice was before his eyes, and almost happened in his own time. By applying to trade alone, she had acquired a power sufficient to cope with the stoutest of her enemies. Portugal, small as it was, merited quite another degree of respect; but poverty, ignorance, pride, and idleness prevailed among the poor people; even agriculture itself was in a manner abandoned since the expulsion of the Moors. 95

Prince Henry, from his early years, had been passionately addicted to the study of what is generally known by the name of mathematics, that is, geometry, astronomy, and consequently arithmetic. He was of a liberal turn of mind, devoid of superstition, haughtiness, or passion; the Arab and the Jew were admitted to him with great freedom, as the only masters who were capable of instructing him in those sciences. It was in vain to attempt to rival Venice in possession of the Mediterranean trade: no other way remained but to open the commerce to India by the Atlantic Ocean, by sailing round the point of Africa to the market of spices in India. Full of this thought, he retired to a country palace, and there dedicated the whole of his time to deliberate inquiry. The ignorance and prejudices of the age were altogether against him. The only geography then known was that of the poets. It was the opinion of the Portuguese, that the regions within the tropics were totally uninhabited, scorched by eternal sun-beams, while boiling oceans wasted these burning coasts; and, therefore, they concluded, that every attempt to explore them was little better than downright madness, and a braving, or tempting, of Providence.

But, on the other hand, he found great materials to comfort him, and to make him persist in his resolution. For Greek history, to which he then had access, had recorded two instances, which shewed that the voyage was not only possible, but that it had been actually performed, first by the Phœnicians, under Necho king of Egypt, then by Eudoxus, during the time of Ptolemy Lathyrus, who, after doubling the southern Cape of Africa, arrived in safety at Cadiz. Hanno, too, had sailed from Carthage through the Straits, and 96 reached to 25° of north latitude in the Atlantic Ocean. In more modern times, even in the preceding century, Macham, an Englishman, returning from a voyage on the west coast of Africa, was shipwrecked on the island of Madeira, together with a woman whom he tenderly loved. After her death he became weary of solitude; and having constructed a bark, or canoe, with which he paddled over to the opposite coast, he was taken by the natives, and presented to the Caliph as a curiosity. And the Normans of Dieppe had, as a company, traded in 1364, not fourscore years from prince Henry’s time, as far as Sierra de Leona, only 7° from the Line.

The prince’s humanity to his Moorish prisoners had likewise been rewarded by substantial information; they reported that some of their countrymen of the kingdom of Sus had advanced far into the desert, carrying their water and provisions along with them on camels; that, after many days travel, they came to mines of salt, and, having loaded their cargoes, they proceeded till they came within the limits of the rains; there they found large and populous towns, inhabited by a people totally black and woolly-headed, who reported that there were many countries even beyond them, occupied by numerous and warlike tribes. To complete all, Don Pedro, Henry’s brother, returning from Venice, brought along with him from that city a map, on which the whole coast of the Atlantic Ocean was distinctly traced, and the southern extremity of Africa was represented to be a cape surrounded with the sea, which joined with the Indian Ocean.

No sooner was the prince thus satisfied of the possibility of a passage to India round Africa, than he set about constructing 97 the necessary instruments for navigation. He corrected the solar tables of the Arabs, and made some alterations in the astrolabe: For, strange to tell! the quadrant was not then known in Portugal, though, a hundred years before, Ulughbeg had measured the sun’s height at Samarcand in Persia, with a quadrant of about 400 feet radius, the largest ever constructed, if, indeed, the size of this be not exaggerated.

Henry, who, by his liberality and affability, had drawn together the most learned mathematicians and ablest pilots of the age, now proposed to reduce his speculations to practice. Many ships had sailed in the course of his disquisitions, and ten years had now elapsed before the prince, after all his encouragement, could induce the captains to proceed farther than Cape Non, or, thirty leagues further, to Cape Bojador. To this their courage held good; after which, the fear of fiery oceans reviving in their minds, they returned exceedingly satisfied with their own perseverance and abilities. Henry, though greatly hurt at this behaviour, dissembled the low opinion which he had formed of both. He contented himself with proposing to them different reasons and rewards; and urged them to repeat their voyages, which, however, constantly ended in the same disappointment. And it is probable a much longer time might have been spent in these miscarriages, had not accident, or rather providence, stept in to his assistance.

John Gonsalez, and Tristan Vaz, two gentlemen of his bed-chamber, seeing the impression this behaviour had made on the prince, and having obtained a small ship from him, resolved to double Cape Bojador, and discover the coast 98 beyond it. Whether the fiery oceans might not have presented themselves to these gentlemen, I know not; but a violent storm forced them to sea. After being tossed about in perpetual fear of shipwreck for several days, they at last landed on a small island, which they called Port Santo. These two navigators possessed the true spirit of discovery. Far from giving themselves up for lost in a new world, or content with what they had already done, they set about making the most diligent observation of every thing remarkable in this small spot. The island itself was barren; but, examining the horizon all around, they observed a black fixed spot there, which never either changed its place or dimensions. Satisfied, therefore, that this was land, they returned to the Infant with the news of this double discovery.

Three vessels were speedily equipped by the prince; two of them given to Vaz and Arco, and the third to Bartholomew Perestrello, gentleman of the bed-chamber to Don John his brother. These adventurers were far from disappointing his expectations; they arrived at Port Santo, and proceeded to the fixed spot, which they found to be the island of Madeira, wholly covered with wood; an island that has ever since been of the greatest use to the trade of both Indies, and which has remained to the crown of Portugal, after the greatest part of their other conquests in the east are lost. John I. was now dead, and Edward had succeeded him. The infant Henry, however, still continued the pursuit of his discoveries with the greatest ardour.

Giles D’Anez, stimulated by the success of the last adventures, put to sea with a resolution to double Cape Bojador close in shore, so as to make his voyage a foundation 99 for pushing farther the discovery; and, being lucky in good weather, he fairly doubled the Cape; and, continuing some leagues farther into the bay to the south of it, he returned with the same good fortune to Portugal, after having found the ocean equally as navigable on the other side as on this; and that there was no foundation for those monstrous appearances or difficulties mariners till now had expected to find there.

The successful expedition round Cape Bojador being soon spread abroad through Europe, excited a spirit of adventure in all foreigners; the most capable of whom resorted immediately to prince Henry, from their different countries, which further increased the spirit of the Portuguese, already raised to a very great height. But there still was a party of men, who, not susceptible of great actions themselves, dedicated their time with some success to criticising the enterprises of others. These blamed prince Henry, because, when Portugal was exhausted both of men and money by a necessary war in Africa, he should have chosen that very time to launch out into expences and vain discoveries of countries, in an immense ocean, which must be useless, because incapable of cultivation. And though they did not advance, as formerly, that the ocean was boiling among burning sands, they still thought themselves authorised to assert, that these countries must, from their situation under the sun, be so hot as to turn all the discoverers black, and also to destroy all vegetation. Futile as these reasons were, at another time they would have been sufficient to have blasted all the designs of prince Henry, had they made half the impression upon the king that they did upon the minds of the people. Portugal was then only growing to the pitch 100 of heroism to which it soon after arrived, their spirit being continually fostered by a long succession of wise, brave, and well-informed princes.

Edward, the reigning prince, disdained to give any answer to such objections, otherwise than by doubling his respect and attention for his uncle Henry. To encourage him still further, he conferred upon him for life the sovereignty of Madeira, Port Santo, and all the discoveries he should make on the coast of Africa; and the spiritual jurisdiction of the island of Madeira, upon his new Order of Christ, for ever.

These voyages of discovery were constantly persevered in. Nugno Tristan doubled Cape Blanco, and came to a small river, which, from their finding gold in the hands of the natives, was afterwards called Rio del Oro; and here a fort was afterwards built by the Portuguese, called Arguim. I would not, however, have it supposed, that gold is the produce of any place in the latitude of Cape Blanco. It was brought here from the black nations, far to the southward, to purchase salt from the mines which are in this desert near the Cape. The sight of gold, better than any argument, served to calm the fears, and overcome the scruples, of those who hitherto had been adversaries to these discoveries.

In the year 1445, Denis Fernandes first discovered the great river Senega, the northern banks of which are inhabited by Asenagi Moors, whose colour is tawny, while the southern, or opposite banks, belong to the Jaloffes, or Negro nation, the chief market for the gum-arabic. Passing this river he discovered Cape Verde; and, to his inexpressible 101 satisfaction, though now in the midst of the torrid zone, he found the country abounded with large rivers, and with the most luxuriant verdure. He found a civil war in the nation of Jaloffes. Bemoy, a prince of that nation, had, in a minority, intruded himself into the throne of his brothers, (to whom he was but half blood), by the address of his mother. The eldest of the three brothers preserved the shadow of government, and seemed to favour the usurpation. Bemoy had improved that interval by cultivating the Portuguese friendship to the uttermost. He promised every thing; a place to build their city on the continent, which the king very much desired; and to be a convert to Christianity, the only thing the king wished still more. His eldest brother dying, the king was briskly pressed by the two younger, and steadily supported by the Portuguese, from whom he had borrowed large sums; but still appearing to trifle with the day of his conversion, and the day of his payment, the king ordered the Portuguese to withdraw from his country, and leave him to his fortune. The loss of a battle with his brothers soon reduced him to the necessity of flying across the deserts to Arguim, and thence to Portugal, with a number of his followers. He was received by the king of Portugal with all the honours due to a sovereign prince, and baptised at Lisbon, the king and queen being his sponsors.

Great festivals and illuminations were made at this acquisition to Christianity; and Bemoy appeared at those festivals as the greatest ornament of them, performing feats of horsemanship never before practised in Portugal. The modesty and propriety of his conversation and behaviour in private, and the great dignity and eloquence which he 102 displayed in public, began to give the Portuguese a very different idea of his clan from that which they had formerly entertained.

In the mean time the king went rapidly on with the preparations that were to establish Bemoy in his kingdom; and the festivals were no sooner terminated, than Bemoy found a large army and fleet ready to sail with him, the command of which, unhappily for him and the expedition, was given to Tristan d’Acugna, a soldier of great experience and courage, but proud, passionate, and cruel; the disagreeable name of Bisagudo20 had already been fixed upon him by his countrymen.

The fleet performed the voyage, and the troops landed happily. They were, by their number and valour, far from any apprehension of opposition. The general began immediately to lay the foundation of a fort, without having sufficiently attended to its unhealthy situation. The spot which was chosen being low and marshy, fevers began early to make havock among his men, and the work of course went on proportionably slower. The murmurs of the army against his obstinacy in adhering to the choice of this place, and his fear that he himself should be left alone governor of it, made D’Acugna desperate; when one day, taking his pleasure on board a ship, and having had some words with Bemoy, he stabbed him with his dagger to the heart, so that he fell dead without uttering a word. The fort was abandoned, and the army returned to Portugal, after 103 having cost little less than all prince Henry’s discoveries together had done.

But Heaven rewarded the wisdom of the king by a discovery, the consequences of which more than overpaid him, in his mind, for his loss. Prince Henry’s principal view was to discover the way to India by the southern Cape of Africa; but this as yet was not known to be possible. In order to remedy a disappointment, if any such happened in this sea-voyage, another was attempted by land. We have seen that the common track for the Indian trade was from the east to the west sea, through the desert, the whole breadth of Africa. Prince Henry had projected a route parallel to this to the southward, through a Christian country: For it had been long reported by the Christians from Jerusalem, that a number of monks resorted thither, subjects of a Christian prince in the very heart of Africa, whose dominions were said to reach from the east to the west sea. Several of these monks had been met at Alexandria, whose patriarch had the sole right to send a metropolitan into that country. These facts, though often known, had been as often forgot by the western Christians. Marco Paulo21, a Venetian traveller, had much confused the story, by saying he had met, in his travels through Tartary, with this prince, who they all agreed was a priest, and was called Joannes Presbyter Prete Janni, or Prester John.

The king of Portugal, therefore, chose Peter Covillan and Alphonso de Paiva for his ambassadors. Covillan was a man 104 qualified for the undertaking. He had several times been employed by the late king in very delicate affairs, out of which he extricated himself with great credit by his address and secrecy. He was, besides this, in the vigour of his age, bold, active, and perfectly master of all sorts of arms; modest and chearful in conversation, and, what crowned all, had happily a great readiness in acquiring languages, which enabled him to explain himself wherever he went, without an interpreter; an advantage to which, above all others, we are to ascribe the success of such a journey.

It was at the court of Bemoy that the first certain account of the existence of this Christian prince was procured. This people, on the west coast of Africa, reported, that, inland to the eastward, were many powerful nations and cities, governed by princes totally independent of each other; that the eastermost of these princes was called prince of the Mosaical people, who were neither Pagans nor Idolaters, but professed a religion compounded of the Christian and Jewish.

It seems plain that this intelligence must have been brought by the caravans; or, indeed, the case may have been that the language of the Negroes had, of old, been a dialect of Abyssinian. The black Ethiopians above Thebes are reported to have bestowed much care upon letters; and they certainly reformed the hieroglyphics, and probably invented the Syllabic alphabet, which we know is used in Abyssinia to this day, and which was probably the first among the nations. Be that as it will, the various names which the Senega went by were all Abyssinian words. Senega comes from Asenagi, which is Abyssinian, and signifies carriers, 105 or caravans; Dengui, a stone, or rock; Angueah, a tree of that name; Anzo, a crocodile; and, at the same time, all these are names of Abyssinian rivers.

It was at Benin, another Negro country, that the king again received a confirmation of the existence of a Christian prince, who was said to inhabit the heart of Africa to the south-east of this state. The people of Benin reported him to be a prince exceedingly powerful; that his name was Ogané, and his kingdom about 250 leagues to the eastward. They added, that the kings of Benin received from him a brass cross and a staff as their investiture. It should seem that this Ogané is but a corruption of Jan, or Janhoi, which title the eastern Christians had given to the king of Abyssinia. But it is very difficult to account for the knowledge of Abyssinia in the kingdom of Benin, not only on account of the distance, but likewise, because several of the most savage nations of the world, the Galla and Shangalla, occupy the intervening space.

The court of Abyssinia, as we shall see afterwards, did, indeed, then reside in Shoa, the south-east extremity of the kingdom, and, by its power and influence, probably might have pushed its dominion through these barbarians, down to the neighbourhood of Benin on the western ocean. But all this I must confess to be a simple conjecture of mine, of which, in the country itself, I never found the smallest confirmation.

Amha Yasous (prince of Shoa) being at court, on a visit to the king at Gondar, in the years 1770 and 1771, and the strictest friendship subsisting between us, every endeavour 106 possible was used on my part to examine this affair to the bottom. A number of letters were written, and messengers sent; and, at this prince’s desire, his father directed, that all the records of government should be consulted to satisfy me. But never any thing occurred which gave room to imagine the prince of Shoa had ever been sovereign of Benin, nor was the western ocean, or that state, known to them in my time. Yet the country alluded to could be no other than Abyssinia; and, indeed, the crooked staff, as well as the cross, corroborate this opinion, unless the whole was an invention of the Negroes, to flatter the king of Portugal.

That prince was resolved no longer to delay the discovery of the markets of the spice-trade in India, and the passage over land, through Abyssinia, to the eastern ocean. He, therefore, as has been before said, dispatched Covillan and de Paiva to Alexandria, with the necessary letters and credit. They had likewise a map, or chart, given them, made under the direction of prince Henry, which they were to correct, or to confirm, according as it needed. They were to enquire what were the principal markets for the spice, and particularly the pepper-trade in India; and what were the different channels by which this was conveyed to Europe; whence came the gold and silver, the medium of this trade; and, above all, they were to inform themselves distinctly, whether it was possible to arrive in India by sailing round the southern promontory of Africa.

From Alexandria these two travellers proceeded to Cairo, thence to Suez, the port on the bottom of the Red Sea, where joining a caravan of western Moors, they continued their 107 route to Aden, a rich trading town, without the Straits of Babelmandeb. Here they separated: Covillan set sail for India, De Paiva for Suakem, a small trading town and island in Barbaria, or Barabra of the ancients. What other circumstances occurred we know not, only that De Paiva, attempting his journey this way, lost his life, and was never more heard of.

Covillan, more fortunate, passed over to Calicut and Goa in India; then crossed the Indian Ocean to Sofala, to inspect the mines; then he returned to Aden, and so to Cairo, where he expected to meet his companion De Paiva; but here he heard of his death. However, he was there met by two Jews with letters from the king of Abyssinia, the one called Abraham, the other Joseph. Abraham he sent back with letters, but took Joseph along with him again to Aden, and thence they both proceeded to Ormus in the Persian Gulf. Here they separated, and the Jew returned home by the caravans that pass along the desert to Aleppo. Covillan, now solely intent upon the discovery of Abyssinia, returned to Aden, and, crossing the Straits of Babelmandeb, landed in the dominions of that prince, whose name was Alexander, and whom he found at the head of his army, levying contributions upon his rebellious subjects. Alexander received him kindly, but rather from motives of curiosity than from any expectation of advantage which would result from his embassy. He took Covillan along with him to Shoa, where the court then resided.

Covillan returned no more to Europe. A cruel policy of Abyssinia makes this a favour constantly denied to strangers. He married, and obtained large possessions; continued 108 greatly in the favour of several succeeding princes, and was preferred to the principal offices, in which, there is no doubt, he appeared with all the advantage a polished and instructed mind has over an ignorant and barbarous one. Frequent dispatches from him came to the king of Portugal, who, on his part, spared no expence to keep open the correspondence. In his journal, Covillan described the several ports in India which he had seen; the temper and disposition of the princes; the situation and riches of the mines of Sofala: He reported that the country was very populous, full of cities both powerful and rich; and he exhorted the king to pursue, with unremitting vigour, the passage round Africa, which he declared to be attended with very little danger; and that the Cape itself was well known in India. He accompanied this description with a chart, or map, which he had received from the hands of a Moor in India, where the Cape, and cities all around the coast, were exactly represented.

Upon this intelligence the king fitted out three ships under Bartholomew Dias, who had orders to inquire after the king of Abyssinia on the western ocean. Dias passed on to lat. 24½ deg. south, and there set up the arms of the king of Portugal in token of possession. He then sailed for the harbour of the Herdsmen, so called from the multitude of cows seen on land; and, as it should seem, not knowing whither he was going, came to a river which he called Del Infante, from the captain’s name that first discovered it, having, without dreaming of it, passed that formidable Cape, the object so much desired by the Portuguese. Here he was tossed for many days by violent storms as he came near land, being more and more in the course of variable winds, but, obstinately 109 persisting to discover the coast, he at last came within sight of the Cape, which he called the Cape of Tempests, from the rough treatment his vessel had met in her passage round it.

The great end was now obtained. Dias and his companions had really suffered much, and, upon their return, they did not fail to do ample justice to their own bravery and perseverance; in doing this, they had conjured up so many storms and dreadful sights, that, all the remaining life of king John, there was no more talk but of this Cape: Only the king, to hinder a bad omen, instead of the Cape of Tempests, ordered it to be called the Cape of Good Hope.

Although the discovery now was made, there were not wanting a considerable number of people of the greatest consequence who were for abandoning it altogether; one of their reasons was curious, and what, if their behaviour afterwards had not been beyond all instance heroic, would have led us to imagine their spirit of religion and conquest had both cooled since the days of prince Henry. They were afraid, lest, after having discovered a passage to India, the depriving the Moorish states of their revenues from the spice-trade, should unite these powers to their destruction. Now, to destroy their revenues effectually, and thereby ruin their power, was the very motive which set prince Henry upon the discovery, as worthy the Grand Master of the Order of Christ; an order founded in the blood of unbelievers, and devoted particularly to the extirpation of the Mahometan religion. 110

Don Emmanuel, then king, having no such apprehensions, resolved to abide the consequences of a measure the most arduous ever undertaken by any nation, and which, though it had cost a great deal of time and expence, had yet succeeded beyond their utmost expectations. It was not till after long deliberation that he fixed upon Vasques de Gama, a man of the first distinction, remarkable for courage and great presence of mind. Before his departure, the king put into his hands the journal of Peter Covillan, with his chart, and letters of credit to all the princes in India of whom he had obtained any knowledge.

The behaviour of Vasques de Gama, at parting, was far from being characteristic of the soldier or great man: his processions and tapers favoured much more of the ostentatious devotion of a bigotted little-minded priest, and was much more calculated to depress the spirits of his soldiers, than to encourage them to the service they were then about to do for their country. It served only to revive in their minds the hardships that Dias had met off the Terrible Cape, and persuade them there was in their expedition much more danger than glory. I would not be understood as meaning to condemn all acts of devotion before military expeditions, but would have them always short, ordinary, and uniform. Every thing further inspires in weak minds a sense of danger, and makes them despond upon any serious appearance of difficulty.

July 4th, 1497, Vasques, with his small fleet, sailed from Lisbon; and, as the art of navigation was considerably improved, he stood out to sea till he made the Canary Islands, and then those of Cape de Verde, where he anchored, took 111 in water and other refreshments. After which he was four months struggling with contrary winds and blowing weather, and at last obliged, through perfect fatigue, to run into a large bay called St Helena22, in lat. 32° 32´ south. The inhabitants of this bay were black, of low stature, and their language not understood, though it afterwards was found to be the same with that of the Cape. They were cloathed with skins of antelopes, which abounded in the country, since known to be that of the Hottentots; their arms were the horns and bones of beasts and fishes, for they had no knowledge of iron.

The Portuguese were unacquainted with the trade-winds in those southern latitudes; and Vasques had departed for India, in a most unfavourable season of the year. The 16th of November they sailed for the Cape with a south-west wind; but that very day, the weather changing, a violent storm came on, which continued increasing; so, although on the 18th they discovered their long-desired Cape, they did not dare or attempt to pass it. Then it was seen how much stronger the impressions were that Dias had left imprinted in their minds, than those of duty, obedience, and resignation, which they had so pompously vowed at the chapel, or hermitage. All the crew mutinied, and refused to pass farther; and it was not the common sailors only; the pilots and masters were at their head. Vasques, satisfied in his mind that there was nothing extraordinary in the danger, persevered to pass the Cape in spite of all difficulties; and the officers, animated with the same ardour, seized the 112 most mutinous of their masters and pilots, and confined them close below in heavy irons.

Vasques himself, taking hold of the rudder, continued to steer the ship with his own hand, and stood out to sea, to the astonishment of the bravest seaman on board. The storm lasted two days, without having in the least shaken the resolution of the admiral, who, on the 20th of November, saw his constancy rewarded by doubling that Cape, which he did, as it were, in triumph, sounding his trumpets, beating his drums, and permitting to his people all sorts of pastimes which might banish from their minds former apprehensions, and induce them to agree with him, that the point had very aptly been called the Cape of Good Hope.

On the 25th they anchored in a creek called Angra de Saint Blaze. Soon after their arrival there appeared a number of the inhabitants on the mountains, and on the shore. The general, fearing some surprise, landed his men armed. But, first, he ordered small brass bells, and other trinkets, to be thrown out of the boats on shore, which the blacks greedily took up, and ventured so near as to take one of them out of the general’s own hand. Upon his landing, he was welcomed with the sound of flutes and singing. Vasques, on his part, ordered his trumpets to sound, and his men to dance round them.

ALL along from St Blaze, for more than sixty leagues, they found the coast remarkably pleasant, full of high and fair trees. On Christmas day they made land, and entered a river which they called the river of the kings; and all the 113 distance between this and St Blaze they named Terra de Natal. The weather being mild, they took to their boats to row along the shore, on which were observed both men and women of a large stature, but who seemed to be of quiet and civil behaviour. The general ordered Martin Alonzo, who spoke several languages of the Negroes, to land; and he was so well received by the chief, or king, that the admiral sent him several trifles, with which he was wonderfully pleased, and offered, in return, any thing he wanted of the produce of his country.

On the 15th of January, in the year 1498, having taken in plenty of water, which the Negroes, of their own accord, helped them to put on board, they left this civil nation, steering past a length of coast terminated by a Cape called the Cape of Currents. There the coast of Natal ends, and that of Sofala begins, to the northward of the Cape. At this place, Gama from the south joined Covillan’s track from the north, and these two Portuguese had completely made the circuit of Africa.

114

ISCANDER, or ALEXANDER.
From 1478 to 1495.

Iscander declares War with Adel—Good Conduct of the King—Betrayed and murdered by Za Saluce.

As soon as the king Bæda Mariam was dead, the history of Abyssinia informs us, that a tumultuous meeting of the nobles brought from the mountain of Geshen the queen Romana, with her son Iscander, who upon his arrival was crowned without any opposition.

It is to be observed in the Abyssinian annals, that very frequent minorities happen. A queen-mother, or regent, with two or three of the greatest interest at court, are, during the minority, in possession of the king’s person, and govern in his name. The transactions of this minority, too, are as carefully inserted in the annals of the kingdom as any other part of the subsequent government, but as the whole of these minorities are but one continued chain of quarrels, plots, and treachery, as soon as the king comes of age, the greatest part of this reign of his ministers is cancelled, as being the acts of subjects, and not worthy to be 115 inserted in their histories; which they entitle Kebra Za Negust, the greatness or atchievements of their kings. This, however political in itself, is a great disadvantage to history, by concealing from posterity the first cause of the most important transactions.

For several years after Iscander ascended the throne, the queen his mother, together with the Acab Saat, Tesfo Georgis, and Betwudet Amdu, governed the kingdom despotically under the name of the young king. Accordingly, after some years sufferance, a conspiracy was formed, at the head of which were two men of great power, Abba Amdu and Abba Hasabo, but the conspirators proving unsuccessful, some of them were imprisoned, some put to death, and others banished to unwholesome places, there to perish with hunger and fevers.

The king from his early age had shewn a passionate desire for a war with Adel, and that prince, whose country had been so often desolated by the Abyssinian armies, omitted no opportunity of creating an interest at that court, that should keep things in a quiet state. In this, however, he was much interrupted at present by a neighbouring chief of Arar, named Maffudi. This man, exceedingly brave, capable of enduring the greatest hardships, and a very great bigot to the Mahometan religion, had made a vow, that, every Lent, he would spend the whole forty days in some part of the Abyssinian kingdom; and to this purpose he had raised, at his own expence, a small body of veteran troops, whom he inspired with the same spirit and resolution. Sometimes he fell on one part of the frontier, sometimes upon another; slaying, without mercy, all that made 116 resistance, and driving off whole villages of men, women, and children, whom he sent into Arabia, or India, to be sold as slaves.

It was a matter of great difficulty for the king of Adel to persuade the Abyssinians that Maffudi acted without his instigation. The young king was one who could not distinguish Adel from Arar, or Mahomet’s army from Maffudi’s. He bore with very great impatience the excesses every year committed by the latter; but he was over-ruled by his nobility at home, and his thoughts turned as much as possible to hunting, to which he willingly gave himself up; and, tho’ but fifteen years of age, was the person, in all Abyssinia, most dexterous at managing his arms. At last, being arrived at the age of seventeen, and returning from having observed a very successful expedition made by Maffudi against his territories, he ordered Za Saluce, his first minister, commander in chief, and governor of Amhara, to raise the whole forces to the southward, while he himself collected the nobility in Angot and Tigré. With those, as soon as the rainy season was over, he descended into the kingdom of Adel.

The king of Adel had been forced into this war, yet, like a wise prince, he was not unprepared for it. He had advanced directly towards the king, but had not passed his frontiers. Some inhabitants of a village called Arno, all Mahometans, but tributary to the king of Abyssinia, had murdered the governor the king had set over them. Iscander marched directly to destroy it, which he had no sooner accomplished, than the Moorish army presented itself. The battle was maintained obstinately on both sides, till the troops under 117 Za Saluce withdrew in the heat of the engagement, leaving the king in the midst of his enemies. This treason, however, seemed to have inspired the small army that remained with new courage, so that the day was as yet dubious, when Iscander, being engaged in a narrow pass, and seeing himself close pressed by a Moor who bore in his hand the green standard of Mahomet, turned suddenly upon him, and slew him with a javelin; and, having wrested the colours from him as he was falling, he, with the point of the spear that bore the ensign, struck the king of Adel’s son dead to the ground, which immediately caused the Moors to retreat.

The young prince was too prudent to follow this victory in the state the army then was; for that of Adel, though it had retreated, did not disperse. Za Saluce was returning by long marches to Amhara, exciting all those in his way to revolt; and it was high time, therefore, for the king to follow him. But, unequal as he was in strength to the Moors, he could not reconcile it with his own honour to leave their army masters of the field. He, therefore, first consulted the principal officers of his troops, then harangued his men, which, the historian says, he did in the most pathetic and masterly manner; so that, with one voice, they desired instantly to be led to the Moors. The king is said to have ranged his little army in a manner that astonished the oldest officers. He then sent a defiance to the Moors, by several prisoners whom he released. They, however, more desirous to keep him from ravaging the country than to fight another battle, continued quiet in their tents; and the king, after remaining on the field till near noon, drew off his troops in the presence of his enemy, making a retreat 118 which would not have been unworthy of the hero whose name he bore.

The king, in his return to Shoa, left his troops, which was the northern army, in the northern provinces, as he passed; so that he came to Shoa with a very small retinue, hearing that Za Saluce had gone to Amhara. This traitor, however, had left his creatures behind him, after instructing them what they were to do. Accordingly, the second day after Iscander’s arrival in Tegulat, the capital of Shoa, they set upon him, during the night, in a small house in Aylo Meidan, and murdered him while he was sleeping. They concealed his body for some days in a mill, but Taka Christos, and some others of the king’s friends, took up the corpse and exposed it to the people, who, with one accord, proclaimed Andreas, son of Iscander, king; and Za Saluce and his adherents, traitors.

In the mean time, Za Saluce, far from finding the encouragement he expected in Amhara, was, upon his first appearance, set upon by the nobility of that province; and, being deserted by his troops, he was taken prisoner; his eyes were put out, and, being mounted on an ass, he was carried amidst the curses of the people through the provinces of Amhara and Shoa.

Iscander was succeeded by his son Andreas, or Amda Sion, an infant, who reigned seven months only.

A wonderful confusion seems to be introduced at this time into history, by the Portuguese writers. Iscander is said to die in the 1490. He began, as they say, to reign 119 in 1475, and this is confirmed by Ludolf; and, on all hands, it is allowed he reigned 17 years, which would have brought the last year of his reign to 1492. It seems also to be agreed by the generality of them, that Covillan saw and conversed with this prince, Iscander, some time before his death: this he very well might have done, if that prince lived to the 1492, and Peter Covillan came into Abyssinia in 1490, as Galvan says in his father’s memoirs. But then Tellez informs us expressly, that Iscander was dead 6 months before the arrival of Peter Covillan in that country: If Peter Covillan arrived 6 months after the death of Iscander, it must have been in the end of his son’s reign, Amda Sion, who was an infant, and reigned only 7 months.

Alvarez omits this king, Amda Sion, altogether, and so does Tellez; and there is a heap of mistakes here that shew these Portuguese historians paid very little attention to the chronology of these reigns. They call Alexander the father of Naod, when he was really but his brother; and Helena, they say, was David’s mother, when, in fact, she was his grandmother, or rather his grandfather’s wife; for Helena, who was Iteghé in the time of David the III. had never either son or daughter. So that if I differ, as in fact I do, 4 years, or thereabout, in this account, I do not think in those remote times, when the language and manner of accounting was so little known to these strangers, that I, therefore, should reject my own account and servilely adopt theirs, and the more so, because, as we shall see in its proper place, by the examination and comparison made by help of an eclipse of the sun in the 13th year of Claudius’ reign in the 1553, and counting from that downwards to my arrival in Abyssinia, and backwards to Iscander, that that prince must have begun 120 his reign in 1478, and reigning 17 years, did not die till the year 1495, and therefore must have seen Peter Covillan, and conversed with him, if he had arrived in Abyssinia so early as the 1490.

NAOD.
From 1495 to 1508.

Wise Conduct of the King—Prepares far a War with the Moors—Concludes an honourable Peace with Adel.

After the unfortunate death of the young king Alexander, the people in general, wearied of minorities, unanimously chose Naod for their king. He was Alexander’s younger brother, the difference of ages being but one year, though he was not by the same mother, but by the king’s second wife Calliope. He was born at a town called Gabargué, the day the royal army was cut off in his father’s time, when both the Betwudets perished. From this circumstance, the Empress Helena and her party had used some underhand means to set him aside as unfortunate, and in his place to put Anquo Israel, Bæda Mariam’s youngest son, that they might govern him and the kingdom during his non-age. But Taka Christos, their man of confidence, being, on his first declaration of such intentions, cut off by the army in Dawaro, Naod was immediately 121 proclaimed, and brought from the mountain of Geshen.

Although Naod was in the prime of life, and vigorous both in body and mind, yet such were the circumstances of the kingdom at his accession, that it seemed a task too arduous for any one man. The continual intrigues of the empress, the quantity of Mahometan gold which was circulating on every occasion throughout the court, the little success the army had in Adel, as also the treachery of Za Saluce, and the untimely end of the young prince, who seemed to promise a remedy to the misfortunes, had so disunited the principal people in the government, that there did not seem a sufficient number of men worthy of trust to assist the king with their councils, or fill, with any degree of dignity, the places that were vacant.

Naod was no sooner seated on the throne than he published a very general and comprehensive amnesty. By proclamation he declared, “That any person who should upbraid another with being a party in the misfortunes of past times, or say that he had been privy to this or to that conspiracy, or had been a favourite of the empress, or a partizan of Za Saluce, or had received bribes from the Moors, should, without delay, be put to death.” This proclamation had the very best effect, as it quieted the mind of every guilty person when he saw the king, from whom he feared an inquiry, cutting off all possible means by which it could be procured against him. Andreas a monk, a man of quality, and of very great consequence in that country, a relation of the king by his mother, having affected to talk lightly of the proclamation, the king sent for 122 him, and ordered the tip of his tongue to be cut off in his presence. This man, whose fault seems only to have been in his tongue, and of whom a very great character is given, lived in the succeeding reign to give the king a very distinguished proof of his attachment to his family, and love of his country.

Naod having thus prudently quieted disturbances at home, turned his thoughts to the war with Maffudi; for the king of Adel himself had made his peace through mediation of the empress Helena; and this king, more politic than Alexander his brother, was willing to dissemble with the king of Adel, that he might fight his two adversaries singly: He, therefore, prepared a smaller army than was usual for the king to head, without suffering a Moor of any kind to serve in it.

It was known to a day when Maffudi was to enter upon his expeditions against Abyssinia. For near thirty years he had begun to burn the churches, and drive off the people and cattle on the first day of Lent; and, as Lent advanced, he with his army penetrated farther up the country. The Abyssinians are the strictest people in the world in keeping fasts. They are so austere that they taste no sort of animal food, nor butter, eggs, oil, or wine. They will not, though ever so thirsty, drink a cup of water till six o’clock in the evening, and then are contented, perhaps, with dry or sour leaven bread, the best of them only making use of honey; by which means they become so weak as to be unable to bear any fatigue. This was Maffudi’s reason for invading the country in Lent, at which time scarce a Christian, through fasting, was able to bear arms. 123

Naod, like a wise prince who had gained the confidence of his army, would not carry with him any man who did not, for that time, live in the same free and full manner he was used to do in festivals. He himself set the example; and Andreas the monk, after taking upon himself a vow of a whole year’s fasting for the success of the army, declared to them, that there was more merit in saving one Christian village from slavery, and turning Mahometan, than in fasting their whole lives.

The king then marched against Maffudi; and having taken very strong ground, as if afraid of his army’s weakness, the Moors, contrary to advice of their leader, attacked the king’s camp in the most careless and presumptuous manner. They had no sooner entered, however, by ways left open on purpose for them, than they found the king’s army in order to receive them, and were so rudely attacked, that most of those who had penetrated into the camp were left dead upon the spot. The king continued the pursuit with his troops, retook all the prisoners and cattle which Maffudi was driving away, and advanced towards the frontiers of Adel, where ambassadors met him, hoping, on the part of the king, that his intention was not to violate the treaty of peace.

To this the king answered, That, so far from it, he would confirm the peace with them, but with this condition, that they must deliver up to him all the Abyssinians that were to be found in their country taken by Maffudi in his last expedition, adding, that he would stay fifteen days there to expect his answer. The king of Adel, desirous of peace, and 124 not a little terrified at the disaster of Maffudi, hitherto reckoned invincible, gathered together all the slaves as soon as possible, and returned them to the king.

Naod having now, by his courage and prudence, freed himself from fear of a foreign war, returned home, and set himself like a wise prince to the reforming of the abuses that prevailed everywhere among his people, and to the cultivation of the arts of peace. He died a natural death, after having reigned 13 years.

DAVID III.
From 1508 to 1540.

David, an Infant, Succeeds—Queen sends Matthew Ambassador to Portugal—David takes the Field—Defeat of the Moors—Arrival of an Embassy from Portugal—Disastrous War with Adel.

The vigorous reign of Naod had at least suspended the fate of the whole empire; and, had it not been that they still persisted in that ruinous and dangerous measure of following minority with minority, by the election of children to the throne, it is probable this kingdom would have escaped the greatest part of those dismal calamities 125 that fell upon it in the sequel. But the Iteghé Helena, and the Abuna Marcos, (now become her creature) had interest enough, notwithstanding the apparent necessities of the times, to place David son of Naod upon the throne, a child of eleven years old, that they might take upon themselves the government of the kingdom; whereas Anquo Israel (third son of Bæda Mariam) was of an age proper to govern, and whom they would have preferred to Naod for the same reason, merely because he was then a child.

Besides the desire of governing, another motive operated, which, however good in itself, was very criminal from the present circumstances. A peace with Adel was what the empress Helena constantly desired; for she could not see with indifference the destruction of her own country, far less contribute to it. She was herself by origin a Moor, daughter of Mahomet, governor for the king in Dawaro; had been suspected, so early as her husband’s time, of preferring the welfare of her own country to that of the kingdom of Abyssinia.

This princess, perfectly informed of the interests of both nations, seems, in her whole conduct, to have acted upon the most judicious and sensible principles. She knew the country of Adel to be, by situation and interest, perfectly commercial; that part of Africa, the opposite Arabia, and the peninsula of the Indies, were but three partners joined in one trade; they mutually consumed each other’s produce; they mutually contributed to export the joint produce of the three countries to distant parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa; which three continents then constituted the whole known world. When Adel was at peace with Abyssinia, 126 then the latter became rich, from the gold, ivory, coffee, cattle, hides, and all manner of provision, procured by the former from every part of the mountainous tract above it. Trade flourished and plenty followed it. The merchants carried every species of goods to the most distant provinces in safety, equally to the advantage of Abyssinia and Adel. These advantages, so sensibly felt, were maintained by bribery, and a constant circulation of Mahometan gold in the court of Abyssinia; the kingdom, however, thus prospered. A war with Adel, on the contrary, had its origin in a violent desire of a barbarous people, such as the Abyssinians were, to put themselves in possession of riches which their neighbours had gained by trade and industry.

She saw that, even in this the worst of cases, nothing utterly destructive could possibly happen to the Abyssinians; in their inroads into that country, they plundered the markets and got, at the risk of their lives, India stuffs of every kind, for which else they would have paid money. On the other hand, the people of Adel, when conquerors, acquired no stuffs, no manufactures, but the persons of the Abyssinians themselves, whom they carried into slavery, and sold in Arabia, and all parts of Asia, at immense profits. Next to gold they are the most agreeable and valuable merchandise in every part of the east; and these again, being chiefly the idle people who delighted in war, their absence promoted the more desirable event of peace.

In this state we see that war was but another species of commerce between the two countries, though peace was the most eligible state for them both; and this the empress Helena had constantly endeavoured to maintain, but could 127 not succeed among a people fond of war, by any other means, but by giving them a minor for their king, who was by the law of the land under her direction, as the country was, during his minority, under her regency.

Although this, the ordinary state of the empress’s politics, had hitherto answered well between the kingdoms, when no other parties were engaged, the introduction of a third power, and its influence, totally changed that system. The Turks, an enemy not yet known in any formidable line by the southern part of Africa, or Asia, now appeared under a form that made all those southern states tremble.

Selim, emperor of Constantinople, had defeated Canso el Gauri, Soldan of Egypt, and slain him in the field. After a second battle he had taken Cairo, the capital of that country; and, under the specious pretence of a violation of the law of nations, by Tomum Bey, the successor, who was said to have put his ambassadors to death, he had hanged that prince upon one of the principal gates of his own capital; and, by this execution, had totally destroyed the succession of the Mamalukes. Sinan Basha, the great general and minister of Selim, in a very few months over-ran all the peninsula of Arabia, to the verge of the Indian Ocean.

These people, trained to war, Mahomet had inspired with enthusiasm, and led them to the conquest of the East. Trade and luxury had, after that, disarmed and reduced them to much the same situation as, in a former age, they had been found by Augustus Cæsar. Sinan Basha, with a troop of veterans, had, by degrees extirpated the native princes of the country; those that resisted, by force; and those that 128 submitted to him, by treachery; and in their place, in every principal town, he had substituted Turkish officers of confidence, strongly supported by troops of Janizaries, who knew no other government but martial law.

War had now changed its form entirely under these new conquerors. Muskets, and large trains of artillery, were introduced against javelins, lances, and arrows, the only arms then known in Arabia, and in the opposite continent of Abyssinia. A large fleet, crowded with soldiers, and filled with military stores, the very name of which, as well as their destructive qualities, were till now unknown in these southern regions, were employed by the Turks to extend their conquest to India, where, though by the superior valour of the Portuguese they were constantly disappointed in their principal object, they nevertheless, in their passage outward and homeward, reinforced their several posts in Arabia, from which they looked for assistance and protection, had any enemy placed himself in their way, or a storm, or other unexpected misfortune, overtaken them in their return.

These Janizaries lived upon the very bowels of commerce. They had, indeed, for a shew of protecting it, established customhouses in their various ports; but they soon made it appear, that the end proposed by these was only to give them a more distinct knowledge who were the subjects from whom they could levy the most enormous extortions. Jidda, Zibid, and Mocha, the places of consequence nearest to Abyssinia on the Arabian shore, Suakem, a sea-port town on the very barriers of Abyssinia, in the immediate way of their caravan to Cairo, on the African side, were each under 129 the command of a Turkish basha, and garrisoned by Turkish troops sent thither from Constantinople by the emperors Selim and Soliman, his successors.

The peaceable Arabian merchants, full of that good faith which successful commerce inspires, fled everywhere from the violence and injustice of these Turkish tyrants, and landed in safety their riches and persons on the opposite shore of the kingdom of Adel. The trade from India, flying from the same enemy, took refuge in Adel among its own correspondents, the Moorish merchants, during the violent and impolitic tyranny that everywhere took place under this Turkish oppression.

Zeyla is a small island, on the very coast of Adel, opposite to Arabia Felix without the Straits of Babelmandeb, upon the entrance of the Indian Ocean. The Turks of Arabia, though they were blind to the cause, were sensible of the great influx of trade into the opposite kingdom. They took possession, therefore, of Zeyla, where they established what they called a Customhouse, and by means of that post, and gallies cruising in the narrow Straits, they laid the Indian trade to Adel under heavy contributions, that might, in some measure, indemnify them for the great desertion their violence and injustice had occasioned in Arabia.

This step threatened the very existence both of Adel and Abyssinia; and considering the vigorous government of the one, and the weak politics and prejudices of the other, it is more than probable the Turks would have subdued both Adel and Abyssinia, had they not, in India their chief object, met the Portuguese, strongly established, and governed 130 by a succession of kings who had not in any age their equals, and seconded by officers and soldiers who, for discipline, courage, love to their country, and affection to their sovereign were, perhaps, superior to any troops, or any set of individuals, that, as far as we can judge from history, have ever yet appeared in the world.

It was not now a time for a woman to reign, nor, which was the same thing, to place a child upon the throne. The empress Helena saw this distinctly; but her ambition made her prefer the love of reigning to the visible necessities and welfare of her country. She knew the progress and extent of the Portuguese power in India; and saw plainly there was no prospect, but in their assistance, at once to save both Abyssinia and Adel.

Peter Covillan, sent thither as ambassador by John king of Portugal, had, for two reigns, been detained in Abyssinia, with a constant refusal of leave to return. He was now become an object of curiosity rather than use. However, except his liberty, he had wanted nothing. The empress had married him nobly in the country; had given him large appointments, both as to profit and dignity. She now began to be sensible of the consequence of having with her a man of his abilities, who could open to her the method of corresponding effectually both with India and Portugal in their own language, to which, as well as to the persons to whom her letters were to be addressed, she was then an utter stranger.

She had about her court an Armenian merchant named Matthew, a person of great trust and discretion, who had 131 been long accustomed to go to the several kingdoms of the East upon mercantile commissions for the king and for his nobles. He had been at Cairo, Jerusalem, Ormus, Ispahan, and in the East Indies on the coast of Malabar; both in places conquered by the Portuguese, and in those that yet held out under their native Pagan princes. He was one of those factors which, as I have already said, are employed by the king and great men in Abyssinia to sell or barter, in the places above mentioned, such part of their revenue as are paid them in kind.

These men are chiefly Greeks, or Armenians, but the preference is always given to the latter. Both nations pay caratch, or capitation, to the Grand Signior, (whose subjects they are) and both have, in consequence, passports, protections, and liberty to trade wherever they please throughout the empire, without being liable to those insults and extortions from the Turkish officers that other strangers are.

The Armenians, of all the people in the East, are those most remarkable for their patience and sobriety. They are generally masters of most of the eastern languages; are of strong, robust constitutions; of all people, the most attentive to the beasts and merchandise they have in charge; exceedingly faithful, and content with little. This Matthew, queen Helena chose for her ambassador to Portugal, and joined a young Abyssinian with him, who died in the voyage. He was charged with letters to the king, which, with the other dispatches, as they are long, and abound with fiction and bombast rather than truth and facts, I have not troubled myself to transcribe; they are, besides, in many printed collections23. 132

It appears clearly from these letters, that they were the joint compositions of Covillan, who knew perfectly the manner of corresponding with his court upon dangerous subjects, and of the simple Abyssinian confidents of the empress Helena, who, unacquainted with embassies or correspondence with princes, or the ill consequence that these letters would be of to their ambassador and his errand, if they happened to be intercepted by an enemy, told plainly all they desired and wished to execute by the assistance of the Portuguese. Thus, in the first part of the letter, (which we shall suppose dictated by Covillan) the empress remits the description of her wants, and what is the subject of the embassy, to Matthew her ambassador, whom she qualifies as her confidential servant, instructed in her most secret intentions; desiring the king of Portugal to believe what he shall report from her to him in private, as if they were her own words uttered immediately from her to him in person. So far was prudent; such a conduct as we should expect from a man like Covillan, long accustomed to be trusted with the secret negociations of his sovereign.

But the latter end of his dispatches (the work, we suppose, of Abyssinian statesmen) divulges the whole secret. It explains the motives of this embassy in the clearest manner, desiring the king of Portugal to send a sufficient force to destroy Mecca and Medina; to assist them with a sufficient number of ships, and to annihilate the Turkish power by sea; while they, by land, should extirpate all the Mahometans on their borders; and it stigmatizes these Mahometans, both Turks and Moors, with the most opprobrious names it was possible to devise. 133

With the first part of these dispatches, it is plain, Matthew, as an envoy, might have passed unmolested; he had only to give to the secret wishes of the empress, with which he was charged, what kind of mercantile colour he pleased. But the last part of the letter brought home to him a charge of the deepest dye, both of sacrilege and high-treason, that he meditated against the Ottoman empire, whose Raya24 he was; and, there can be no doubt, had these letters been intercepted and read, Matthew’s embassy and life would have ended together under some exquisite species of torture. This, indeed, he seems to have apprehended; as, after his arrival in India, he constantly refused to shew his dispatches, even to the Portuguese viceroy himself, from whom, in the instant, he had received very singular favour and protection.

The king, when of age, never could be brought to acknowledge this embassy by Matthew; but, as we shall see, did constantly deny it. If we believe the Portuguese, the despair of the empress was so great, that she offered one-third of the kingdom to the king of Portugal if he relieved her. Nothing of this kind appears in the letters; but, if this offer was part of Matthew’s private dispatches, we may see a reason why David did not wish to own the commission and offer as his.

Matthew had a safe passage to Dabul in India, but here his misfortunes began. The governor, taking him for a spy, confined him in close prison. But Albuquerque, then viceroy of India, residing at Goa, who had himself a design 134 upon Abyssinia, hearing that such a person, in such a character, was arrived, sent and took him out of the hands of the governor of Dabul, where his sufferings else would not have so quickly ended. All the Portuguese cried out upon seeing such an ambassador as Matthew sent to their master; sometimes they pretended that he was a spy of the Sultan, at other times he was an impostor, a cook, or some other menial servant.

Albuquerque treated with him privately before he landed, to make his commissions known to him; but he expressly refused shewing any letter unless to the king himself in Portugal. This behaviour hurt him in the eyes of the viceroy, who was therefore disposed, with the rest of his officers, to slight him when he should come ashore. But Matthew, now out of danger, and knowing his person to be sacred, would no longer be treated like a private person. He sent to let the viceroy, bishop, and clergy know, that, besides his consequence as an ambassador, which demanded their respect, he was the bearer of a piece of wood of the true cross, which he carried as a present to the king of Portugal; and, therefore, he required them, as they would avoid an imputation of sacrilege, to shew to that precious relict the utmost respect, and celebrate its arrival as a festival. No more was necessary after this. The whole streets of Goa were filled with processions; the troops were all under arms; the viceroy, and the principal officers, met Matthew at his landing, and conveyed him to the palace, where he was magnificently lodged and feasted. But nothing could long overcome the prejudices the Portuguese had imbibed upon the first sight of him; and, notwithstanding he carried a piece of the true cross, both he and it soon fell into perfect oblivion: 135 Nor was it till 1513, after he had staid three years in India, that he got leave to proceed to Portugal by a fleet returning home loaded with spices.

Damianus Goez the historian, though apparently a man of good sense and candour, cannot conjecture why this Armenian was sent as an ambassador, and wishes to be resolved why not an Abyssinian nobleman. But it is obvious from the character I have already given of him, there could be nobody in the empress’s power that had half his qualifications; and, besides, an Abyssinian nobleman would not have ventured to go, as knowing very well that everywhere beyond the limits of his own country he would have been without protection, and the first Turk in whose power he might have fallen would have sold him for a slave. In no other character is any of his nation seen, either in Arabia or India, and his master has no treaty with any state whatever. Add to this, that an Abyssinian speaks no language but his own, which is not understood out of his own country; and is absolutely ignorant even of the existence of other far distant nations.

But, besides, there was an Abyssinian sent with Matthew, who died; and here Damianus Goez’s wonder should cease.

The same ill-fortune, which had attended Matthew in India, followed him in his voyage to Portugal. The Captains of the ships contended with each other who should behave worst to him; and, in the midst of all this ill-treatment, the ship which he was on board of arrived at Lisbon. The king, upon hearing the particulars of this ill usage, immediately put the offenders in irons, where they had, 136 probably, lain during their lives, had they not been freed by the intercession of Matthew.

David (as I have before observed) was only eleven years old25 when he was placed upon the throne; and, at his inauguration, took the name of Lebna Denghel, or the Virgin’s Frankincense; then that of Etana Denghel, or the Myrrh of the Virgin; and after that, of Wanag Segued, which signifies Reverenced, or Feared, among the Lions, with whom, towards the last of his reign, he resided in wilds and mountains more than with men.

During this minority, there was peace with Mahomet king of Adel. Maffudi still continued his depredations; and, by his liberality, had formed strong connections with the Turks in Arabia. In return for the number of slaves whom he had sent to Mecca, a green silk standard, (that of Mahomet and of the Faith), and a tent of black velvet, embroidered with gold, were sent him by the Sherriffe, the greatest honour a Mahometan could possibly receive, and he was also made Shekh of the island of Zeyla, which was delivering the key of Abyssinia to him.

It was not till David had arrived at sixteen years of age that the constant success of Maffudi, the honours bestowed upon him, and the gain which accrued from all his expeditions, had at last determined the king of Adel to break the peace with Abyssinia, and join him. These princes, with the whole Mahometan force, had fallen together upon 137 Dawaro, Ifat, and Fatigar; and, in one year, had driven away, and slain, above nineteen thousand Christians, subjects to the king. A terror was now spread over the whole kingdom, and great blame laid both upon the empress and the king, for sitting and looking timidly on, while the Turks and Moors, year after year, ravaged whole provinces without resistance.

These murmurs at last roused David, who, for his own part, had not suffered them willingly so long. He determined immediately to raise an army, and to command it in person: In vain the empress admonished him of his danger, and his absolute want of experience in matters of war; in vain she advised him to employ some of the old officers against the veteran Moorish troops.

The king answered, That every officer of merit had been tried already, and baffled from beginning to end, so that the army had no confidence in them; that he was resolved to take his trial as the others had done, and leave the event where it ought to be left. Though the diviners all prophesied ill from this resolution of the king, the generality of the kingdom, and young nobility, flocked to his standard, rejoicing in a leader so near their own age. The middle-aged had great hopes of the vigour of that youth; and the old were not more backward, satisfied of the weight their years and experience must give them in the councils of a young king.

Seldom a better army took the field; and the empress, from her own treasures, furnished every thing, even to superfluity, engaging all the people of consequence by giving them 138 in the most affable manner, presents in hand, and magnificent promises of recompence hereafter. Great as these preparations were, they had not made much impression among the confederates in Adel; and already the king had put himself at the head of his army, before the Moors seemed to think it worth their while to follow him. They were, indeed, at that very time, laying waste a part of the kingdom of Abyssinia. The king, then, by quick marches, advanced through Fatigar, as if he was going to Aussa, the capital of Adel.

Between Fatigar and the plain country of Adel there is a deep large valley, through which it was necessary the army should pass. Very steep mountains bound it on every side, whilst two openings (each of them very narrow) were the only passages by which it was possible to enter or go out. The king divided his army into two; he kept the best troops and largest body with himself, and sent Betwudet with the rest, as if they intended to fight the enemy before they gained the defiles. The Moors, on the other hand, terrified at what must happen if the king with his army marched into their defenceless country, accounted it a great escape to get into these very defiles before they were forced to an engagement. Betwudet, who desired no more, gave them their way, and, entering the valley behind them, encamped there. The king, at the other end, had done the same, unseen by the enemy, who thought he was advanced on his march to Aussa. The Moors were thus completely hemmed in, and the king’s army vastly superior. He had ordered his tents to be left standing, with a body of troops in them, and these completely covered the only outlet to the 139 valley, whilst Betwudet and his party had advanced considerably, and made much the same disposition.

The king drew up his troops early in the morning, and offered the enemy battle, when the whole Abyssinian army was surprised to discover a backwardness in the Moors so unlike their behaviour at former times; well they might, when they were informed from whom that panic among the Moors came. Maffudi, a fanatic from the beginning, whether really deceived by such a prophecy, or raised to a pitch of pride and enthusiasm by the honours he had received, and desirous, by a remarkable death, to deserve the rank of martyr among those of his own religion, or from whatever cause it arose, came to the king of Adel, and told him, that his time was now come; that it had been prophesied to him long ago, that if, that year, he fought the king of Abyssinia in person, he was there to lose his life: That he knew, for certain, David was then present, having, with his own eyes, seen the scarlet tent, (a colour which is only used by the king); he desired, therefore, the king of Adel to make the best of his way through a less steep part of the mountain, which he shewed him; to take his family and favourites along with him, and leave under his command the army to try their fortune with David. Mahomet, at no time very fond of fighting, never found himself less so than upon this advice of Maffudi’s. He resolved, therefore, to follow his council; and, before the battle began, withdrew himself through the place that was shewn him, and was followed by a few of his friends.

It was now 9 o’clock, and the sun began to be hot, before which the Abyssinians never choose to engage, when 140 Maffudi, judging the king of Adel was beyond danger, sent a trumpet to the Abyssinian camp, with a challenge to any man of rank in the army to fight him in single combat, under condition that the victory should be accounted to belong to that army whose champion was victorious, and that, thereupon, both parties should withdraw their troops without further bloodshed. It does not appear whether the conditions were agreed to, but the challenge was accepted as soon as offered. Gabriel Andreas the monk, who, in the reign of Naod, had, by the king’s order, lost a part of his tongue for giving it too much licence, offered himself first to the king, beseeching him to trust to him that day, his own honour, and the fortune of the army. The king consented without hesitation, with the general applause of all the nobility; for Andreas, though a monk, was a man of great family and distinction; the most learned of the court; liberal, rich, affable, and remarkable for facetious conversation; he was, besides, a good soldier, of tried skill and valour, and, in strength and activity, surpassed by no man in the army.

Maffudi was not backward to present himself; nor was the combat longer than might be expected from two such willing champions. Gabriel Andreas, seeing his opportunity, with a two-handed sword struck Maffudi between the lower part of the neck and the shoulder, so violently, that he nearly divided his body into two, and felled him dead to the ground. He then cut his head off, and threw it at the king’s feet, saying, “There is the Goliath of the Infidels.”

This expression became instantly the word of battle, or signal to charge. The king, at the head of his troops, rushed 141 upon the Moorish army, and, throwing them into disorder, drove them back upon Betwudet, who, with his fresh troops, forced them again back to the king. Seeing no hopes of relief, they dispersed to the mountains, and were slaughtered, and hunted like wild beasts by the peasants, or driven to perish with thirst and hunger. About 12,000 of the Mahometan army are said to have been slain upon the field, with no very considerable loss on the side of the conquerors. The green standard of Mahomet was taken, as also the black velvet tent embroidered with gold; which last, we shall see, the king gave to the Portuguese ambassador some time afterwards, to consecrate and say mass in. A vast number of cattle was taken, and with them much rich merchandise of the Indies. Nor did the king content himself with what he had got in battle. He advanced and encamped at a place where was held the first market of Adel26. The next day he proceeded to a town where was a house of the king, and, going up to the door, and finding it locked, he struck the door with his lance, and nobody answering, he prohibited the soldiers from plundering it, and retired with his army home, leaving his lance sticking in the door as a sign of his having been there, and having had it in his power.

Though the king was received on his return amidst the greatest acclamations of his subjects, as the saviour of his country, the eyes of the whole nation and army were first fixed on Andreas, whose bravery had at last delivered them from that constant and inveterate scourge, Maffudi. Every body pressed forward to throw flowers and green branches in his way; the women celebrating him with songs, putting garlands on his head, and holding out the young children to see him as he passed. The battle was fought in the 142 month of July 1516; and, the same day, the island of Zeyla, in the mouth of the Red Sea, was taken, and its town burned by the Portuguese armament, under Lopez Suarez Alberguiera.

Neither the suspicions transmitted from India, nor the mean person of Matthew the ambassador, seem to have made any impression upon the king of Portugal. He received him with every sort of honour, and testified the most profound respect for his master, and attention to the errand he came upon. Matthew was lodged and maintained with the utmost splendour; and, considering the great use of so powerful a friend on the African coast of the Red Sea, where his fleets would meet with all sort of provision and protection, while they pursued the Turkish squadrons, he prepared an embassy on his part, and sent Matthew home on board the fleet commanded by Lopez Suarez for India.

Edward Galvan, a man of capacity and experience, who had filled the offices of secretary of state and ambassador in Spain, France, and Germany, arrived at that time of life when he might reasonably expect to pass the rest of his days in ease, wealth, and honour, found himself unexpectedly chosen, at the age of eighty-six, to go ambassador from his sovereign to Abyssinia. Goez had much more reason to wonder at the ambassador fixed upon by his master, than at that of Abyssinia sent by the empress Helena to Portugal. The fleet under Suarez entered the Red Sea, and anchored at the flat island of Camaran, close on the coast of Arabia Felix, one of the most unwholesome places he could have chosen. Here Edward Galvan died; and here Suarez, most ignorantly, resolved to pass the winter, which he did, suffering 143 much for want of every sort of provision but water; whereas twenty-four hours of any wind would have carried him to Masuah, to his journey’s end; where, if he had lost the monsoon, he would still have had great abundance of necessaries, and been in the way every moment of promoting the wishes of his master.

Lopez de Segueyra succeeded the ignorant Suarez, who had returned to India. He fitted out a strong fleet at Goa, with which he entered the Red Sea, and sailed for the island of Masuah, where he arrived the 16th of April 1520, having Matthew along with him. Upon the first approach of the fleet, the inhabitants, both of the island and town, abandoned them, and fled to Arkeeko on the main land. Segueyra having remained before Masuah a few days without committing any hostilities, there came at last to him a Christian and a Moor from the continent; who informed him that the main-land, then before him, was part of the kingdom of Abyssinia, governed by an officer called Baharnagash: they added, that the reason of their flying at the sight of the fleet was, that the Turks frequently made descents, and ravaged the island; but that all the inhabitants of the continent were Christians. The Portuguese general was very joyful on this intelligence, and began to treat Matthew more humanely, finding how truly and exactly he had described these places. He gave, both to the Christian and Moor that came off to him, a rich vest; commended them for having fled to Arkeeko rather than expose themselves to an attack from the Turks, but directed them to assure the people on the continent, that they too were all Christians, and under the command of the king of Abyssinia; being arrived 144 there purposely for his service, so that they might return, whenever they should please, in perfect safety.

The next day, came down to the shore the governor of Arkeeko, accompanied with thirty horsemen, and above two hundred foot. He was mounted on a fine horse, and dressed in a kind of shirt resembling that of the Moors. The governor brought down four oxen, and received in return certain pieces of silk, with which he was well pleased. A very familiar conversation followed; the governor kindly inviting the Portuguese general ashore, assuring him that the Baharnagash, under whose command he was, had already intelligence of his arrival.

In answer to his inquiries about the religion of the country, the governor told him, that in a mountain, then in sight, twenty-four miles distant, there was a convent called the Monastery of Bisan, (which Matthew had often described in the voyage) whose monks, being informed of his arrival, had deputed seven of their number to wait upon him, whom the Portuguese general went to meet accordingly, and received them in the kindest manner.

These monks, as soon as they saw Matthew, broke out into the warmest expressions of friendship and esteem, congratulating him with tears in their eyes upon his long voyage and absence. The Portuguese general then invited the monks on board his vessel, where he regaled them, and gave to each presents that were most suitable to their austere life. On his side, Segueyra chose seven Portuguese, with Peter Gomez Tessera, auditor of the East Indies, who understood Arabic very well, to return the visit of the monks, and see the monastery 145 of Bisan. This short journey they very happily performed. Tessera brought back a parchment manuscript, which he received as a present from the monks, to be sent to the king of Portugal.

It was on the 24th of April that the Baharnagash arrived at Arkeeko, having before sent information of his intended visit. The Portuguese general, who never doubted but that he would come to the sea-side, pitched his tents, and spread his carpets and cushions on the ground to receive him. But it was signified to him from the Baharnagash, who was probably afraid of putting himself under the guns of the fleet, that he did not intend to advance so far, and that the governor should meet him half way. This being agreed to on both sides, they sat down on the grass.

The Baharnagash began the conversation, by telling the Portuguese, they had, in virtue of certain prophecies, been long expected in this country; and that he, and all the officers of Abyssinia, were ready to do them every service and kindness. After the Portuguese general had returned a proper answer, the priests and monks concluded the interview with certain religious services. Segueyra then made the Baharnagash a present of a very fine suit of complete armour with some pieces of silk; while the Baharnagash, on his side, made the return with a very fine horse and mule.

All doubt concerning Matthew was removed at this interview; he was acknowledged as a genuine ambassador. The Portuguese now flocked to Segueyra, beseeching him to choose from among his men, who should accompany 146 him to the court. The first step was to name Roderigo de Lima ambassador from the king of Portugal, instead of Galvan, who was dead; and, for his suite, George de Breu, Lopez de Gama, John Scolare secretary to the ambassador, John Gonsalvez his factor and interpreter, Emmanuel de Mare organist, Peter Lopez, Master John his physician, Gaspar Pereira, and Lazarus d’Andrad a painter. The three chaplains were John Fernandes, Peter Alphonso Mendez, and Francisco Alvarez. In this company also went Matthew, the Abyssinian ambassador returned from Portugal, and with him three Portuguese, one called Magailanes, the other Alvaremgo, and the third Diego Fernandes.

It seemed probable, the severe blow which David had given to the king of Adel, by the total destruction of his army on the death of his general Maffudi, would have procured a cessation of hostilities to the Abyssinian frontiers, which they had not experienced during the life of that general; but it appeared afterwards, that, increased in riches and population by the great accession of power which followed the interruption of the Indian trade in Arabia by the Turkish conquest, far from entertaining thoughts of peace, they were rather meditating a more formidable manner of attack, by training themselves to the use of fire-arms and artillery, of which they had provided a quantity, and to which the Abyssinians were as yet strangers.

The king was encamped in Shoa, covering and keeping in awe his Mahometan provinces, Fatigar and Dawaro; besides which he seemed to have no object but the conquest of the Dobas, that bordered equally upon the Moorish and Christian frontiers, and who (though generally gained by 147 the Mahometans) were, when occasion offered, enemies to both. The Shum27 of Giannamora, a small district belonging to Abyssinia, full of brave soldiers, and considerably reinforced by David for the very purpose, had the charge of bringing these barbarians to subjection, as being their immediate neighbour.

The king had afterwards advanced eastward to the frontiers of Fatigar, but was still in the southern part of his dominions. The ambassador and his retinue were landed on the north. They were to cross the whole extent of the empire through woods and over mountains, the like of which are not known in Europe, full of savage beasts, and men more savage than the beasts themselves; intersected by large rivers, and what was the worst circumstance, swelling every day by the tropical rains. Frequently deserts of no considerable length, indeed, intervened, where no sustenance was to be found for man or beast, nor relief for accidental misfortunes. Yet such was the bravery of that small company, that they hesitated not a moment to undertake this enterprise. Every thing was thought easy which contributed to the glory of their king, and the honour of their country.

It was not long before this gallant company found need of all their constancy and courage; for in their short journey to the convent of St Michael (the first they attempted) they found the wood so thick that there was scarcely passage for either man or beast. Briers and thorns, too, of a 148 variety of species, which they had never before seen, added greatly to the fatigue which the thickness of the woods had occasioned. Mountains presented themselves over mountains, broken into terrible precipices and ravines, by violent torrents and constant storms; their black and bare tops seemed as it were calcined by the rays of a burning sun, and by incessant lightnings and thunder. Great numbers of wild beasts also presented themselves everywhere in these dark forests, and seemed only to be hindered from devouring them by their wonder at seeing so many men in so lonely a situation. At last the woods began to grow thinner, and some fields appeared where the people were sitting armed, guarding their small flocks of half-starved goats and kine, and crops of millet, of which they saw a considerable quantity sown. The men were black, their hair very gracefully plaited, and were altogether naked, excepting a small piece of leather that covered their middle. At this place they were met by twelve monks, four of whom were distinguished by their advanced years and the respect paid to them by the others.

Having rested their mules and camels a short time, they again began their journey by the side of a great lake, near which was a very high mountain, and this they were too weary to attempt to pass. Full of discontent and despondency, they halted at the foot of this mountain, where they passed the night, having received a cow for supper, a present from the convent. Here Matthew (the ambassador) separated his baggage from that of the caravan, and left it to the care of the monks. He had probably made some little money in Portugal; and, distrusting his reception with the king, wisely determined to place it out of danger. The precaution, 149 however, proved superfluous; for, a few days after, an epidemical fever began to manifest itself, which, in eight-and-forty hours, carried off Matthew, and soon after Pereira, the servant of Don Roderigo; so that no opportunity now offered for an explanation with the king about his or the empress’s promise of ceding one-third of the kingdom to the Portuguese in case the king would send them succour. Terrified by the fever, and the bad prospect of the weather, they resumed their journey.

The monastery of Bisan (to which they were now going) is so called from the great quantity of water which is everywhere found about it. The similitude of sound has made Poncet28, and several other travellers, call it the Monastery of the Vision; but Bisan (water) is its true name, being plentifully supplied with that most valuable element. A number of lakes and rivers are interspersed through its plains; while abundant springs, that are never dry, flow from the top of each rock, dashing their rills against the rugged projections of the cliffs below.

The monastery of Bisan, properly so called, is the head of six others in the compass of 26 miles; each convent placed like a tower on the top of its own rock. That upon which Bisan is situated is very high, and almost perpendicular; and from this rises another still higher than it, which, unless to its inhabitants, is perfectly inaccessible. It is, on every side, surrounded with wood, interspersed with fruit-trees of many different kinds, as well of those known as of those 150 unknown in Europe. Oranges, citrons, and limes are in great abundance; wild peaches and small figs of a very indifferent quality; black grapes, on loaded branches, hang down from the barren timber round which they are twined, and afford plentiful supply to man and beast: The fields are covered with myrtles and many species of jessamin; with roses too of various colours; but fragrance is denied to them all, except one sort, which is the white one, single-leafed29.

The monks of these convents were said once to be about a thousand in number. They have a large territory, and pay a tribute in cows and horses to the Baharnagash, who is their superior. Their horses are esteemed good, as coming from the neighbourhood of the Arabs. However, though I had the absolute choice of them all during the time I commanded the king’s guard, I never could draw from that part of the country above a score of sufficient strength and size to bear a man in complete armour.

I shall now leave Don Roderigo to pursue his journey towards the king at Shoa. The history of it, and of his embassy, published at large by Alvarez his chaplain, has not met, from the historians of his own country, with a reception which favours the authenticity of its narrative. There are, indeed, in the whole of it, and especially where religion is concerned, many things very difficult of belief, which seem to be the work of the Jesuits some years posterior to the time in which Alvarez was in Abyssinia. Tellez condemns him, though a writer of those times; and Damianus 151 Goez, one of the first historians, says, that he had seen a journal written in Alvarez’s own name, very different from the journal that is gone forth to the public. For my part, I can only say, that what is related of the first audience with the king, and many of the following pages, seem to me to be fabrications of people that never have been in Abyssinia; and, if this is the case, no imputation can be laid against Francisco Alvarez, as, perhaps, he is not the author of the misrepresentation in question. But, as to the cordiality with which the Catholic religion was received by the monks and people in general, during the long stay and bad reception Don Roderigo met with, I have no sort of doubt that this is a falsehood, and this must be charged directly to his account.

We have already seen that, early as Zara Jacob’s time, the religion of the Franks was held in the utmost detestation, and that in Bæda Mariam’s reign the whole country was in rebellion, because the king had directed the Virgin Mary to be painted by one Branca Leon, a Venetian painter, then alive, and in court, when Don Roderigo de Lima was with the king in Shoa. Iscander and Naod were both strict in the tenets of the church of Alexandria; and two Abunas, Imaranha Christos, who lived till Iscander’s time, and Abuna Marcus, alive in Alvarez’s, had given no allowance for strange or foreign worship to be introduced. How the Catholic could be so favourably and generally received in the time of Alvarez is what I cannot conceive. Blood enough was spilt immediately afterwards, to shew that this affection to the Roman Catholic religion, if any such there was in Alvarez’s time, must have been merely transitory. When, therefore, I find any thing in this journal plainly misunderstood, 152 I explain and vindicate it; where I see there is a fact deliberately misrepresented, such as the celebration of the Epiphany, I refute it from ocular demonstration. The rest of the journal I leave in medio to the judgment of my reader, who will find it at his bookseller’s; only observing, that there can be no doubt that the journey itself was made by Don Roderigo, and the persons named with him.

I have preserved the several stations of these travellers in my map, though a great part of the countries through which they passed is now in the hands of the Galla, and is as inaccessible to Abyssinians as it is to strangers.

There are two particulars in Alvarez’s account of this journey which very much surprise me. The first is, the daily and constant danger this company was in from tigers, so daring as to present themselves within pike-length. Of this I have taken notice in the appendix when speaking of the hyæna.

The other particular relates to the field of beans through which they passed. I never yet saw this sort of grain, or pulse, in Abyssinia. The lupine, a wild plant, somewhat similar, chiefly infects those provinces from which the honey comes, and is regarded there with the utmost aversion. The reason of which will be seen in the sequel. But as these Mahometans, through whose country Don Roderigo passed, are not indigenous, and never had any connection with the ancient state of manners or religion of this country, it is more than probable the cultivation of the bean is no older than the settlement of these Mahometans here, long after 153 the Pythagorean prejudices against that plant were forgotten.

It was on the 16th of April 1520 that Don Roderigo de Lima landed in Abyssinia; and it was the 16th of October of the same year when he arrived within sight of the king’s camp, distant about three miles. The king had advanced, as hath been said, into Fatigar, about twenty-five miles from the first fair in the kingdom of Adel, and something less than two hundred from the port of Zeyla. The ambassador, after so painful a journey, expected an immediate admission into the king’s presence. Instead of which, a great officer, called the Hadug Ras30, which is chief or commander of the asses, was sent to carry him three miles farther distant, where they ordered him to pitch his tent, and five years passed in the embassy afterwards before he procured his dismission.

Alvarez accounts very lamely for this prodigious interval of time; and, excepting the celebration of the Epiphany, he does not mention one remarkable occurrence in the whole of this period. One would imagine their stay had not been above a month, and that one conversation only passed upon business, which I shall here set down as a specimen of the humour the parties were in the one with the other.

The king carried the ambassador to see the church Mecana Selassé, the church of the Trinity, which was then repairing, where many of the kings had been buried while 154 the Royal family resided in Shoa. All the churches in Abyssinia are thatched. Some of Roderigo’s own retinue, who bore him ill-will, had put it into the king’s head how elegant this church would be if covered with lead, a thing he certainly could have no idea of. He asked Don Roderigo, whether the king of Portugal could not send him as much sheet-lead as would serve to cover that church? To which the ambassador replied, That the king of Portugal, upon bare mentioning the thing, would send him as much sheet-lead31 as would cover not only that church, but all the other churches he should ever build in Abyssinia; and, after all, the present would be but a trifling one.

Immediately upon this the king changed his discourse; and observed to the ambassador, in a very serious tone of voice, “That, since they were now upon the subject of presents, he could not help letting the king of Portugal know, that, if ever he sent an ambassador again into that country, he should take care to accompany him with presents of value, for otherwise stranger ambassadors that ventured to come before him without these were very ill received.” To which the ambassador returned warmly, “That it was very far from being the custom of the king of Portugal to send presents to any king upon earth; that, having no superior, it was usual for him, only to receive them from others, and to accept them or not, according to his royal pleasure; for it was infinitely below him to consider what was the value of the present itself. He then desired the king of Abyssinia might be informed, that he, Don Roderigo, came ambassador from the general of the Indies, and not from the king of Portugal; nevertheless, when the king of Portugal had lately dispatched 155 Galvan, who had died upon the road, ambassador to his highness, he had sent with him presents to the value of 100,000 ducats, consulting his own greatness, but not considering himself as under any obligation to send any presents at all; and as to the many scandalous aspersions that had been thrown upon him by mean people, which the king had given credit to, and were made constantly part of his discourse, he wished his highness, from the perusal of the letters which he had brought from the general of the Indies, to learn, that the Portuguese were not accustomed to use lying and dissimulation in their conversations, but to tell the naked truth; to which he the ambassador had strictly confined himself in every circumstance he had related to his highness, if he pleased to believe him; if not, that he was very welcome to do just whatever he thought better in his own eyes. Yet he would, once for all, have his highness to know, that, though he came only as ambassador from the general of the Indies, he could, as such, have presented himself before the greatest sovereign upon earth, without being subjected to hear such conversation as he had been daily exposed to from his highness, which he, as a Portuguese nobleman and a soldier, though he had been no ambassador at all, was not any way disposed to suffer, and therefore he desired his immediate dismission.”

Upon this the king said, “That the distinction he had shewn him was such as he would never have met with from any of his predecessors, having brought no present of any value.” To which the ambassador replied in great warmth, “That he had received no distinction in this country whatever, but only injuries and wrongs; that he should think he became a martyr if he died in this country where 156 he had been robbed of every thing, except the clothes upon his back; that Matthew, who was but a pretended ambassador, had been much otherwise treated by the king of Portugal; but for himself he desired nothing but a speedy dismission, having delivered his letters and done his errand: Till that time, he should expect to be treated like a man of honour, above lying or falsehood.” To this the king answered, “That he believed him to be a man of honour, worth, and veracity, but that Matthew was a liar: at the same time he wished Don Roderigo to know, that he was perfectly informed what degree of respect and good usage Matthew had met with from the king of Portugal’s officers and captains, but that he did not impute this to Don Roderigo.”

There was a rumour at court which very much alarmed the ambassador; it was, that the king intended to detain him according to the invariable custom and practice of his country. Two Venetians, Nicholas Branca Leon and Thomas Gradinego, had been forcibly detained since the reign of Bæda Mariam. But what terrified Don Roderigo still more, as a case most similar to his, was the sight of Peter Covillan then in court, who had been sent ambassador by John king of Portugal to Iscander, and ever since was detained without being able to get leave to return, but was obliged to marry and settle in the country.

What was the emperor’s real intention is impossible now to know; but, having resolved to send an Abyssinian ambassador to the king of Portugal, it was necessary to dismiss Don Roderigo likewise. However, he did not entirely abandon the whole of his design, but forcibly detained Master John the secretary, and Lazarus d’Andrad the painter, and 157 obliged Don Roderigo to depart without them. Zaga Zaab, an Abyssinian monk, who had learned the Portuguese language by waiting on Don Roderigo during his stay in Abyssinia, was chosen for the function; and they set out together for Masuah, plentifully furnished with every thing necessary for the journey, and arrived safely there without any remarkable occurrence, where they found Don Hector de Silveyra, governor of the Indies, with his fleet, waiting to carry Don Roderigo de Lima home. Whether the king had changed his mind or not is doubtful; but, on the 27th of April 1526, arrived four messengers from court with orders for Don Roderigo to return, and also to bring Don Hector along with him. This was immediately and directly refused; but it was left in the power of Zaga Zaab to return if he pleased, who however declared, that, if he staid behind, he should be thrown to the lions. He, therefore, went on board with great readiness, and they all sailed from Masuah on the 28th of April of the year just mentioned, in their return to India.

These frequent intercourses with the Portuguese had given great alarm to the Mahometan powers, though neither the king of Abyssinia, nor the Portuguese themselves, had reaped any profit from them, or the several fleets that had arrived at Masuah, which had really no end but to seek the ambassador Don Roderigo. The six years spent in wrangling and childish behaviour, both on the part of the king and the ambassador, had an appearance of something serious between the two powers; and what still alarmed the Moors more was, that no part of the secret had transpired, because no scheme had really been concerted, only mere proposals of vain and idle enterprises, without either power or 158 will to put them in execution. Such were the plans of a joint army, to attack Arabia, and to conquer it down to Jerusalem. The Turks32 were on their progress southward in great force; they had conquered Arabia in less than half the time Don Roderigo had spent quarrelling with the king about pepper and mules; and a storm was ready to break in a quarter least expected.

In the gentle reigns of the Mamalukes, before the conquest of Egypt and Arabia by Selim33, a caravan constantly set out from Abyssinia directly for Jerusalem. They had then a treaty with the Arabs. This caravan rendezvoused at Hamazen, a small territory abounding in provisions, about two days journey from Dobarwa, and nearly the same from Masuah; it amounted sometimes in number to a thousand pilgrims, ecclesiastics as well as laymen. They travelled by very easy journies, not above six miles a-day, halting to perform divine service, and setting up their tents early, and never beginning to travel till towards nine in the morning. They had, hitherto, passed in perfect safety, with drums beating and colours flying, and, in this way, traversed the desert by the road of Suakem.

The year after Selim had taken possession of Cairo, Abba Azerata Christos, a monk famous for holiness, had conducted fifteen hundred of these pilgrims with him to Jerusalem, and they had arrived without accident; but, on their return, they had fallen in with a body of Selim’s troops, who slew a great part of them, and forced others to take 159 refuge in the desert, where they perished with hunger and thirst. In the year 1525, another caravan assembled at Hamazen, consisting of 336 friars and priests, and fifteen nuns. They set out from Hamazen on the 12th day after leaving this place, travelling slowly; and, being loaded with provisions and water, they were attacked by the Moors of that district, and utterly defeated and robbed. Of the pilgrims taken prisoners, all the old men were put to the sword, and the young were sold for slaves; so that of 336 persons fifteen only escaped, but three of which lived to return to Shoa at the time the ambassador was there. This was the first vengeance the Moors to the northward had yet taken for the alliance made with the Portuguese; and, from this time, the communication with Cairo through the desert ceased as to the Christians, and was carried on by Mahometans only.

Since the time of Peter Covillan’s arrival in Abyssinia, the views of all parties had very much changed. The Portuguese at first coveted the friendship of Abyssinia, for the sake of obtaining through it a communication with India. But they now became indifferent about that intercourse, since they had settled in India itself, and found the convenience of the passage of the Cape of Good Hope. David, freed from his fears of the Moors of Adel, whom he had defeated, and seeing the great power of the Turks, so much apprehended after the conquest of Egypt, disappointed in India in all their attempts against the Portuguese settlements there; being, moreover, displeased with the abrupt behaviour of the ambassador Don Roderigo, and the promises the empress Helena had made by Matthew without his knowledge, he wished no further connection with the Portuguese, 160 for whose assistance, he thought, he should have no use.

Selim, whose first object was the conquest of India, had met there so rude a reception that he began to despair of further success in his undertaking; but, having conquered Arabia on one side of the Red Sea, he was desirous of extending his dominions to the other also, and for three reasons: The first was, that the safety of the holy place of Mecca would be much endangered should a Portuguese army and fleet rendezvous in Abyssinia, and be joined by an army there. The second, that his ships and gallies could not be in security at the bottom of the Gulf, should the Portuguese obtain leave to fortify any island or harbour belonging to the Abyssinians. The third, that the king of Abyssinia being, as he was taught to believe, the prince whom the prophet Mahomet had honoured with his correspondence, he thought it a duty incumbent upon him to convert this prince and kingdom to the Mahometan religion by the sword, a method allowable in no religion but that of Mahomet and of Rome.

The ancient and feeble arms of lances and bows, carried by half-naked peasants assembled in haste and at random for an occasion, were now laid aside. In place of these, Selim had left garrisons of veteran troops in all the sea-coast towns of Arabia, exercised in fire-arms, and furnished with large trains of artillery, supported by a large fleet which, though destined against the Portuguese in India, and constantly beat by them, never failed, both going and coming, to reinforce their posts in Arabia with stores and fresh soldiers. 161

The empress Helena died in 1525, the year before the Portuguese embassy ended, after having brought about an interview between the two nations, which, by the continual disavowal of Matthew’s embassy, it is plain that David knew not how to turn to his advantage. Soon after her death, the king prepared to renew the war with the Moors, without having received the least advantage from the Portuguese. But very differently had the people of Adel employed this interval of peace. They had strengthened themselves by the strictest friendship with the Turkish officers in Arabia, especially with the basha of Zibit, a large trading port nearly opposite to Masuah. A Turkish garrison was put into Zeyla; and a Turk, with a large train of artillery, commanded in it. All was ready against the first invasion the king was to make, and he was now marching directly towards their country.

The first retaliation, for the Portuguese friendship, (as we have already observed) had been the cutting off the caravan for Jerusalem. In revenge for this, the king had marched into Dawaro, and sent a body of troops from that province to see what was the state of the Moorish forces in Adel. These were no sooner arrived on the frontiers of that kingdom, than they were met by a number of the enemy appointed to guard those confines, and, coming to blows, the Abyssinians defeated, and drove them into the desert parts of their own country. The king still advanced till he met the Mahometan army, and a battle was fought at Shimbra Coré, where the Abyssinian army was totally defeated; the Betwudet, Hadug Ras, the governor of Amhara, Robel, governor of the mountain of Geshen, with the greatest part of the nobility, and four thousand men, were all slain. 162

Mahomet, called Gragnè, (which signifies left-handed) commanded this army. He was governor of Zeyla, and had promoted the league with the Turkish bashas on the coast of Arabia; and, having now given the king a check in his first enterprise, he resolved to carry on the war with him in a way that should produce something decisive. He remained then quiet two years at home, sent all the prisoners he had made in the last expedition to Mecca, and to the Turkish powers on the coast, and required from them in return the number of troops stipulated, with a train of portable artillery, which was punctually furnished, while a large body of janizaries crossed over and joined the Moorish army. Mahomet led these troops straight into Fatigar, which he over-ran, as he did the two other neighbouring provinces Ifat and Dawaro, burning and laying waste the whole country, and driving, as was his usual manner, immense numbers of the inhabitants, whom the sword had spared, back with him to Adel.

The next year, Mahomet marched from Adel directly into Dawaro, committing the same excesses. The king, who saw in despair that total ruin threatened his whole country, and that there were no hopes but in a battle, met the Moorish army at Ifras, very much inferior to them in every sort of appointment. The battle was fought 1st May 1528; the king was defeated, and Islam Segued, his first minister, who commanded the army that day, with many of his principal officers, were slain upon the spot, and the Moorish army took possession of Shoa. David retreated with his broken army into Amhara, and encamped at Hegu, thinking to procure reinforcements during the bad weather, but Gragnè was too near to give him time for this. He entered Amhara, 163 destroying all before him. The second of November he burnt the church of Mecana Selassé of the holy sepulchre, and Atronsa Mariam; and, on the 8th of the same month, Ganeta Georgis; on the 2d of December, Debra Agezia-beher; the 6th of the same month, St Stephen’s church; after which he returned to Adel with his booty.

The following year Gragnè returned in April, plundered and burnt Warwar, and wintered there. In the year 1530 Gragnè invaded the province of Tigré in the month of October, while the king, who had wintered in Dembea, marched up to Woggora; thence, in December, he went to Tsalamet, and returned to Tigré to keep the feast of the Epiphany.

The king, next year, marched through Tzegadé, and Gragnè close followed him, as if he had been hunting a wild beast rather than making war. The 2d of January he burnt Abba Samuel, then went down into Mazaga the borders of Sennaar to a conference with Muchtar, one of his confederates, when it was resolved that they should fight the king wherever they could meet him, and attach themselves to his person alone. Gragnè by forced marches overtook the king upon the Nile at Delakus, the 6th of February, and offered him battle, knowing the proud spirit of David, that he would not refuse, however great the disproportion was.

The event was such as might be expected. Fortune again declared against the king. Negadé Yasous, Acab Saat, and many others of the nobility perished, fighting to the last, in the sight of their sovereign. In this battle 164 the brave monk, Andreas34, much advanced in years, was slain, behaving with the greatest gallantry, unwilling to survive the ruin of his country.

The Moors now found it unnecessary to keep together an army. They divided into small parties, that they might more effectually and speedily ruin the country. Part of Gragnè’s army was detached to burn Axum; the other under Simeon continued in Amhara to watch the king’s motions; and, while he attempted to relieve Axum, dispersed his army, on which the town was burnt, and with it many of the richest churches in Abyssinia, Hallelujah, Banquol, Gaso, Debra Kerbé, and many others. And, on the 7th of April, Saul, son of Tesfo Yasous, fought another detachment of the Moorish army, and was cut to pieces.

The 28th year of his reign, 1536, the king crossed the Tacazzé, and had many disastrous encounters with the people of Siré and Serawé. Tesfo l’Oul, who commanded in this latter province for the king, surprised a Turkish party under Adli, whom he slew, and met with the same fate himself from Abbas, Moorish governor of Serawé, when a great many of the principal people of that province were there slain. Galila, a large island in the lake Tzana, was plundered, and the convent upon it burnt. It was one of the principal places where the Abyssinians hid their treasure, and a great booty was found there.

In the following year, Gragnè, in a message represented to him, that he might see he was fighting against God, exhorting 165 him to be wise, and make his peace in time, which he should have upon the condition of giving him his daughter in marriage, and he would then withdraw his army, otherwise he would never leave Abyssinia till he had reduced it to a condition of producing nothing but grass. But the king, nothing daunted, returned him for answer, That he was an infidel, and a blasphemer, used as an instrument to chastise him and his people for their many sins; that it was his duty to bear the correction patiently; but that it would soon happen, when this just purpose was answered, that he would be destroyed, and all those with him, as such wicked instruments had always been; that he the king, and Abyssinia his kingdom, would be preserved as a monument of the mercy of God, who never entirely forsook his people, though he might chastise them.

Indeed, the condition of the country was now such that a total destruction seemed to be at hand; for a famine and plague, its constant companion, raged in Abyssinia, carrying off those that the sword had spared.

Gideon and Judith, king and queen of the Jews, in the high country of Samen, after having suffered much from Gragnè, had at last rebelled and joined him; and the king, who it seems continued to shew an inclination to the Catholic church, which he had imbibed during the embassy of Don Roderigo, by this had occasioned many to fall off from him, he and the court observing Easter according to the Roman kalendar, while the rest of the clergy and kingdom continued firm to that of Alexandria. 166

At this time Osman of Dawaro, Jonadab, Kefla, Yousef, and other rebel Abyssinians, part of Ammer’s army, one of Gragnè’s generals, surprised the king’s eldest son, Victor, going to join his father the 7th day of March; slew him, and dispersed his army. Three days after, the king himself came to action, with Ammer at Zaat in Waag, but he was there again beaten, and his youngest son Menas was taken prisoner. The king had scarce now an attendant, and, being almost alone, he took refuge among the rocks and bushes in a high mountain called Tsalem, in the district of Tsalamet. But he had not remained above a day there, when he was followed by Joram, (rebel-master of that district) and narrowly escaped being taken as he was crossing the Tacazzé on foot and alone; whence he took refuge on mount Tabor, a very high mountain in Siré, and there he passed the winter.

The amazing spirit and constancy of the king, who alone seemed not to forsake the cause of his kingdom, who now, without children or army, still singly, made war for the liberty of his country, astonished all Abyssinia as well friends as enemies. Every veteran soldier, therefore, that could escape the small parties of the Moors which surrounded the king, joined him at Tabor, and he was again at the head of a very small, but brave body of troops, though it was scarcely known in what part of the kingdom he was hid. When Achmet-eddin, lieutenant of Ammer, passed through Siré, loaded with the spoils of the churches and towns he had plundered, the king, finding him within his reach, descended from the mountain, and, by a sudden march, surprised and slew him with his own hand, leaving the greatest part of his army dead on the field. After which he distributed the booty among his small army. 167

Ammer, the king’s mortal enemy, who had taken upon himself the destruction of the royal family, descended into the province of Siré, and neighbourhood of Tabor, and there indulged himself in the most wanton cruelties, torturing and murdering the priests, burning churches and villages, hoping by this the king would lose his temper, and leave his strong-hold in the mountain. But hearing at the same time, that a large quantity of plate, and other treasure, belonging to the church Debra Kerbé, had been carried into an island in the lake Tzana for safety, he left the king, and seized his booty in the lake to a very great amount.

However, he there fell ill of a fever; but, on his return, was so far advanced in his recovery as to resume his schemes of destroying the king; when, the night of the 10th of February 1538, while he was sleeping in bed in his tent, a common soldier, from what quarrel or cause is not known, went secretly and stabbed him several times in the belly with a two-edged knife, so that he died instantly, to David’s great relief, and much to the safety of the whole kingdom.

It was now 12 years since Don Roderigo de Lima had sailed from Masuah, carrying with him Zaga Zaab ambassador from the king of Abyssinia. This embassy arrived safe in Lisbon, and was received with great magnificence by king John; but, as the circumstances of the kingdom when he left Masuah were really flourishing, and as the treatment he met in Portugal was better than he had, probably, ever experienced at home, he seems to have been in no haste to put an end to this embassy. On the other side, the king of Portugal’s affairs in India were arrived at that 168 degree of prosperity and power, that little use remained for such an ally as the king of Abyssinia.

The Moorish trade and navigation to India had already received a fatal blow, as well from the Portuguese themselves, as from the fall of the Mamalukes in Egypt; and Soliman, and his servant Sinan Basha, by their conquest, and introducing soldiers who had not any idea or talent for trade, but only plunder and rapine, had given a finishing stroke to what the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope began. The filling Arabia with fire-arms and Turks was now of consequence to none but to David; and of such a consequence it had been, that, as we have seen, in the course of 12 years it had left him nothing in Abyssinia but the bare name of king, and a life so precarious that it could not be counted upon from one day’s end to the other.

David had detained in Abyssinia two Portuguese, one called Master John, the other Lazarus d’Andrad a painter, being two of Don Roderigo’s train that came from the Indies with him. The Abuna (Mark) was become old and incapable, and, since the Turkish conquest of Egypt, very indifferent to, and unconnected with, what passed at Cairo. Before he died, at the king’s desire he had appointed John his successor, and accordingly ordained him Abuna, as well as having first given him all the inferior orders at once; for John was a layman and student in physic; a very simple creature, but a great bigot; and we shall from henceforward call him John Bermudes.

John very willingly consented to his ordination, provided the pope approved of it; and he set out for Rome, 169 not by the usual way of India, but through Arabia and Egypt; and, arriving there without accident, was confirmed by Paul III. the then pope, not only as patriarch of Abyssinia, but of Alexandria likewise; to which he added, as Bermudes says, the most unintelligible and incomprehensible title of Patriarch of the Sea. Bermudes, to this variety of charges, had this other added to him, of ambassador from King David to the court of Portugal; and for this he was certainly very fit, however he might be for his ecclesiastical dignities; for he had been now 12 years in Abyssinia, knew the country well, and had been witness of the variety of distresses which, following close one upon another, had brought this country to its then state of ruin.

While these things passed in the north of Abyssinia, a terrible catastrophe happened in the south. A Mahometan chief, called Vizir Mudgid, governor of Arar, having an opportunity from his situation to hear of the riches which were daily carried from churches, and other places, for safety into the mountain of Geshen, took a resolution to attempt that natural fortress, though in itself almost impregnable, and strengthened by an army constantly encamped at the foot of it.

When Mudgid arrived near the mountain he found it was forsaken by the troops destined to guard it; and led by a Mahometan, who was a menial servant to the princes above, he ascended with his troops without opposition, putting all the royal family that were prisoners, and indeed every individual of either sex resident there, indiscriminately to the sword. 170

The measure of David’s misfortunes seems to have been now full, and he died accordingly this very year 1540.

It will be necessary here to remind the reader, that Alvarez, the chaplain and historian of the first Portuguese embassy, was (as he said) on his return appointed by king David to make his submission to the pope. Leaving Zaga Zaab, therefore, in Portugal, he proceeded to Bologna, where the emperor Charles V. was then in person, before whom and the pope himself he delivered his credentials framed by Peter Covillan, and afterwards, in a long speech, the reasons of his embassy.

The pope received this submission of David with infinite pleasure, at a time when so many kingdoms in the west were revolting from his supremacy. He considered it as a thing of the greatest moment to be courted before the emperor by so powerful a prince in Africa. But as for the emperor himself, though he was then preparing for an expedition against the Mahometans, and though it was his favourite war, he seems to have been perfectly indifferent either to the embassy itself, or to the person that sent it; a great proof that he believed there was nothing real in it.

Many other people have doubted whether this embassy, or that of John Bermudes, actually came from the Abyssinian court, as the king would scarcely have abandoned the form of the Alexandrian church in which he had been brought up by Abuna Mark, then alive. Abuna Mark, moreover, could scarcely be believed to have promoted embassies which were intended to strike at the root of his own 171 religion, and the patriarchal power with which he was endowed.

But to this it is easily answered, That the Abyssinian historian of David’s reign, through the whole course of it, readily admits his constant attachment to the see of Rome. He gives a striking example of it during the war with Gragnè, when the king celebrated Easter after the manner of the Roman Catholics, though it was to have this certain effect of dividing his kingdom, and alienating the minds of his subjects, of whose assistance he was then in the utmost need. And as for the Abuna, we are to consider that Cairo had been taken, and the government, which Abuna Mark owned for the lawful one, had been overturned by the Turks who then possessed it, and were actually persecuting the Alexandrian church.

The Abuna, then, and the king also, had the same reason for not applying to Cairo, the seat of the Turks their enemies; and, therefore, they more readily accommodated matters with a people from whom only their assistance could come; and without whom, it was probable, that both the Christian religion and civil government of Abyssinia would fall together.

It has been said of this king by the European writers who have touched upon the history of his reign, that he was a prince who had began it in the most promising manner, but after the death of the empress Helena, he had abandoned himself to all sort of debauchery, and especially that of women; insomuch, as Mr Ludolf says, he suffered his concubines to have idols in his palace. This I take 172 to be a calumny copied from the Portuguese priests, who never forgave him the denial of his writing the letters by Matthew, in which it was said he gave the Portuguese, or rather king of Portugal, one-third of the kingdom; for he succeeded to the crown at 11 years of age, defeated and slew Maffudi when he was about sixteen; and, when Don Roderigo and the Portuguese embassy were with him, he was then something more than twenty, a very devout, prudent prince, according to the account Alvarez, an eye-witness, gives of him; and all this time empress Helena was alive.

Again, the very year after the Portuguese embassy left Abyssinia, that is, in the year 1526, the king was defeated by the Moors, and, from that time to his death, was hunted about the country like a wild beast, from rock to rock, very often alone, and at all times slenderly attended, till he died, in 1540, at the age of 46; so there is no period during his life in which this calumny can be justly fixed upon him.

As for the idolatry he is accused of suffering in his palace among his Pagan mistresses, I cannot recollect any place in the adjoining nations from which he could have brought these idolatrous rites or mistresses. The Pagan countries around him profess a remnant of ill-understood Sabaism, worshipping the stars, the moon, and the wind; but I do not, as I say, recollect any of these bordering on Abyssinia who worship idols. 173

CLAUDIUS, or ATZENAF SEGUED.
From 1540 to 1559.

Prosperous Beginning of Claudius’s Reign—Christopher de Gama lands in Abyssinia—Prevented by the rainy Season from joining the King—Battle of Ainal—Battle of Offalo—Christopher de Gama slain—Battle of Isaac’s Bet—Moors defeated, and their General slain—Abyssinian Army defeated—Claudius slain—Remarkable Behaviour of Nur, Governor of Zeyla, General of the Moors.

Claudius succeeded his father David III. being yet young, and found the empire in circumstances that would have required an old and experienced prince. But, though young, he possessed those graceful and affable manners which, at first sight, attached people of all sorts to him. He had been tutored with great care by the empress Helena, was expert in all warlike exercises, and brave beyond his years.—So say the Abyssinian annals; and though I have not thought myself warranted to depart from the letter of the context, yet it is my duty to the reader to shew him how this could not be.

Claudius was born about the 1522; the empress Helena died in 1525. From this it is plain, the first three years of 174 his life was all that he could be under the tutelege of the empress Helena; and, at so early a period, it is not possible he could receive much advantage. The princess, to whom he was indebted for his education, was Sabel Wenghel, celebrated in the Abyssinian history for wisdom and courage equal to the empress Helena herself. She was relict of David. We shall hereafter see her called Helena likewise upon another occasion; but the reader is desired to have in mind, that this confusion of persons is owing only to that of names to be met with almost in every reign in the Abyssinian history.

Claudius is said likewise in these annals to have been a child at the time of his accession; but, having been born in the 1522, and succeeding to the throne in 1540, he must have been eighteen years of age; and this cannot be called childhood, especially in Abyssinia, unless, as I have before said, this observation of age was relative to the arduous task he had in hand, by succeeding to a kingdom arrived at the very eve of perdition.

The Moors, notwithstanding the constant success they had against David, still feared the consequences of his long experience and undaunted resolution in the most adverse fortune. They were happy, therefore, in the change of such an enemy, however unfortunate, for a young man scarcely yet out of the influence of female government, which had always been favourable to them, and their religion.

A general league was formed without delay among all the Mahometan chiefs to surround Claudius, and fall upon 175 him before he was in a situation to defend himself, and by one stroke to put an end to the war. They accordingly set about collecting troops from all quarters, but with a degree of inattention and presumption that sufficiently shewed they thought themselves in no danger. But the young king having good intelligence that vizir Asa, Osman, Debra Yasous, and Joram, (who had so nearly taken his father prisoner in the mountain Tsalem) had their quarters near him, and neglected a good look-out, fell upon them, without their knowing what his force was, entirely defeated them, dispersed their army, and struck a panic into the whole confederacy by the manner this victory was followed up; the king himself on horseback continued the pursuit all that day and night, as also the next day, and did not return to his camp till the second evening after his victory, having slain without mercy every one that had fallen into his hands, either in the flight, or in the field of battle.

Claudius’s behaviour, on this first occasion, raised the soldiers confidence to a degree of enthusiasm. Every man that had served under his father repaired to him with the greatest alacrity. Above all, the Agows of Lasta came down to him in great troops from their rugged and inaccessible mountains, the chief of that warlike nation being related to him by his mother.

The king in person at the head of his army became now an object of such consideration as to make the Mahometan chiefs no longer retire as usual to winter in Adel, but canton themselves in the several districts they had conquered in Abyssinia, and lay aside the thoughts of farther wasting the 176 country, to defend themselves against so active and spirited an assailant. They agreed then to join their whole forces together, and march to force the king to a battle. Osman of Ganzé, vizir Mudgid who had settled in Amhara, Saber-eddin35, and all the lesser rebel officers of Siré and Serawé, effected a junction about the same time without opposition. Jonathan alone, a rebel of great experience, had not yet appeared with his troops. The king, on the other hand, did not seem over anxious to come to an engagement, though his army was every day ready for battle; and his ground was always taken with advantage, so that it was almost desperate to pretend to force him.

Jonathan at last was on his way to join the confederates; but the king had as early intelligence of his motions as his friends: and, while he was yet two days march distant from the camp, the king, leaving his tents standing and his fires lighted, by a forced march in the night came upon him, (while he thought him blocked up by his rebel associates at a distance) and, finding Jonathan without preparation or defence, cut his whole army to pieces, slew him, and then returned to his own tents as rapidly as he went, having ordered small detachments to continue in the way between him and his camp, patroling lest some ambush should be laid for him by the enemy, who, if they had been informed of his march, though they were too late to prevent the success of it, might still have attempted to revenge it. 177

But intelligence was now given to the Moors with much less punctuality and alacrity than formerly. So generally did the king possess the affections of the country-people, that no information came to the confederate army till the next day after his return, when, early in the morning, he dispatched one of the Moorish prisoners that he had taken three days before, and spared for the purpose, carrying with him the head of Jonathan, and a full account of the havock to which he had been a witness.

This messenger bore also the king’s defiance to the Moors, whom he challenged, under the odious epithets they deserved, to meet him; and then actually to shew he was in earnest, marched towards them with his army, which he formed in order of battle. But tho’ they stood under arms for a considerable time, whilst several invitations to single combat were sent from the Christian horsemen, as their custom is, before they engage, or when their camps are near each other, yet the Moors were so astonished at what had happened, and what they saw now before them, that not one officer would advise the risking a battle, nor any one soldier accept of the challenge offered. The king then returned to his camp, distributed the whole booty among his soldiers, and refreshed them, preserving a proper station to cover the wounded, whom he sent off to places of security.

The king was in the country of Samen in the neighbourhood of Lasta. He then decamped and passed the river Tacazzé, that he might be nearer those districts of which the Turks had possessed themselves. In this march all sorts of people joined the victorious army. Those that had revolted, and many that had apostatized, came without fear and surrendered 178 themselves, trusting to the clemency of the prince. Many of the Moors, natives of Abyssinia, did the same, after having experienced the difference between the mild Christian government, and that of their new masters, the Moors and Turks of Adel.

The king encamped at Sard, there to pass his Easter; and, as is usual in the great festivals, many of the nobility obtained leave to attend the religious offices of the season at home with their families. Ammer, governor of Ganzé, who knew the custom of the country, thought this was the time to surprise the king thinly attended; and it might have succeeded, if intelligence of the enemy’s designs had not been received almost as soon as they were formed. Claudius, therefore, drawing together some of the best of his forces, placed himself in ambush in Ammer’s, way, who, not suspecting, fell into it with his army, which was totally destroyed on the 24th of April 1541. After which the king left his own quarter at Sard and came to Shume.

While things were taking this favourable turn in Abyssinia, the ambassador, John Bermudes, had passed from Rome to Lisbon, where he was acknowledged by the king as patriarch of Alexandria, Abyssinia, and, as he will have it, of the Sea. The first thing he did was to give the Portuguese a sample of Abyssinian discipline, by putting Zaga Zaab in irons for having wasted so much time without effecting any of the purposes of his embassy; but, by the interposition of the king, he was set at liberty in a few days. Bermudes then fell roundly to the subject of his embassy, and drew such a picture of the distresses of Abyssinia, and insisted in his own blunt way so violently with the king of 179 Portugal, and the nobility in general, that he procured an order from the king for Don Garcia de Noronha, who was then going out viceroy of the Indies, to send 400 Portuguese musqueteers from India to the relief of Abyssinia, and to land them at Masuah.

John Bermudes, to secure the assistance promised, resolved to embark in the same fleet with Don Garcia; but he fell sick, from poison given him, as he apprehends, by Zaga Zaab, and this delayed his embarkation a year. The next year, being recovered of his illness, he arrived safely at India. In the interim Don Garcia died, and Don Stephen de Gama, who succeeded him, did not embrace the scheme of the intended succour with such eagerness as Bermudes could have wished.

After some delay, however, it was resolved that Don Stephen should himself undertake an expedition from India, to burn the Turkish gallies that were at Suez. In this, however, Don Stephen was disappointed. Upon intelligence of the intended visit, the Turkish gallies had been all drawn ashore. He came after this to the port of Masuah, where the fleet intended to water; and, for that purpose, their boats were sent to Arkeeko, a small town and fortress upon the main-land, where good water may be found. But the Moors and Turks from Zeyla and Adel were now masters there, who took the 1000 webs of cotton-cloth the captain had sent to exchange for water and provisions, and sent him word back, that his master, the king of Adel, was now king of all Ethiopia, and would not suffer any further trade to be carried on, but through his subjects; if, therefore, the captain of the fleet would make peace with him, he should restore the cotton-webs 180 which had been taken, supply him plentifully with provisions, and make amends for the sixty Portuguese slain on the coast near Zeyla: For, upon the fleet’s entering the Red Sea, this number of Portuguese had run away with a boat; and, landing in the kingdom of Adel, where they could procure no water, they were decoyed to give up their arms, and were then all massacred.

The captain, Don Stephen, saw the trap laid for him by the Moors, and, resolving to pay them in their own coin, he returned this answer to their message, “That he was very willing to trade with the Moorish officer, but did not demand restitution of the clothes, as they were taken in fair war. As for the sixty Portuguese, they had met the death they deserved, as being traitors and deserters: That he now sent a thousand more clothes, desiring water and provisions, especially live cattle; and that, as it was now the time of their festival, he would treat with them for peace, and bring his goods ashore as soon as the holidays were over.”

This being agreed to on both sides, with equal bad faith and intention towards each other, and Don Stephen having obtained his refreshments, he strictly forbade any further communication with the shore. He then selected a body of six hundred men, the command of whom he gave to Martin Correa, who, in light boats, without shewing any fire, landed undiscovered below Arkeeko, and took possession of the entrances to the town, putting all that they met to the sword. Nur, governor of the province for the king of Adel, fled as soon as he had heard the Portuguese were in the town: He was already in the fields, when Martin Correa shot him with a musquet, and cut off his head, 181 which was sent before them to the queen, Sabel Wenghel, then in a strong-hold of the province of Tigré, and with her Degdeasmati (which, in common discourse, is called Kasmati) Robel. This was the person of that name who had met Don Roderigo in his journey to find the king, and who was now governor of the province. The queen received the Moorish general’s head with great demonstrations of joy, considering it as an early pledge of future victories.

In the mean time, Don Stephen de Gama, captain of the fleet, began to inrol the men destined to march to join Claudius. Four hundred and fifty musqueteers was the number granted by the king to Bermudes; but an ardent desire of glory had seized all the Portuguese, and every one strove to be in the nomination for that enterprise. All that Don Stephen could do was to choose men of the first rank for the officers; and these, of necessity, having many servants whom they carried with them, greatly, by this means, encreased the number beyond the 450. Don Christopher de Gama, Don Stephen’s youngest brother, a nobleman of great hopes, was chosen to command this small army of heroes.

A very great murmuring, nevertheless, prevailed among those that were refused, which was scarcely kept in due bounds by the presence and authority of the governor Don Stephen himself. And from this honourable emulation, and the discontent these brave soldiers who were left behind shewed, the bay where the galley rode in the harbour of Masuah, on board which this council was held, is called to this day Bahia dos Agravados, the Bay of Wronged, or Injured People, sometimes misinterpreted the Bay of the Sick. 182

The army under Don Christopher marched to Arkeeko, where the next day came the governor Don Stephen, and the principal officers of the fleet, and took leave of their countrymen; and, after receiving the blessing of Don John Bermudes, Patriarch of the Sea, the governor and rest of the Portuguese embarked, and returned to India.

Don Christopher, with the greatest intrepidity, began his march towards Dobarwa, the easiest entrance into Abyssinia, though still over rugged and almost inaccessible mountains. The Baharnagash had orders to attend him, and furnish this little army with cattle both for their provision and carriages; and this he actually performed. But the carriages of the small train of artillery giving way in this bad road, and there being nobody at hand to assist them with fresh ones in case the old failed, Gama made certain carriages of wood after the pattern of those they had brought from Portugal; and, as iron was a very scarce commodity in Abyssinia, he made them split in pieces some barrels of old and useless firelocks for the wheels with which they were to draw their artillery.

The queen, without delay, came forward to join Don Christopher; who, hearing she was at hand, went to meet her a league from the city with drums beating and colours flying, and saluted her with a general discharge of fire-arms, which terrified her much. Her two sisters accompanied her, and a number of attendants of both sexes. Don Christopher, at the head of his soldiers, paid his compliments with equal gallantry and respect. The queen was covered from head to foot, but lifted up her veil, so that her face could be seen by him; and he, on the other hand, appointed a hundred 183 musqueteers for her guard; and thus they returned to Dobarwa mutually satisfied with this their first interview.

Don Christopher marched from Dobarwa eight days through a very rugged country, endeavouring, if possible, to bring about a junction with the king. And it was in this place, while he was encamped, that he received a message from the Moorish general, full of opprobrious expressions, which was answered in much the same manner. Don Christopher continued his march as much as he could on account of the rains; and Gragnè, whose greatest desire was to prevent the junction, followed him into Tigré. Neither army desired to avoid the other, and they were both marching to the same point; so that on the 25th of March 1542, they came in sight of each other at Ainal, a small village in the country of the Baharnagash.

The Moorish army consisted of 1000 horsemen, 5000 foot, 50 Turkish musqueteers, and a few pieces of artillery. Don Christopher, besides his 450 musqueteers, had about 12,000 Abyssinians, mostly foot, with a few bad horse commanded by the Baharnagash, and Robel governor of Tigré. Don Christopher, whose principal view was a junction with the king, though he did not decline fighting, yet, like a good officer, he chose to do it as much as possible upon his own terms; and, therefore, as the enemy exceeded greatly in the number of horse, he posted himself so as to make the best of his fire-arms and artillery. And well it was that he did so, for the Abyssinians shewed the utmost terror when the firing began on both sides. 184

Gragne, mounted on a bay horse, advancing too near Don Christopher’s line that he might see if in any part it was accessible to his cavalry, and being known by his dress to be an officer of distinction, he was shot at by Peter de Sa, a Portuguese marksman, who killed his horse, and wounded the rider in the leg. This occasioned a great confusion, and would probably have ended in a defeat of the Moors, had not the Portuguese general also been wounded immediately after by a shot. Don Christopher, to shew his confidence of victory, ordered his men forthwith to pitch their tents, upon which the Moors retired with Gragnè (whom they had mounted on another horse) without being pursued, the Abyssinians having contented themselves with being spectators of the battle.

Don Christopher, with his army and the empress, now entered into winter-quarters at Affalo; nor did Gragnè depart to any distance from him, but took up his quarters at Zabul, in hopes always to fight the Portuguese before it was possible for them to effect a junction with the king. The winter passed in a mutual intercourse of correspondence and confidence between the king and Don Christopher, and in determining upon the best scheme to pursue the war with success. Don Christopher and the queen were both of opinion, that, considering the small number of Portuguese first landed, and their diminution by fighting, and a strange climate, it was risking every thing to defer a junction till the winter was over.

The Moorish general was perfectly of the same opinion; therefore, as soon as the king began his march from Dembea, Gragnè advanced to Don Christopher’s camp, and placed himself 185 between the Portuguese army and that of the king, drawing up his troops before the camp, and defying the Portuguese to march out, and fight, in the most opprobrious language. Don Christopher, in a long catalogue of virtues which he possessed to a very eminent degree, had not the smallest claim to that of patience, so very necessary to those that command armies. He was brave to a fault; rash and vehement; jealous of what he thought military honour; and obstinate in his resolutions, which he formed in consequence. The defiance of this barbarian, at which an old general would have laughed, made him utterly forget the reasons he himself frequently alledged, and the arguments used by the queen, which the king’s approach daily strengthened, that it was risking every thing to come to a battle till the two armies had joined. He had, however, from no other motive but Gragnè’s insolence, formed his resolution to fight, without waiting a junction; and accordingly the 30th of August, early in the morning, having chosen his ground to the best advantage, he offered battle to the Moorish army.

Gragne, by presents sent to the basha of Zibid, had doubled his number of horse, which now consisted of 2000. He had got likewise 100 Turkish musqueteers, an infinite number of foot, and a train of artillery more numerous and complete than ever had been seen before in Abyssinia. The queen, frightened at the preparation for the battle, fled, taking with her the Portuguese patriarch, who seemed to have as little inclination as she had to see the issue of the day. But Don Christopher, who knew well the bad effects this example would have, both on Abyssinians and Portuguese, sent twenty horse, and brought them both back; telling the patriarch it was a breach of duty he would not suffer, 186 for him to withdraw until he had confessed him, and given the army absolution before the action with the Infidels.

The battle was fought on the 30th of August with great fury and obstinacy on both sides. The Portuguese had strewed, early in the morning, all the front of their line with gun-powder, to which, on the approach of the Turks, they set fire by trains, which burnt and disabled, a great many of them; and things bore a prosperous appearance, till the Moorish general ordered some artillery to be pointed against the Abyssinians, who, upon hearing the first explosion, and seeing the effect of some balls that had lighted among them, fled, and left the Portuguese to the number only of 400, who were immediately surrounded by the Moorish army. Nor did Gragnè pursue the fugitives, his affair being with the Portuguese, the smallness of whose number promised they would fall an easy and certain sacrifice. He therefore, attacked their camp upon every side with very little success, having lost most of his best officers, till, unfortunately, Don Christopher, fighting and exposing himself everywhere, was singled out by a Turkish soldier, and shot through the arm. Upon this all his men turned their thoughts from their own preservation to that of their general, who obstinately refused to fly, till he was by force put upon a litter, and sent off, together with the patriarch and queen.

Night now coming on, Don Christopher had got into a wood in which there was a cave. There he ordered himself to be set down to have his wounds dressed; which, being done, he was urged by the queen and patriarch to continue 187 his flight. But he had formed his resolution, and, without deigning to give his reasons, he obstinately refused to retreat a step farther. In vain the queen, and those that knew the country, told him he was just in the tract of the Moorish horsemen, who would not fail soon to surround him. He repeated his resolution of staying there with such a degree of firmness, that the queen and patriarch, who had no great desire for martyrdom, left him to his fate, which presently overtook him.

In one of Don Christopher’s expeditions to the mountains, he had taken a very beautiful woman, wife to a Turkish officer, whom he had slain. This lady had made a shew of conversion to Christianity; lived with him afterwards, and was treated by him with the utmost tenderness. It was said, that, after he was wounded and began to fly, this woman had given him his route, and promised to overtake him with friends that would carry him to a place of safety. Accordingly, some servants left by the queen, hidden among the rocks, to watch what might befal him, and assist him if possible, saw a woman, in the dawn of the morning, come to the cave, and return into the wood immediately, whence there rushed out a body of Moorish horse, who went straight to the cave and found Don Christopher lying upon the ground sorely wounded. Upon the first question that was asked him, he declared his name, which so overjoyed the Moors, that they gave over further pursuit, and returned with the prisoner they had taken. Don Christopher was brought into the presence of the Moorish general, Gragnè, who loaded him with reproaches; to which he replied with such a share of invectives, that the Moor, in the violence of his passion, drew his sword and cut 188 off his head with his own hand. His head was sent to Constantinople, and parts of his body to Zibid and other quarters of Arabia.

The Portuguese camp was now taken, and all the wounded found in it were put to death. The women, from their fear, having retired all into Don Christopher’s tent, the Turks began to indulge themselves in their usual excesses towards their captives, when a noble Abyssinian woman, who had been married to a Portuguese, seeing the shocking treatment that was awaiting them, set fire to several barrels of gun-powder that were in the tent, and at once destroyed herself, her companions, and those that were about to abuse them.

The queen and the patriarch, after travelling through most difficult ways, and being hospitably entertained whereever they passed, at last took up their residence in the Jews mountain, a place inaccessible in point of strength, having but one entrance, and that very difficult, being also defended by a multitude of inhabitants who dwell on a large plain on the top of that mountain, where there is plenty of space to plow and sow, and a large stream of water that runs through the whole of it. Here they staid two months, as well to repose themselves as to give the king time to relieve them. After hearing that he was in motion, they left the mountain of the Jews, and met him on his march towards them.

Claudius shewed great signs of sorrow for the death of Don Christopher, and mourned three days. He then sent 3000 ounces of gold to be divided among the Portuguese, who, in the place of Don Christopher, had elected Alphonso 189 Caldeyra for their captain. These all flocked about the king, demanding that he would lead them to battle, that they might revenge the death of Don Christopher. Soon after which, Alphonso Caldeyra, exercising a horse in the field, was thrown off and died of the fall. In his place was elected Arius Dias, a Portuguese, born at Coimbra, whose mother was a black; he was very much favoured by the king, who now began to cultivate particular parties among the Portuguese, in order to divide them, and loosen their attachment for their patriarch, religion, and country.

The king marched from Samen to Shawada, where the Moorish army came in full force to meet him. They were not, however, those formidable troops that had defeated and taken Don Christopher: For the Turkish soldiers, who were the strength of the army, expecting to have shared a great sum each for Don Christopher’s ransom, thought themselves exceedingly injured by the manner in which he was put to death; and they had accordingly all to a man returned into Arabia, leaving Gragnè to fight his own battles for his own profit. Nor was Claudius ignorant of this; and having collected all his army he gave the Moors battle on the 15th of November in a plain called Woggora, on the top of Lamalmon, in which the Moors, notwithstanding their recent victory, were not long in yielding to the superiority of the king’s troops.

The loss of the day was not inconsiderable. Mahomet, Osman, and Talil, three Moorish leaders, famous for their 190 successes against David the king’s father, were this day slain in the field.

Claudius now descended into the low country of Derseguè, a very plentiful province, to which the Moors always retreated to strengthen themselves after any misfortune. This the king utterly destroyed; while Gragnè did the same with those countries in Dembea that had been recovered by the king. Claudius then returned to Shawada, and Gragnè to Derseguè. After that the king marched to Wainadega, and Gragnè, leaving Derseguè, advanced so near the king’s army, that the outposts were nearly in sight of each other. In such a position of two such armies a battle became inevitable.

Accordingly, on the 10th of Feb. 1543, in the morning, the king, whose quarters were at Isaac’s Bet, having well refreshed his army, marched out of his camp, and offered the enemy battle. The Portuguese, ever mindful of Don Christopher, fought with a bravery like to desperation, and the presence of the king keeping the Abyssinians in their duty, the van of Gragnè’s army was pushed back upon the center, and much confusion was like to follow, till Gragnè advanced alone before them, waving and beckoning with his hands to his men that they should follow; and he was already come so near the Portuguese line as to be easily known and distinguished by them.

Peter Lyon, a man of low stature, but very active and valiant, who had been valet-de-chambre to Don Christopher, having crept unseen along the course of a river a considerable space nearer, to make his aim more certain, shot Gragnè 191 with his musquet, so that the ball went through his body in the moment that both armies joined. Gragnè, finding that his wound was mortal, rode aside from the pressure of the troops towards a small thicket, and was closely followed by Peter Lyon, who saw him fall dead from his horse; and, desirous still to do further service in the battle, he would not incumber himself with his head, but, cutting off one of the ears, he put it in his pocket, and returned to the action. The Moorish army no sooner missed the presence of their general, than concluding all lost, they fell into confusion, and were pursued by the Portuguese and Abyssinians, with a great slaughter, till the evening.

The next morning, in surveying the dead, the body of Gragnè was found by an Abyssinian officer, who cut his head off, and brought it to the king, who received him with great honour and promise of reward. Peter Lyon stood a silent spectator of the impudence of his competitor; but Arius Dias, who knew the fact, desired the king’s attention; saying, at the same time, “That he believed his majesty knew Gragnè well enough to suppose that he would not suffer any man to cut off his ear, without having it in his power to sever his head also; and consequently, that the ear must be in possession of a better man than he that had brought his head to the camp.” Upon this, Peter Lyon pulled the ear out of his pocket, and laid it at the king’s feet, amidst the acclamations of all present, for his bravery in revenging his old master’s death, and his modesty in being content with having done so, without pretending to any other reward. 192

In this battle, a son of Gragnè was taken prisoner, with many other considerable officers; and Del Wumbarea, wife of Gragnè, with Nur son of Mudgid, and a few troops, were obliged to throw themselves, for safety, among the wilds and woods of Atbara, thereby escaping with great difficulty.

The king had now ample revenge of all the Moorish leaders who had reduced his father to such extremities, excepting Joram, who had driven the king from his hiding-place on mount Tsalem, and forced him to cross the Tacazzé on foot, with equal danger of being drowned or taken. This leader had, much against his will, been detained from the last battle, but, hoping to be still in time, was advancing by forced marches. The king, informed of his route, detached a party of his army to meet him before the news of the battle could reach him. They having placed them selves in ambush, he fell into it with his army, and was cut to pieces: this completed Claudius’s account with his father’s enemies.

During the late war with Gragnè, the provinces of Tigré and Siré had been the principal seat of the war. They were immediately in the way between Dembea, Masuah, and the other Moorish posts upon the Red Sea; the enemy had crossed them in all directions, and a proportionable devastation had been the consequence. Gragnè had burnt Axum, and destroyed all the churches and convents in Tigré. The king, now delivered from this enemy, had applied seriously to repair the ravages which had been made in the country. For this purpose he marched with a small army towards Axum, intending afterwards an expedition against the Galla. 193

It was in the 13th year of the reign of Claudius, while he was at Siré, that there happened a very remarkable eclipse of the sun, which threw both court and army into great consternation. The prophets and diviners, ignorant monks of the desert, did not let slip so favourable an opportunity of increasing their consequence by augmenting this panic, and declaring this eclipse to portend nothing less than the renewal of the Moorish war. The year, however, passed in tranquillity and peace. Two old women, relations of the king, are said to have died; and it was in this great calamity that these diviners were to look for the completion of their prophecies. It is from this, however, that I have taken an opportunity to compare and rectify the dates of the principal transactions in the Abyssinian history. Siré, where the king then resided, was a point very favourable for this application; for, in my journey from Masuah to Gondar, I had settled the latitude and longitude of that town by many observations.

On the 22d of January 1770, at night, by a medium of different passages of stars over the meridian, and by an observation of the sun the noon of the following day, I found the latitude to be 14° 4´ 35´´ north, and the evening of the 23d, I observed an emersion of the first satellite of Jupiter, and by this I concluded the longitude of Siré to be 38° 0´ 15´´ east of the meridian of Greenwich.

The 13th year of the reign of Claudius falls to be in the 1553, and I find that there was a remarkable eclipse of the sun that did happen that same year on the 24th of January N. S. which answers to the 18th of the Ethiopic month Teir. The circumstances of this eclipse were as follow: 194

The quantity of the sun’s disk obscured was 10 digits; so that this was so near to a total eclipse, it must have made an impression on the spectators minds that sufficiently accounts for the alarm and apprehensions it occasioned.

In the month of January, nothing can be more beautiful than the sky in Siré; not a cloud appears; the sky is all of a pale azure, the colour lighter than an European sky, and of inexpressible beauty. The manner of applying this eclipse I shall mention hereafter.

Eclipses of the moon do not seem to be attended to in Abyssinia. The people are very little out in the night, insomuch that I do not find one of these recorded throughout their history. The circumstances of the season make even those of the sun seldomer visible than in other climates, for in the rainy season, from April to September, the heavens are constantly overcast with clouds, so that it is mere accident if they can catch the moment it happens. But in the month of Teir, that is December and January, the sky is perfectly serene and clear, and at this time our eclipse above mentioned happened.

The king now took into his consideration the state of the church. He had sent for an Abuna from Cairo to succeed Abuna Marcus, and he was now in his way to Abyssinia, while Bermudes, not able to bear this slight, on the other 195 hand, publicly declared to the king, that, having been ambassador from his father, and made his submission to the Roman pontiff, for himself and for his kingdom, he now expected that Claudius would make good his father’s engagements, embrace the Roman Catholic religion himself, and, without delay, proclaim it as the established religion in Abyssinia. This the king positively refused to do, and a conversation ensued, which is repeated by Bermudes himself, and sufficiently shews the moderation of the young king, and the fiery, brutal zeal of that ignorant, bigotted, ill-mannered priest. Hitherto the Abyssinians heard the Portuguese mass with reverence and attention; and the Portuguese frequented the Abyssinian churches with complacency. They intermarried with each other, and the children seem to have been christened indifferently by the priests of either church. And this might have long continued, had it not been for the impatience of Bermudes.

The king, seeing the danger of connecting himself with such a man, kept up every appearance of attachment to the Alexandrian church. Yet, says the Abyssinian historian who writes his life, it was well known that Claudius, in his heart, was a private, but perfect convert, to the Romish faith, and kept only from embracing it by his hatred to Bermudes, the constant persuasion of the empress Sabel Wenghel, and the recollection of the misfortunes of his father. Upon being required publicly to submit himself to the See of Rome, he declared that he had made no such promise; that he considered Bermudes as no patriarch, or, at best, only patriarch of the Franks; and that the Abuna of Abyssinia was the chief priest acknowledged by him. Bermudes told him, that he was accursed and excommunicated. Claudius answered, that 196 he, Bermudes, was a nestorian heretic, and worshipped four gods. Bermudes answered plainly, that he lied; that he would take every Portuguese from him, and return to India whence he came. The king’s answer was, that he wished he would return to India; but as for the Portuguese, neither they, nor any other person, should leave his kingdom without his permission. Accordingly, having perfectly gained Arius Dias, he gave him the name of Marcus, with the command of the Portuguese, and sent him a standard with his own arms, to use instead of the king of Portugal’s. But the Abyssinian page being met, on his return, with the Portuguese standard in his hand, by James Brito, he wrested it from him, felling him to the ground with a blow of his sword on the head.

From expostulations with the king, the matter of religion turned into disputes among the priests, at which the king always assisted in person. If we suppose they were no better sustained on the part of the Abyssinians than they were by the patriarch Bermudes, who we know was no great divine, we cannot expect much that was edifying from the arguments that either of them used. The Portuguese priests say36, that the king, struck with the ignorance of his own clergy, frequently took the discussion upon himself, which he managed with such force of reasoning as often to put the patriarch to a stand. From verbal disputes, which terminated in nothing, Bermudes was resolved to appeal to arguments in writing; and, with the help of those that were with him of the same faith, a fair state of the differences in question was made in a small book, and presented to the king, who read it with so much pleasure that he kept it constantly by him. This gave very great offence to the 197 Abyssinian clergy; and the Abuna being now arrived, the king desired of him liberty to read that book, which he refusing, put the young king into so violent a passion that he called the Abuna Mahometan and Infidel to his face.

Things growing worse and worse between the Portuguese and Abyssinians, by the incendiary spirit of the brutish Bermudes, from reproaches they came to blows; and this proceeded so far, that the Portuguese one night assaulted the king’s tent, where they slew some, and grievously wounded others. Upon this, the king, desirous to estrange him a little from the Portuguese, sent Bermudes to the country of the Gafats, where he gave him large appointments, in hopes that the natural turbulence of his temper would involve him in some difficulties. And there he staid seven months, oppressing the poor ignorant people, and frightening them with the noise of his fire-arms. During this period, the king went on an expedition against the Galla; Bermudes then returned to court, where he found that Arius Dias was dead, and a great many of the Portuguese very well attached to the king. But he began his old work of dissention, insomuch that the king determined to banish him to a mountain for life.

Gaspar de Suza now commanded the Portuguese instead of Arius Dias, a man equally beloved by his own nation and the king. By his persuasions, and that of Kasmati Robel, the banishment to the mountain was laid aside; but Bermudes was privately persuaded to embark for India while it was yet time; and accordingly he repaired to Dobarwa, where he remained two years, as it should seem, perfectly quiet, neglected, and forlorn; saying daily mass to ten Portuguese 198 who had settled in that town after the defeat of Don Christopher. He then went to Masuah, and the monsoon being favourable, he embarked on board a Portuguese vessel, carrying with him the ten Portuguese that were settled at Dobarwa, who all arrived safely at Goa.

St Ignatius, founder of the Order of Jesuits, was then at Rome in the dawn of his holiness. The conversion of Abyssinia seemed of such consequence to him, that he resolved himself to go and be the apostle of the kingdom. But the pope, who had conceived other hopes of him and his Order more important and nearer at hand, absolutely refused this offer. One of his society, Nugnez Baretto, was, however, fixed upon for patriarch, without any notice being taken of Don John Bermudes. By him Ignatius sent a letter addressed to Claudius, which is to be found in the collections37. It does not, I think, give us any idea of the ingenuity or invention of that great saint. It seems mostly to beg the question, and to contain little else than texts of scripture for his future missionaries to preach and write on, relative to the difference of tenets of the two churches.

With this letter, and a number of priests, Baretto came to Goa. But news being arrived there of king Claudius’s steady aversion to the Catholic church, it was then thought better, rather than risk the patriarchal dignity, to send Andrew Oviedo bishop of Hierapolis, and Melchior Carneyro bishop of Nice, with several other priests, as ambassadors from the governor of India to Claudius, with proper credentials. They arrived safely at Masuah in 1558, five days before the Turkish basha came with his fleet and army, and took possession 199 of Masuah and Arkeeko, though these places had been occupied by the Turks two years before.

When the arrival of these Portuguese was intimated to Claudius, he was exceedingly glad, as he considered them as an accession of strength. But when, on opening the letter, he saw they were priests, he was very much troubled, and said, that he wondered the king of Portugal should meddle so much with his affairs; that he and his predecessors knew no obedience due but to the chair of St Mark, or acknowledged any other patriarch but that of Alexandria; nevertheless, continued he with his usual goodness and moderation, since they are come so far out of an honest concern for me, I shall not fail to send proper persons to receive and conduct them. This he did, and the two bishops and their companions were immediately brought to court. It was at this time that the dispute about the two natures began, in which the king took so considerable a part. He was strenuous, eloquent, and vehement in the discussion; when that was ended, he still preserved his usual moderation and kindness for the Portuguese priests.

Nugnez died in India, and Oviedo succeeded him as patriarch to Abyssinia, it having been so appointed by the pope from the beginning of their mission.

Claudius had no children; a treaty was therefore set on foot, at the instance of the empress Sabel Wenghel, for ransoming the prince Menas who had been taken prisoner in his father David’s time, and ever since kept in confinement among the Moors, upon a high mountain in Adel. 200 The same had happened to a son of Gragnè likewise, made prisoner at the battle of Wainadega, when his father was slain by Claudius. The Moors settled in Abyssinia, as well as all the Abyssinian rebels who had forsaken their allegiance or religion during the war, were to a man violently against setting Menas at liberty, for he was the only brother Claudius had, and a disputed succession was otherwise probable, which was what the Moors longed for. Besides this, Menas was exceedingly brave, of a severe and cruel temper, a mortal enemy to the Mahometans, and at this time in the flower of his age, and perfectly fit to govern. It was not, then, by any means, an eligible measure for those who were naturally the objects of his hatred, to provide such an assistant and successor to Claudius.

Del Wumbarea thought, that, having lost her husband, to be deprived of her son likewise, was more than fell to her share in the common cause. She, too, had therefore applied to the basha of Masuah, who looked no farther than to a ransom, and cared very little what prince reigned in Abyssinia. He, therefore, undertook the management of the matter, and declared that he would send Menas to the Grand Signior, as soon as an answer should come from Constantinople, while Claudius protested, that he would give up Gragnè’s son to the Portuguese, if the ransom for his brother was not immediately agreed on. This resolution, on both sides, quickly removed all objections. Four thousand ounces of gold were paid to the Moors and the basha; Menas was released and sent home to Claudius, who thereupon, in his turn, set Ali Gerad, son of Gragnè by Del Wumbarea, at liberty, and with him Waraba Guta brother of the king of Adel, and this finished the transaction. 201

I must here observe, that what Bermudes38 says, that Del Wumbarea was taken prisoner and given in marriage to Arius Dias, was but a fable, as appears both from the beginning and sequel of the narrative. Del Wumbarea having thus obtained her son, took a very early opportunity of shewing she had not yet forgot the father. Nur, governor of Zeyla, son of Mudgid, who had slain the princes imprisoned upon the mountain of Geshen, was deeply in love with this lady, and had deserved well of her, for he had assisted her in making her escape into Atbara that day her husband was slain. But this heroine had constantly refused to listen to any proposals; nay, had vowed she never would give her hand in marriage to any man till he should first bring her the head of Claudius who had slain her husband. Nur willingly accepted the condition, which gave him few rivals, but rather seemed to be reserved for him, and out of the power of every one else.

Claudius, before this, had marched towards Adel, when he received a message from Nur, that, though Gragnè was dead, there still remained a governor of Zeyla, whose family was chosen as a particular instrument for shedding the blood of the Abyssinian princes; and desired him, therefore, to be prepared, for he was speedily to set out to come to him. Claudius had been employed in various journies through different parts of his kingdom, repairing the churches which Gragnè and the other Moors had burnt; and he was then rebuilding that of Debra Werk39 when this message of 202 Nur was brought to him. This prince was of a temper never to avoid a challenge; and if he did not march against Nur immediately, he staid no longer than to complete his army as far as possible. He then began his march for Adel, very much, as it is said, against the advice of his friends.

That such advice should be given, at this particular time, appears strange; for till now he had been constantly victorious, and his kingdom was perfectly obedient, which was not the case when any one of the former battles had been fought. But many prophecies were current in the camp, that the king was to be unfortunate this campaign, and was to lose his life in it. These unfortunate rumours tended much to discourage the army, at the same time that they seemed to have a contrary effect on the king, and to confirm him in his resolution to fight. The truth is, the clergy, who had seen the country delivered by him from the Mahometans in a manner almost miraculous, and the constancy with which he withstood the Romish patriarch, and frustrated the designs of his father against the Alexandrian church, and who had experienced his extreme liberality in rebuilding the churches, had wrought his young mind to such a degree of enthusiasm that he was often heard to say, he preferred a death in the middle of an army of Infidels to the longest and most prosperous life that ever fell to the lot of man. It needed not a prophet to have foretold the likely issue of a battle in these circumstances, where the king, careless of life, rather sought death than victory; where the number of Portuguese was so small as to be incapable, of themselves, to effect any thing; where, even of that number, those that were attached to the king were looked upon as traitors by those of the party of the patriarch; and where 203 the Abyssinians, from their repeated quarrels and disputes, heartily hated them all.

The armies were drawn up and ready to engage, when the chief priest of Debra Libanos came to the king to tell him a dream, or vision, which warned him not to fight; but the Moors were then advancing, and the king on horseback made no reply, but marched briskly forward to the enemy. The cowardly Abyssinians, upon the first fire, fled, leaving the king engaged in the middle of the Moorish army with twenty horse and eighteen Portuguese musqueteers, who were all slain around his person; and he himself fell, after fighting manfully, and receiving twenty wounds. His head was cut off, and by Nur delivered to Del Wumbarea, who directed it to be tied by the hair to the branch of a tree before her door, that she might keep it constantly in sight. Here it remained three years, till it was purchased from her by an Armenian merchant, her first grief, having, it is probable, subsided upon the acquisition of a new husband. The merchant carried the head to Antioch, and buried it there in the sepulchre of a saint of the same name.

Thus died king Claudius in the 19th year of his reign, who, by his virtues and capacity, might hold a first place among any series of kings we have known, victorious in every action he fought, except in that one only in which he died. A great slaughter was made after this among the routed, and many of the first nobility were slain in endeavouring to escape; among the rest, the dreamer from Debra Libanos, his vision, by which he knew the king’s death, not having extended so far as to reveal his own. 204 The Abyssinians immediately transferred the name of this prince into their catalogue of Saints, and he is called St Claudius in that country to this day. Though endowed with every other virtue that entitled him to his place in the kalendar, he seems to have wanted one—that of dying in charity with his enemies.

This battle was fought on the 22d March 1559; and the victory gained by Nur was a complete one. The king and most of his principal officers were slain; great part of the army taken prisoners, the rest dispersed, and the camp plundered; so that no Moorish general had ever returned home with the glory that he did. But afterwards, in his behaviour, he exhibited a spectacle more memorable, and that did him more honour than the victory itself; for, when he drew near to Adel, he clothed himself in poor attire like a common soldier, and bare-headed, mounted on an ordinary mule, with an old saddle and tattered accoutrements, he forbade the songs and praise with which it is usual to meet conquerors in that country when returning with victory from the field. He declined also all share in the success of that day, declaring that the whole of it was due to God alone, to whose mercy and immediate interposition he owed the destruction of the Christian army.

The unworthy and unfortunate John Bermudes having arrived in Portugal from India, continued there till his death; and, in the inscription over his tomb, is called only Patriarch of Alexandria. Yet it is clear, from the history of these times, that he was first ordained by the old patriarch Marcus; and that the pope, Paul III. only confirmed the ordination of this heretical schismatical prelate, though we have 205 stated that he was ordained by the pope, according to his own assertion, to be patriarch of Alexandria, Abyssinia, and the Sea. Bermudes lived many years after this, and never resigned any of his charges.

However, on his arrival in Europe, several supposed well-meaning persons at Rome began to discourse among themselves, as if the conversion of Abyssinia had not had a fair trial when trusted in the hands of such a man as Bermudes. Scandalous stories as to his moral character were propagated at Rome to strengthen this. He was said to have stolen a golden cup in Abyssinia40; but this does not appear to me in any shape probable, or like the manners of the man. He was a simple, ill-bred zealot, exceedingly vain, but in no-wise coveting riches or gain of any sort. Sebastian king of Portugal, hearing the bad posture of the Catholic religion in Abyssinia, and the small hopes of the conversion of that country, besought the pope to send all the missionaries that were in that kingdom to preach the gospel in Japan: but Oviedo stated such strong reasons in his letter to Rome, that he was confirmed in the mission of Ethiopia.

206

MENAS, or ADAMAS SEGUED.
From 1559 to 1563.