Chapter VI: Book III: Annals of Abyssinia, (4)

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 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 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 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 Bisagudo[20] 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 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 Paulo[21], 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 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_, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 Helena_[22], 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 collections[23].