BOOK II.

ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST AGES OF THE INDIAN AND AFRICAN TRADE--THE FIRST PEOPLING OF ABYSSINIA AND ATBARA--SOME CONJECTURES CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE THERE.

CHAP. I.

_Of the India trade in its earliest ages--Settlement of Ethiopia--Troglodytes--Building of the first Cities._

The farther back we go into the history of Eastern nations, the more reason we have to be surprised at the accounts of their immense riches and magnificence. One who reads the history of Egypt is like a traveller walking through its ancient, ruined, and deserted towns, where all are palaces and temples, without any trace of private or ordinary habitation. So in the earliest though now mutilated, accounts which we have of them, all is power, splendour, and riches, attended by the luxury which was the necessary consequence, without any clue or thread left us by which we can remount, or be conducted, to the source or fountain whence this variety of wealth had flowed; without ever being able to arrive at a period, when these people were poor and mean, or even in a state of mediocrity, or upon a footing with European nations.

The sacred scriptures, the most ancient, as well as the most credible of all histories, represent Palestine, of which they particularly treat, in the earliest ages, as not only full of polished, powerful, and orderly states, but abounding also in silver and gold[211], in a greater proportion than is to be found this day in any state in Europe, though immensely rich dominions in a new world have been added to the possession of that territory, which furnished the greatest quantity of gold and silver to the old. Palestine, however, is a poor country, left to its own resources and produce merely. It must have been always a poor country, without some extraordinary connection with foreign nations. It never contained either mines of gold or silver, and though, at most periods of its history, it appears to have been but thinly inhabited, it never of itself produced wherewithal to support and maintain the few that dwelt in it.

Mr de Montesquieu[212], speaking of the wealth of Semiramis, imagines that the great riches of the Assyrian empire in her reign, arose from this queen’s having plundered some more ancient and richer nation, as they, in their turn, fell afterwards a prey to a poorer, but more warlike enemy. But however true this fact may be with regard to Semiramis, it does not solve the general difficulty, as still the same question recurs, concerning the wealth of that prior nation, which the Assyrians plundered, and from which they received their treasure. I believe the example is rare, that a large kingdom has been enriched by war. Alexander conquered all Asia, part of Africa, and a considerable portion of Europe; he plundered Semiramis’s kingdom, and all those that were tributary to her; he went farther into the Indies than ever she did, though her territories bordered upon the river Indus itself; yet neither Macedon, nor any of the neighbouring provinces of Greece, could ever compare with the small districts of Tyre and Sidon for riches.

War disperses wealth in the very instant it acquires it; but commerce, well regulated, constantly and honestly supported, carried on with œconomy and punctuality, is the only thing that ever did enrich extensive kingdoms; and one hundred hands employed at the loom will bring to a country more riches and abundance, than ten thousand bearing spears and shields. We need not go far to produce an example that will confirm this. The subjects and neighbours of Semiramis had brought spices by land into Assyria. The Ishmaelites and Midianites, the merchants and carriers of gold from Ethiopia, and more immediately from Palestine, met in her dominions; and there was, for a time, the mart of the East India trade. But, by an absurd expedition with an army into India, in hopes to enrich herself all at once, she effectually ruined that commerce, and her kingdom fell immediately afterwards.

Whoever reads the history of the most ancient nations, will find the origin of wealth and power to have risen in the east; then to have gradually advanced westward, spreading itself at the same time north and south. They will find the riches and population of those nations decay in proportion as this trade forsakes them; which cannot but suggest to a good understanding, this truth constantly to be found in the disposition of all things in this universe, that God makes use of the smallest means and causes to operate the greatest and most powerful effects. In his hand a pepper-corn is the foundation of the power, glory, and riches of India; he makes an acorn, and by it communicates power and riches to nations divided from India by thousands of leagues of sea.

Let us pursue our consideration of Egypt. Sesostris, before the time we have been just speaking of, passed with a fleet of large ships from the Arabian Gulf into the Indian Ocean; he conquered part of India, and opened to Egypt the commerce of that country by sea. I enter not into the credibility of the number of his fleet, as there is scarce any thing credible left us about the shipping and navigation of the ancients, or, at least, that is not full of difficulties and contradictions; my business is with the expedition, not with the number of the ships. It would appear he revived, rather than first discovered, this way of carrying on the trade to the East Indies, which, though it was at times intermitted, (perhaps forgot by the Princes who were contending for the Sovereignty of the continent of Asia), was, nevertheless, perpetually kept up by the trading nations themselves, from the ports of India and Africa, and on the Red Sea from Edom.

The pilots from these ports alone, of all the world, had a secret confined to their own knowledge, upon which the success of these voyages depended. This was the phænomena of the trade-winds[213] and monsoons, which the pilots of Sesostris knew; and which those of Nearchus seem to have taught him only in part, in his voyage afterwards, and of which we are to speak in the sequel. History says further of Sesostris, that the Egyptians considered him as their greatest benefactor, for having laid open to them the trade both of India and Arabia, for having overturned the dominion of the _Shepherd_ kings; and, lastly, for having restored to the Egyptian individuals each their own lands, which had been wrested from them by the violent hands of the Ethiopian _Shepherds_, during the first usurpation of these princes.

In memory of his having happily accomplished these events, Sesostris is said to have built a ship of cedar of a hundred and twenty yards in length, the outside of which he covered with plates of gold, and the inside with plates of silver, and this he dedicated in the temple of Isis. I will not enter into the defence of the probability of his reasons for having built a ship of this size, and for such a purpose, as one of ten yards would have sufficiently answered. The use it was made for, was apparently to serve for a hieroglyphic, of what he had accomplished, viz. that he had laid open the gold and silver trade from the mines in Ethiopia, and had navigated the ocean in ships made of wood, which were the only ones, he thereby insinuated, that could be employed in that trade. The Egyptian ships, at that time, were all made of the reed papyrus[214], covered with skins or leather, a construction which no people could venture to present to the ocean.

There is much to be learned from a proper understanding of these last benefits conferred by Sesostris upon his Egyptian subjects. When we understand these, which is very easy to any that have travelled in the countries we are speaking of, (for nations and causes have changed very little in these countries to this day), it will not be difficult to find a solution of this problem, What was the commerce that, progressively, laid the foundation of all that immense grandeur of the east; what polished them, and cloathed them with silk, scarlet, and gold; and what carried the arts and sciences among them, to a pitch, perhaps, never yet surpassed, and this some thousands of years before the nations in Europe had any other habitation than their native woods, or cloathing than the skins of beasts, wild and domestic, or government, but that first, innate one, which nature had given to the strongest?

Let us inquire what was the connection Sesostris brought about between Egypt and India; what was that commerce of Ethiopia and Arabia, by which he enriched Egypt, and what was their connection with the peninsula of India; who were those kings who bore so opposite an office, as to be at the same time _Shepherds_; and who were those _Shepherds_, near, and powerful enough to wrest the property of their lands from four million of inhabitants.

To explain this, it will be necessary to enter into some detail, without which no person dipping into the ancient or modern history of this part of Africa, can have any precise idea of it, nor of the different nations inhabiting the peninsula, the source of whose wealth consisted entirely in the early, but well-established commerce between Africa and India. What will make this subject of more easy explanation is, that the ancient employment and occupations of these people in the first ages, were still the same that subsist at this day. The people have altered a little by colonies of strangers being introduced among them, but their manners and employments are the same as they originally were. What does not relate to the ancient history of these people, I shall only mention in the course of my travels when passing through, or sojourning amongst them.

Providence had created the inhabitants of the peninsula of India under many disadvantages in point of climate. The high and wholesome part of the country was covered with barren and rugged mountains; and, at different times of the year, violent rains fell in large currents down the sides of these, which overflowed all the fertile land below; and these rains were no sooner over, than they were succeeded by a scorching sun, the effect of which upon the human body, was to render it feeble, enervated, and incapable of the efforts necessary for agriculture. In this flat country, large rivers, that scarce had declivity enough to run, crept slowly along, through meadows of fat black earth, stagnating in many places as they went, rolling an abundance of decayed vegetables, and filling the whole air with exhalations of the most corrupt and putrid kind. Even rice, the general food of man, the safest and most friendly to the inhabitants of that country, could not grow but by laying under water the places where it was sown, and thereby rendering them, for several months, absolutely improper for man’s dwelling. Providence had done this, but, never failing in its wisdom, had made to the natives a great deal more than a sufficient amends.

Their bodies were unfit for the fatigues of agriculture, nor was the land proper for common cultivation. But this country produced spices of great variety, especially a small berry called Pepper, supposed, of all others, and with reason, to be the greatest friend to the health of man. This grew spontaneously, and was gathered without toil. It was, at once, a perfect remedy for the inclemencies and diseases of the country, as well as the source of its riches, from the demand of foreigners. This species of spice is no where known but in India, though equally useful in every putrid region, where, unhappily, these diseases reign. Providence has not, as in India, placed remedies so near them, thus wisely providing for the welfare of mankind in general, by the dependency it has forced one man to have upon another. In India, and similar climates, this spice is not used in small quantities, but in such, as to be nearly equal to that of bread.

In cloathing, Providence had not been less kind to India. The silk worm, with little fatigue and trouble to man, almost without his interference, provided for him a stuff, at once the softest, the most light and brilliant, and consequently the best adapted to warm countries; and cotton, a vegetable production, growing every where in great abundance, without care, which may be considered as almost equal to silk, in many of its qualities, and superior to it in some, afforded a variety still cheaper for more general use. Every tree without culture produced them fruit of the most excellent kind; every tree afforded them shade, under which, with a very light and portable _loom_ of cane, they could pass their lives delightfully in a calm and rational enjoyment, by the gentle exercise of weaving, at once providing for the health of their bodies, the necessities of their families, and the riches of their country.

But however plentifully their spices grew, in whatever quantity the Indians consumed them, and however generally they wore their own manufactures, the superabundance of both was such, as naturally led them to look out for articles against which they might barter their superfluities. This became necessary to supply the wants of those things that had been with-held from them, for wise ends, or which, from wantonness, luxury, or slender necessity, they had created in their own imaginations.

Far to the westward of them, but part of the same continent, connected by a long desert, and dangerous coast, was the peninsula of Arabia, which produced no spices, tho’ the necessities of its climate subjected its inhabitants to the same diseases as those in India. In fact, the country and climate were exactly similar, and, consequently, the plentiful use of these warm productions was as necessary there, as in India, the country where they grew.

It is true, Arabia was not abandoned wholly to the inclemency of its climate, as it produced myrrh and frankincense, which, when used as perfumes or fumigations, were powerful antiseptics of their kind, but administered rather as preventatives, than to remove the disorder when it once prevailed. These were kept up at a price, of which, at this day, we have no conception, but which never diminished from any circumstance, under which the country where they grew, laboured.

The silk and cotton of India were white and colourless, liable to soil, and without any variety; but Arabia produced gum and dyes of various colours, which were highly agreeable to the taste of the Asiatics. We find the sacred scriptures speak of the party-coloured garment as the mark of the greatest honour[215]. Solomon, in his proverbs, too, says, that he decked his bed with coverings of tapestry of Egypt[216]. But Egypt had neither silk nor cotton manufactory, no, nor even wool. Solomon’s coverings, though he had them from Egypt, were therefore an article of barter with India.

Balm, or Balsam[217], was a commodity produced in Arabia, sold at a very high price, which it kept up till within these few centuries in the east; when the Venetians carried on the India trade by Alexandria, this Balsam then sold for its weight in gold; it grows in the same place, and, I believe, nearly in the same quantity as ever, but, for very obvious reasons[218], it is now of little value.

The basis of trade, or a connection between these two countries, was laid, then, from the beginning, by the hand of Providence. The wants and necessities of the one found a supply, or balance from the other. Heaven had placed them not far distant, could the passage be made by sea; but violent, steady, and unconquerable winds presented themselves to make that passage of the ocean impossible, and we are not to doubt, but, for a very considerable time, this was the reason why the commerce of India was diffused through the continent, by land only, and from this arose the riches of Semiramis.

But, however precious the merchandise of Arabia was, it was neither in quantity, nor quality, capable of balancing the imports from India. Perhaps they might have paid for as much as was used in the peninsula of Arabia itself, but, beyond this there was a vast continent called Africa, capable of consuming many hundred fold more than Arabia; which lying under the same parallel with India, part of it still farther south, the diseases of the climate, and the wants of its numerous inhabitants, were, in many parts of it, the same as those of Arabia and India; besides which there was the Red Sea, and divers communications to the northward.

Neither their luxuries nor necessaries were the same as those of Europe. And indeed Europe, at this time, was probably inhabited by shepherds, hunters, and fishers, who had no luxury at all, or such as could not be supplied from India; they lived in woods and marshes, with the animals which made their sport, food, and cloathing.

The inhabitants of Africa then, this vast Continent, were to be supplied with the necessaries, as well as the luxuries of life, but they had neither the articles Arabia wanted, nor those required in India, at least, for a time they thought so; and so long they were not a trading people.

It is a tradition among the Abyssinians, which they say they have had from time immemorial, and which is equally received among the Jews and Christians, that almost immediately after the flood, Cush, grandson of Noah, with his family, passing through Atbara from the low country of Egypt, then without inhabitants, came to the ridge of mountains which still separates the flat country of Atbara from the more mountainous high-land of Abyssinia.

By casting his eye upon the map, the reader will see a chain of mountains, beginning at the Isthmus of Suez, that runs all along like a wall, about forty miles from the Red Sea, till it divides in lat. 13°, into two branches. The one goes along the northern frontiers of Abyssinia, crosses the Nile, and then proceeds westward, through Africa towards the Atlantic Ocean. The other branch goes southward, and then east, taking the form of the Arabian Gulf; after which, it continues southward all along the Indian Ocean, in the same manner as it did in the beginning all along, the Red Sea, that is parallel to the coast.

Their tradition says, that, terrified with the late dreadful event the flood, still recent in their minds, and apprehensive of being again involved in a similar calamity, they chose for their habitation caves in the sides of these mountains, rather than trust themselves again on the plain. It is more than probable, that, soon after their arrival, meeting here with the tropical rains, which, for duration, still exceed the days that occasioned the flood, and observing, that going through Atbara, that part of Nubia between the Nile and Astaboras, afterwards called Meroë, from a dry climate at first, they had after fallen in with rains, and as those rains increased in proportion to their advancing southward, they chose to stop at the first mountains, where the country was fertile and pleasant, rather than proceed farther at the risk of involving themselves, perhaps in a land of floods, that might prove as fatal to their posterity as that of Noah had been to their ancestors.

This is a conjecture from probability, only mentioned for illustration, for the motives that guided them cannot certainly be known; but it is an undoubted fact, that here the Cushites, with unparalleled industry, and with instruments utterly unknown to us, formed for themselves commodious, yet wonderful habitations in the heart of mountains of granite and marble, which remain entire in great numbers to this day, and promise to do so till the consummation of all things. This original kind of dwellings soon extended themselves through the neighbouring mountains. As the Cushites grew populous, they occupied those that were next them, spreading the industry and arts which they cultivated, as well to the eastern as to the western ocean, but, content with their first choice, they never descended from their caves, nor chose to reside at a distance on the plain.

It is very singular that St Jerome does not know where to look for this family, or descendents of Cush; though they are as plainly pointed out, and as often alluded to by scripture, as any nation in the Old Testament. They are described, moreover, by the particular circumstances of their country, which have never varied, to be in the very place where I now fix them, and where, ever since, they have remained, and still do to this present hour, in the same mountains, and the same houses of stone they formed for themselves in the beginning. And yet Bochart[219], professedly treating this subject, as it were industriously, involves it in more than Egyptian darkness. I rather refer the reader to his work, to judge for himself, than, quoting it by extracts, communicate the confusion of his ideas to my narrative.

The Abyssinian tradition further says, they built the city of Axum some time early in the days of Abraham. Soon after this, they pushed their colony down to Atbara, where we know from Herodotus[220], they early and successfully pursued their studies, from which, Josephus says[221], they were called Meroëtes, or inhabitants of the island of Meroë.

The prodigious fragments of colossal statues of the dog-star, still to be seen at Axum, sufficiently shew what a material object of their attention they considered him to be; and Seir, which in the language of the Troglodytes, and in that of the low country of Meroë, exactly corresponding to it, signifies a _dog_, instructs us in the reason why this province was called _Sirè_, and the large river which bounds it, _Siris_.

I apprehend the reason why, without forsaking their ancient domiciles in the mountains, they chose this situation for another city, Meroë, was owing to an imperfection they had discovered (both in Sirè and in their caves below it) to result from their climate. They were within the tropical rains; and, consequently, were impeded and interrupted in the necessary observations of the heavenly bodies, and the progress of astronomy which they so warmly cultivated. They must have seen, likewise, a necessity of building Meroë farther from them than perhaps they wished, for the same reason they built Axum in the high country of Abyssinia in order to avoid the fly (a phænomenon of which I shall afterwards speak) which pursued them everywhere within the limits of the rains, and which must have given an absolute law in those first times to the regulations of the Cushite settlements. They therefore went the length of lat. 16°, where I saw the ruins supposed to be those of Meroë[222], and caves in the mountains immediately above that situation, which I cannot doubt were the temporary habitation of the builders of that first seminary of learning.

It is probable that, immediately upon their success at Meroë, they lost no time in stretching on to Thebes. We know that it was a colony of Ethiopians, and probably from Meroë, but whether directly, or not, we are not certain. A very short time might have passed between the two establishments, for we find above Thebes, as there are above Meroë, a vast number of caves, which the colony made provisionally, upon its first arrival, and which are very near the top of the mountain, all inhabited to this day.

Hence we may infer, that their ancient apprehensions of a deluge had not left them whilst, they saw the whole land of Egypt could be overflowed every year without rain falling upon it; that they did not absolutely, as yet, trust to the liability of towns like those of Sirè and Meroë, placed upon columns or stones, one laid upon the other, or otherwise, that they found their excavations in the mountains were finished with less trouble, and more comfortable when complete, than the houses that were built. It was not long before they assumed a greater degree of courage.

CHAP. II.

_Saba and the South of Africa peopled--Shepherds, their particular Employment and Circumstances--Abyssinia occupied by seven stranger Nations--Specimens of their several Languages--Conjectures concerning them._

While these improvements were going on so prosperously in the central and northern territory of the descendents of Cush, their brethren to the south were not idle, they had extended themselves along the mountains that run parallel to the Arabian Gulf; which was in all times called Saba, or Azabo, both which signify _South_, not because Saba was south of Jerusalem, but because it was on the south coast of the Arabian Gulf, and, from Arabia and Egypt, was the first land to the southward which bounded the African Continent, then richer, more important, and better known, than the rest of the world. By that acquisition, they enjoyed all the perfumes and aromatics in the east, myrrh, and frankincense, and cassia; all which grow spontaneously in that stripe of ground, from the Bay of Bilur west of Azab, to Cape Gardefan, and then southward up in the Indian Ocean, to near the coast of Melinda, where there is cinnamon, but of an inferior kind.

Arabia probably had not then set itself up as a rival to this side of the Red Sea, nor had it introduced from Abyssinia the myrrh and frankincense, as it did afterwards, for there is no doubt that the principal mart, and growth of these gums, were always near Saba. Upon the consumption increasing, they, however, were transplanted thence into Arabia, where the myrrh has not succeeded.

The Troglodyte extended himself still farther south. As an astronomer, he was to disengage himself from the tropical rains and cloudy skies that hindered his correspondent observations with his countrymen at Meroë and Thebes. As he advanced within the southern tropic, he, however, still found rains, and made his houses such as the fears of a deluge had instructed him to do. He found there solid and high mountains, in a fine climate; but, luckier than his countrymen to the northward, he found gold and silver in large quantities, which determined his occupation, and made the riches and consequence of his country. In these mountains, called _the Mountains of Sofala_, large quantities of both metals were discovered in their pure unmixed state, lying in globules without alloy, or any necessity of preparation or separation.

The balance of trade, so long against the Arabian and African continents, turned now in their favour from the immense influx of these precious metals, found in the mountains of Sofala, just on the verge of the southern tropical rains.

Gold and silver had been fixed upon in India as proper returns for their manufactures and produce. It is impossible to say whether it was from their hardness or beauty, or what other reason governed the mind of man in making this standard of barter. The history of the particular transactions of those times is lost, if, indeed, there ever was such history, and, therefore, all further inquiries are in vain. The choice, it seems, was a proper one, since it has continued unaltered so many ages in India, and has been universally adopted by all nations pretty much in the proportion or value as in India, into which continent gold and silver, from this very early period, began to flow, have continued so to do to this day, and in all probability will do to the end of time. What has become of that immense quantity of bullion, how it is consumed, or where it is deposited, and which way, if ever it returns, are doubts which I never yet found a person that could satisfactorily solve.

The Cushite then inhabited the mountains, whilst the northern colonies advanced from Meroë to Thebes, busy and intent upon the improvement of architecture, and building of towns, which they began to substitute for their caves; they thus became traders, farmers, artificers of all kinds, and even practical astronomers, from having a meridian night and day free from clouds, for such was that of the Thebaid. As this was impossible to their brethren, and six months continual rain confined them to these caves, we cannot doubt but that their sedentary life made them useful in reducing the many observations daily made by those of their countrymen who lived under a purer sky. Letters too, at least one sort of them, and arithmetical characters, we are told, were invented by this middle part of the Cushites, while trade and astronomy, the natural history of the winds and seasons, were what necessarily employed the part of the colony established at Sofala most to the southward.

The very nature of the Cushites commerce, the collecting of gold, the gathering and preparing his spices, necessarily fixed him perpetually at home; but his profit lay in the dispersing of these spices through the continent, otherwise his mines, and the trade produced by the possession of them, were to him of little avail.

A carrier was absolutely necessary to the Cushite, and Providence had provided him one in a nation which were his neighbours. These were in most respects different, as they had long hair, European features, very dusky and dark complexion, but nothing like the black-moor or negro; they lived in plains, having moveable huts or habitations, attended their numerous cattle, and wandered from the necessities and particular circumstances of their country. These people were in the Hebrew called _Phut_, and, in all other languages, _Shepherds_; they are so still, for they still exist; they subsist by the same occupation, never had another, and therefore cannot be mistaken; they are called Balous, Bagla, Belowee, Berberi, Barabra, Zilla and Habab[223], which all signify but one thing, namely that of _Shepherd_. From their place of habitation, the territory has been called _Barbaria_ by the Greeks and Romans, from Berber, in the original signifying _shepherd_. The authors that speak of the Shepherds seem to know little of those of the _Thebaid_, and still less of those of _Ethiopia_, whilst they fall immediately upon the shepherds of the Delta, that they may get the sooner rid of them, and thrust them into Assyria, Palestine, and Arabia. They never say what their origin was; how they came to be so powerful; what was their occupation; or, properly, the land they inhabited; or what is become of them now, though they seem inclined to think the race extinct.

The whole employment of the shepherds had been the dispersing of the Arabian and African goods all over the continent; they had, by that employment, risen to be a great people: as that trade increased, their quantity of cattle increased also, and consequently their numbers, and the extent of their territory.

Upon looking at the map, the reader will see a chain of mountains which I have described, and which run in a high ridge nearly straight north, along the Indian Ocean, in a direction parallel to the coast, where they end at Cape Gardefan. They then take the direction of the coast, and run west from Cape Gardefan to the Straits of Babelmandeb, inclosing the frankincense and myrrh country, which extends considerably to the west of Azab. From Babelmandeb they run northward, parallel to the Red Sea, till they end in the sandy plain at the Isthmus of Suez, a name probably derived from Suah, _Shepherds_.

Although this stripe of land along the Indian Ocean, and afterwards along the Red Sea, was necessary to the shepherds, because they carried their merchandise to the ports there, and thence to Thebes and Memphis upon the Nile, yet the principal seat of their residence and power was that flat part of Africa between the northern tropic and the mountains of Abyssinia. This is divided into various districts; it reaches from Masuah along the sea-coast to Suakem, then turns westward, and continues in that direction, having the Nile on the south, the tropic on the north, to the deserts of Selima, and the confines of Libya on the west. This large extent of country is called _Beja_. The next is that district[224] in form of a shield, as Meroë is said to have been; this name was given it by Cambyses. It is between the Nile and Astaboras, and is now called Atbara. Between the river Mareb, the ancient Astusaspes on the east, and Atbara on the west, is the small plain territory of Derkin, another district of the shepherds. All that range of mountains running east and west, inclosing Derkin and Atbara on the south, and which begins the mountainous country of Abyssinia, is inhabited by the negro woolly-headed Cushite, or Shangalla, living as formerly in caves, who, from having been the most cultivated and instructed people in the world, have, by a strange reverse of fortune, relapsed into brutal ignorance, and are hunted by their neighbours like wild beasts in those forests, where they used to reign in the utmost luxury, liberty, and splendour. But the noblest, and most warlike of all the shepherds, were those that inhabited the mountains of the Habab, a considerable ridge reaching from the neighbourhood of Masuah to Suakem, and who, still dwell there.

In the ancient language of this country, _So_, or _Suah_, signified shepherd, or shepherds; though we do not know any particular rank or degrees among them, yet we may suppose these called simply _shepherds_ were the common sort that attended the flocks. Another denomination, part of them bore, was _Hycsos_, sounded by us Agsos, which signifies _armed shepherds_, or such as wore harness, which may be supposed the soldiers, or armed force of that nation. The third we see mentioned is Ag-ag, which is thought to be the nobles or chiefs of those armed shepherds, whence came their title _King of Kings_[225]. The plural of this is Agagi, or, as it is written in the Ethiopic, Agaazi.

This term has very much puzzled both Scaliger and Ludolf; for, finding in the Abyssinian books that they are called Agaazi, they torment themselves about finding the etymology of that word. They imagine them to be Arabs from near the Red Sea, and Mr Ludolf[226] thinks the term signifies _banished men_. Scaliger, too, has various guesses about them nearly to the same import. All this, however, is without foundation; the people assert themselves at this day to be Agaazi, that is, a race of Shepherds inhabiting the mountains of the Habab, and have by degrees extended themselves through the whole province of Tigré, whose capital is called Axum, from Ag and Suah, the metropolis, or principal city of the shepherds that wore arms.

Nothing was more opposite than the manners and life of the Cushite, and his carrier the shepherd. The first, though he had forsaken his caves, and now lived in cities which he had built, was necessarily confined at home by his commerce, amassing gold, arranging the invoices of his spices, hunting in the season to provide himself with ivory, and food throughout the winter. His mountains, and the cities he built afterwards, were situated upon a loomy, black earth, so that as soon as the tropical rains began to fall, a wonderful phænomenon deprived him of his cattle. Large swarms of flies appeared wherever that loomy earth was, which made him absolutely dependent in this respect upon the shepherd, but this affected the shepherd also.

This insect is called _Zimb_; it has not been described by any naturalist. It is in size very little larger than a bee, of a thicker proportion, and his wings, which are broader than those of a bee, placed separate like those of a fly; they are of pure gauze, without colour or spot upon them; the head is large, the upper jaw or lip is sharp, and has at the end of it a strong-pointed hair of about a quarter of an inch long; the lower jaw has two of these pointed hairs, and this pencil of hairs, when joined together, makes a resistance to the finger nearly equal to that of a strong hog’s bristle. Its legs are serrated in the inside, and the whole covered with brown hair or down. As soon as this plague appears, and their buzzing is heard, all the cattle forsake their food, and run wildly about the plain, till they die, worn out with fatigue, fright, and hunger. No remedy remains, but to leave the black earth, and hasten down to the sands of Atbara, and there they remain while the rains last, this cruel enemy never daring to pursue them farther.

What enables the shepherd to perform the long and toilsome journies across Africa is the camel, emphatically called by the Arabs, the _ship of the desert_. He seems to have been created for this very trade, endued with parts and qualities adapted to the office he is employed to discharge. The driest thistle, and the barest thorn, is all the food this useful quadruped requires, and even these, to save time, he eats while advancing on his journey, without stopping, or occasioning a moment of delay. As it is his lot to cross immense deserts, where no water is found, and countries not even moistened by the dew of heaven, he is endued with the power at one watering-place to lay in a store, with which he supplies himself for thirty days to come. To contain this enormous quantity of fluid, Nature has formed large cisterns within him, from which, once filled, he draws at pleasure the quantity he wants, and pours it into his stomach with the same effect as if he then drew it from a spring, and with this he travels, patiently and vigorously, all day long, carrying a prodigious load upon him, through countries infected with poisonous winds, and glowing with parching and never-cooling sands. Though his size is immense, as is his strength, and his body covered with a thick skin, defended with strong hair, yet still he is not capable to sustain the violent punctures the fly makes with his pointed proboscis. He must lose no time in removing to the sands of Atbara; for, when once attacked by this fly, his body, head, and legs break out into large bosses, which swell, break, and putrify, to the certain destruction of the creature.

Even the elephant and rhinoceros, who, by reason of their enormous bulk, and the vast quantity of food and water they daily need, cannot shift to desert and dry places as the season may require, are obliged to roll themselves in mud and mire, which, when dry, coats them over like armour, and enables them to stand their ground against this winged assassin; yet I have found some of these tubercles upon almost every elephant and rhinoceros that I have seen, and attribute them to this cause.

All the inhabitants of the sea-coast of Melinda, down to Cape Gardefan, to Saba, and the south coast of the Red Sea, are obliged to put themselves in motion, and remove to the next sand in the beginning of the rainy season, to prevent all their stock of cattle from being destroyed. This is not a partial emigration; the inhabitants of all the countries from the mountains of Abyssinia northward, to the confluence of the Nile and Astaboras, are once a-year obliged to change their abode, and seek protection in the sands of Beja; nor is there any alternative, or means of avoiding this, though a hostile band was in their way, capable of spoiling them of half their substance; and this is now actually the case, as we shall see when we come to speak of Sennaar.

Of all those that have written upon these countries, the prophet Isaiah alone has given an account of this animal, and the manner of its operation. Isa. vii. ch. 18. and 19. ver. “And it shall come to pass, in that day, that the Lord shall _hiss_ for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt,”--“And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate vallies[227], and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.”

The mountains that I have already spoken of, as running through the country of the Shepherds, divide the seasons by a line drawn along their summit, so exactly, that, while the eastern side, towards the Red Sea, is deluged with rain for the six months that constitute our _winter_ in Europe, the western side toward Atbara enjoys a perpetual sun, and active vegetation. Again, the six months, when it is our _summer_ in Europe, Atbara, or the western side of these mountains, is constantly covered with clouds and rain, while, for the same time, the shepherd on the eastern side, towards the Red Sea, feeds his flocks in the most exuberant foliage and luxuriant verdure, enjoying the fair weather, free from the fly or any other molestation. These great advantages have very naturally occasioned these countries of Atbara and Beja to be the principal residence of the shepherd and his cattle, and have entailed upon him the necessity of a perpetual change of places. Yet so little is this inconvenience, so short the peregrination, that, from the rain on the west side, a man, in the space of four hours, will change to the opposite season, and find himself in sun-shine to the eastward.

When Carthage was built, the carriage of this commercial city fell into the hands of Lehabim, or Lubim, the Libyan peasants, and became a great accession to the trade, power, and number of the shepherds. In countries to which there was no access by shipping, the end of navigation was nearly answered by the immense increase of camels; and this trade, we find, was carried on in the very earliest ages on the Arabian side, by the Ishmaelite merchants trading to Palestine and Syria, from the south end of the peninsula, with camels. This we learn particularly from Genesis, they brought myrrh and spices, or pepper, and sold them for silver; they had also balm, or balsam, but this it seems, in those days, they brought from Gilead.

We are sorry, in reading this curious anecdote preserved to us in scripture, to find, in those early ages of the India trade, that another species of commerce was closely connected with it, which modern philanthropy has branded as the disgrace of human nature. It is plain, from the passage, the commerce of selling men was then universally established. Joseph[228] is bought as readily, and sold as currently immediately after, as any ox or camel could be at this day. Three nations, Javan, Tubal, and Meshech[229], are mentioned as having their principal trade at Tyre in the selling of men; and, as late as St John’s time[230], this is mentioned as a principal part of the trade of Babylon; notwithstanding which, no prohibition from God, or censure from the prophets, have ever stigmatized it either as irreligious or immoral; on the contrary, it is always spoken of as favourably as any species of commerce whatever. For this, and many other reasons which I could mention, I cannot think, that purchasing slaves is, in itself, either cruel or unnatural. To purchase any living creature to abuse it afterwards, is certainly both base and criminal; and the crime becomes still of a deeper dye, when our fellow-creatures come to be the sufferers. But, although this is an abuse which accidentally follow the trade, it is no necessary part of the trade itself; and, it is against this abuse the wisdom of the legislature should be directed, not against the trade itself.

On the eastern side of the peninsula of Africa, many thousand slaves are sold to Asia, perfectly in the same manner as those on the west side are sent to the West Indies; but no one, that ever I heard, has as yet opened his mouth against the sale of Africans to the East Indies; and yet there is an aggravation in this last sale of slaves that should touch us much more than the other, where no such additional grievance can be pretended. The slaves sold into Asia are most of them Christians; they are sold to Mahometans, and, with their liberty, they are certainly deprived of their religion likewise. But the treatment of the Asiatics being much more humane than what the Africans, sold to the West Indies, meet with, no clamour has yet been raised against this commerce in Asia, because its only bad consequence is apostacy; a proof to me that religion has no part in the present dispute, or, as I have said, it is the abuse that accidentally follows the purchasing of slaves, not the trade itself, that should be considered as the grievance.

It is plain from all history, that two abominable practices, the one the eating of men, the other of sacrificing them to the devil, prevailed all over Africa. The India trade, as we have seen in very early ages, first established the buying and selling of slaves; since that time, the eating of men, or sacrificing them, has so greatly decreased on the eastern side of the peninsula, that now we scarcely hear of an instance of either of these that can be properly vouched. On the western part, towards the Atlantic Ocean, where the sale of slaves began a considerable time later, after the discovery of America and the West Indies, both of these horrid practices are, as it were, general, though, I am told, less so to the northward since that event.

There is still alive a man of the name of Matthews, who was present at one of those bloody banquets on the west of Africa, to the northward of Senega. It is probable the continuation of the slave-trade would have abolished these, in time, on the west side also. Many other reasons could be alledged, did my plan permit it. But I shall content myself at present, with saying, that I very much fear that a relaxation and effeminacy of manners, rather than genuine tenderness of heart, has been the cause of this violent paroxysm of philanthropy, and of some other measures adopted of late to the discouragement of discipline, which I do not doubt will soon be felt to contribute their mite to the decay both of trade and navigation that will necessarily follow.

The Ethiopian shepherds at first carried on the trade on their own side of the Red Sea; they carried their India commodities to Thebes, likewise to the different black nations to the south-west; in return, they brought back gold, probably at a cheaper rate, because certainly by a shorter carriage than by that from Ophir.

Thebes became exceedingly rich and proud, though, by the most extensive area that ever was assigned to it, it never could be either large or populous. Thebes is not mentioned in scripture by that name; it was destroyed before the days of Moses by Salatis prince of the Agaazi, or Ethiopian shepherds; at this day it has assumed a name very like the ancient one. The first signification of its name, Medinet Tabu, I thought was the Town of our Father. This, history says, was given it by Sesostris in honour of his father; in the ancient language, its name was _Ammon No_. The next that presented itself was Theba, which was the Hebrew name for the Ark when Noah was ordered to build it--Thou shalt “make thee an Ark (Theba) of gopher-wood[231].”

The figure of the temples in Thebes do not seem to be far removed from the idea given us of the Ark. The third conjecture is, that being the first city built and supported on pillars, and, on different and separate pieces of stone, it got its name from the architects first expression of approbation or surprise, Tabu, that it stood insulated and alone, and this seems to me to be the most conformable both to the Hebrew and Ethiopic.

The shepherds, for the most part, friends and allies of the Egyptians, or Cushite, at times were enemies to them. We need not, at this time of day, seek the cause; there are many very apparent, from opposite manners, and, above all, the difference in the dietetique regimen. The Egyptians worshipped the cow, the Shepherds killed and ate her. The Shepherds were Sabeans, worshipping the host of heaven--the sun, moon, and stars. Immediately upon the building of Thebes and the perfection of sculpture, idolatry and the grossest materialism greatly corrupted the more pure and speculative religion of the Sabeans. Soon after the building of Thebes, we see that Rachel, Abraham’s wife, had idols[232]; we need seek no other probable cause of the devastation that followed, than difference of religion.

Thebes was destroyed by Salatis, who overturned the first Dynasty of Cushite, or Egyptian kings, begun by Menes, in what is called the second age of the world, and founded the first Dynasty of the Shepherds, who behaved very cruelly, and wrested the lands from their first owners; and it was this Dynasty that Sesostris destroyed, after calling Thebes by his father’s name, Ammon No, making those decorations that we have seen of the harp in the sepulchres on the west, and building Diospolis on the opposite side of the river. The second conquest of Egypt by the Shepherds was that under Sabaco, by whom it has been imagined Thebes was destroyed, in the reign of Hezekiah king of Judah, who is said to have made peace with So[233] king of Egypt, as the translator has called him, mistaking So for the name of the king, whereas it only denoted his quality of shepherd.

From this it is plain, all that the scripture mentions about Ammon No, applies to Diospolis on the other side of the river. Ammon No and Diospolis, though they were on different sides of the river, were considered as one city, thro’ which the Nile flowed, dividing it into two parts. This is plain from profane history, as well as from the prophet Nahum[234], who describes it very exactly, if in place of the word _sea_ was substituted _river_, as it ought to be.

There was a third invasion of the Shepherds after the building of Memphis, where a [235]king of Egypt[236] is said to have inclosed two hundred and forty thousand of them in a city called _Abaris_; they surrendered upon capitulation, and were banished the country into the land of Canaan. That two hundred and forty thousand men should be inclosed in one city, so as to bear a siege, seems to me extremely improbable; but be it so, all that it can mean is, that Memphis, built in Lower Egypt near the Delta, had war with the Shepherds of the Isthmus of Suez, or the districts near them, as those of Thebes had before with the Shepherds of the Thebaid. But, however much has been written upon the subject, the total expulsion of the Shepherds at any one time by any King of Egypt, or at any one place, must be fabulous, as they have remained in their ancient seats, and do remain to this day; perhaps in not so great a number as when the India trade was carried on by the Arabian Gulf, yet still in greater numbers than any other nation of the Continent.

The mountains which the Agaazi inhabit, are called _Habab_, from which it comes, that they themselves have got that name. Habab, in their language, and in Arabic likewise, signifies a _serpent_, and this I suppose explains that historical fable in the book of Axum, which says, a serpent conquered the province of Tigré, and reigned there.

It may be asked, Is there no other people that inhabit Abyssinia, but these two nations, the Cushites and the Shepherds? Are there no other nations, whiter or fairer than them, living to the southward of the Agaazi? Whence did these come? At what time, and by what name are they called? To this I answer, That there are various nations which agree with this description, who have each a particular name, and who are all known by that of _Habesh_, in Latin _Convenæ_, signifying a number of distinct people meeting accidentally in one place. The word has been greatly misunderstood, and misapplied, both by Scaliger and Ludolf, and a number of others; but nothing is more consonant to the history of the country than the translation I have given it, nor will the word itself bear any other.

The Chronicle of Axum, the most ancient repository of the antiquities of that country, a book esteemed, I shall not say how properly, as the first in authority after the holy scriptures, says, that between the creation of the world and the birth of our Saviour there were 5500 years[237]; that Abyssinia had never been inhabited till 1808 years before Christ[237]; and 200 years after that, which was in the 1600, it was laid waste by a flood, the face of the country much changed and deformed, so that it was denominated at that time Ourè Midre, or, _the country laid waste_, or, as it is called in scripture itself, a land which the waters or floods had spoiled[238]; that about the 1400 year before Christ it was taken possession of by a variety of people speaking different languages, who, as they were in friendship with the Agaazi, or Shepherds, possessing the high country of Tigrè, came and sat down beside them in a peaceable manner, each occupying the lands that were before him. This settlement is what the Chronicle of Axum calls _Angaba_, the entry and establishment of these nations, which finished the peopling of Abyssinia.

Tradition further says, that they came from Palestine. All this seems to me to wear the face of truth. Some time after the year 1500, we know there happened a flood which occasioned great devastation. Pausanius says, that this flood happened in Ethiopia in the reign of Cecrops; and, about the 1490 before Christ, the Israelites entered the land of promise, under Caleb and Joshua. We are not to wonder at the great impression that invasion made upon the minds of the inhabitants of Palestine. We see by the history of the harlot, that the different nations had been long informed by prophecies, current and credited among themselves, that they were to be extirpated before the face of the Israelites, who for some time had been hovering about their frontiers. But now when Joshua had passed the Jordan, after having miraculously dried up the river[239] before his army had invaded Canaan, and had taken and destroyed Jericho, a panic seized the whole people of Syria and Palestine.

These petty states, many in number, and who had all different languages, seeing a conqueror with an immense army already in possession of part of their country, and who did not conduct himself according to the laws of other conquerors, but put the vanquished under saws and harrows of iron, and destroyed the men, women, and children; and sometimes even the cattle, by the sword, no longer could think of waiting the arrival of such an enemy, but sought for safety by speedy flight or emigration. The Shepherds in Abyssinia and Atbara were the most natural refuge these fugitives could seek; commerce must have long made them acquainted with each others manners, and they must have been already entitled to the rights of hospitality by having often passed through each other’s country.

Procopius[240] mentions that two pillars were standing in his time on the coast of Mauritania, opposite to Gibraltar, upon which were inscriptions in the Phœnician tongue: “We are Canaanites, flying from the face of Joshua, the son of Nun, the _robber_:” A character they naturally gave him from the ferocity and violence of his manners. Now, if what these inscriptions contain is true, it is much more credible, that the different nations, emigrating at that time, should seek their safety near hand among their friends, rather than go to an immense distance to Mauritania, to risk a precarious reception among strangers, and perhaps that country not yet inhabited.

Upon viewing the several countries in which these nations have their settlements, it seems evident they were made by mutual consent, and in peace; they are not separated from each other by chains of mountains, or large and rapid rivers, but generally by small brooks, dry the greatest part of the year; by hillocks, or small mounds of earth, or imaginary lines traced to the top of some mountain at a distance; these boundaries have never been disputed or altered, but remain upon the old tradition to this day. These have all different languages, as we see from scripture all the petty states of Palestine had, but they have no letters, or written character, but the Geez, the character of the Cushite shepherd by whom they were first invented and used, as we shall see hereafter. I may add in further proof of their origin, that the curse[241] of Canaan seems to have followed them, they have obtained no principality, but served the kings of the Agaazi or Shepherds, have been hewers of wood and drawers of water, and so they still continue.

The first and most considerable of these nations settled in a province called _Amhara_; it was, at first coming, as little known as the others; but, upon a revolution in the country, the king fled to that province, and there the court staid many years, so that the Geez, or language of the Shepherds, was dropt, and retained only in writing, and as a dead language; the sacred scriptures being in that language only, saved the Geez from going totally into disuse. The second were the Agows of Damot, one of the southern provinces of Abyssinia, where they are settled immediately upon the sources of the Nile. The third are the Agows of Lasta, or Tcheratz Agow, from Tchera, their principal habitation; theirs too is a separate language; they are Troglodytes that live in caverns, and seem to pay nearly the same worship to the Siris, or Tacazzè, that those of Damot pay to the Nile.

I take the old names of these two last-mentioned nations, to be sunk in the circumstances of this their new settlement, and to be a compound of two words Ag-oha, the Shepherds of the River, and I also imagine, that the idolatry they introduced in the worship of the Nile, is a further, proof that they came from Canaan, where they imbibed materialism in place of the pure Sabean worship of the Shepherds, then the only religion of this part of Africa.

The fourth is a nation bordering upon the southern banks of the Nile near Damot. It calls itself Gafat, which signifies oppressed by violence, torn, expelled, or chaced away by force. If we were to follow the idea arising merely from this name, we might be led to imagine, that these were part of the tribes torn from Solomon’s son and successor, Rehoboam. This, however, we cannot do confident with the faith to be kept by a historian with his reader. The evidence of the people themselves, and the tradition of the country, deny they ever were Jews, or ever concerned with that colony, brought with Menilek and the queen of Saba, which established the Jewish hierarchy. They declare, that they are now Pagans, and ever were so; that they are partakers with their neighbours the Agows in the worship of the river Nile, the extent or particulars of which I cannot pretend to explain.--The fifth is a tribe, which, if we were to pay any attention to similarity of names, we should be apt to imagine we had found here in Africa a part of that great Gaulish nation so widely extended in Europe and Asia. A comparison of their languages, with what we know exists of the former, cannot but be very curious.--These are the Galla, the most considerable of these nations, specimens of whose language I have cited. This word, in their own language, signifies _Shepherd_[242]; they say that formerly they lived on the borders of the southern rains, within the southern tropic; and that, like these in Atbara, they were carriers between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, and supplied the interior part of the peninsula with Indian commodities.

The history of this trade is unknown; it must have been little less ancient, and nearly as extensive, as the trade to Egypt and Arabia. It probably suffered diminution, when the mines of Sofala were given up, soon after the discovery of the new world. The Portuguese found it still flourishing, when they made their first conquests upon that coast; and they carry it on still in an obscure manner, but in the same tract to their settlements near Cape Negro on the western ocean. From these settlements would be the proper place to begin to explore the interior parts of the peninsula, on both sides of the southern tropic, as protection and assistance could probably be got through the whole course of it, and very little skill in language would be necessary.

When no employment was found for this multitude of men and cattle, they left their homes, and proceeding northward, they found themselves involved near the Line, in rainy, cold, and cloudy weather, where they scarcely ever saw the sun. Impatient of such a climate, they advanced still farther, till about the year 1537, they appeared in great numbers in the province of Bali, abandoning the care of camels for the breeding of horses. At present they are all cavalry. I avoid to say more of them in this place, as I shall be obliged to make frequent mention of them in the course of my narrative.

The Falasha, too, are a people of Abyssinia, having a particular language of their own; a specimen of which I have also published, as the history of the people seems to be curious. I do not, however, mean to say of them, more than of the Galla, that this was any part of those nations who fled from Palestine on the _invasion_ of Joshua. For they are now, and ever were, Jews, and have traditions of their own as to their origin, and what reduced them to the present state of separation, as we shall see hereafter, when I come to speak of the translation of the holy scripture.

In order to gratify such as are curious in the study and history of language, I, with great pains and difficulty, got the whole book of the Canticles translated into each of these languages, by priests esteemed the most versant in the language of each nation. As this barbarous polyglot is of too large a size to print, I have contented myself with copying six verses of the first chapter in each language; but the whole book is at the service of any person of learning that will bestow his time in studying it, and, for this purpose, I left it in the British Museum, under the direction of Sir Joseph Banks, and the Bishop of Carlisle.

These _Convenæ_, as we have observed, were called _Habesh_, a number of distinct nations meeting in one place. Scripture has given them a name, which, though it has been ill translated, is precisely _Convenæ_, both in the Ethiopic and Hebrew. Our English translation calls them the _mingled people_[243], whereas it should be the _separate nations_, who, though met and settled together, did not mingle, which is strictly _Convenæ_. The inhabitants then who possessed Abyssinia, from its southern boundary to the tropic of Cancer, or frontiers of Egypt, were the Cushites, or polished people, living in towns, first Troglodytes, having their habitations in caves. The next were the Shepherds; after these were the nations who, as we apprehend, came from Palestine--Amhara, Agow of Damot, Agow of Tchera, and Gafat.

Interpreters, much less acquainted with the historical circumstances of these countries than the prophets, have, either from ignorance or inattention, occasioned an obscurity which otherwise did not arise from the text. All these people are alluded to in scripture by descriptions that cannot be mistaken. If they have occasioned doubts or difficulties, they are all to be laid at the door of the translators, chiefly the Septuagint. When Moses returned with his wife Zipporah, daughter of the sovereign of the Shepherds of Midian, carriers of the India trade from Saba into Palestine, and established near their principal mart Edom, in Idumea or Arabia, Aaron, and Miriam his sister, quarrelled with Moses, because he had married one who was, as the translator says, an Ethiopian[244]. There is no sense in this cause; Moses was a fugitive when he married Zipporah; she was a noble-woman, daughter of the priest of Midian, head of a people. She likewise, as it would seem, was a Jewess[245], and more attentive, at that time, to the preservation of the precepts of the law, than Moses was himself; no exception, then, could lie against Zipporah, as she was surely, in every view, Moses’s superior. But if the translator had rendered it, that Aaron and Miriam had quarrelled with Moses, because he had married a _negro_, or _black-moor_, the reproach was evident; whatever intrinsic merit Zipporah might have been found to have possessed afterwards, she must have appeared before the people, at first sight, as a _strange_ woman, or Gentile, whom it was prohibited to marry. Besides, the innate deformity of the complexion, negroes were, at all times, rather coveted for companions of men of luxury or pleasure, than sought after for wives of sober legislators, and governors of a people.

The next instance I shall give is, Zerah of Gerar[246], who came out to fight Asa king of Israel with an army of a million of men, and three hundred chariots, whilst both the quarrel and the decision are represented as immediate.

Gerar was a small district, producing only the Acacia or gum-arabic trees, from which it had its name; it had no water but what came from a few wells, part of which had been dug by Abraham[247], after much strife with the people of the country, who sought to deprive him of them, as of a treasure.

Abraham and his brother Lot returning from Egypt, though poor shepherds, could not subsist there for want of food, and water, and they separated accordingly, by consent[248]. Now it must be confessed, as it is not pretended there was any miracle here, that there is not a more unlikely tale in all Herodotus, than this must be allowed to be upon the footing of the translation. The translator calls Zerah an Ethiopian, which should either mean he dwelt in Arabia, as he really did, and this gave him no advantage, or else that he was a stranger, who originally came from the country above Egypt; and, either way, it would have been impossible, during his whole life-time, to have collected a million of men, one of the greatest armies that ever stood upon the face of the earth, nor could he have fed them though they had ate the whole trees that grew in his country, nor could he have given every hundredth man one drink of water in a day from all the wells he had in his country.

Here, then, is an obvious triumph for infidelity, because, as I have said, no supernatural means are pretended. But had it been translated, that Zerah was a _black-moor_, a _Cushite-negro_, and prince of the Cushites, that were carriers in the Isthmus, an Ethiopian shepherd, then the wonder ceased. Twenty camels, employed to carry couriers upon them, might have procured that number of men to meet in a short space of time, and, as Zerah was the aggressor, he had time to choose when he should attack his enemy; every one of these shepherds carrying with them their provision of flour and water, as is their invariable custom, might have fought with Asa at Gerar, without eating a loaf of Zerah’s bread, or drinking a pint of his water.

The next passage I shall mention is the following: “The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia, and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine[249].” Here the several nations are distinctly and separately mentioned in their places, but the whole meaning of the passage would have been lost, had not the situation of these nations been perfectly known; or, had not the Sabeans been mentioned separately, for both the Sabeans and the Cushite were certainly Ethiopians. Now, the meaning of the verse is, that the fruit of the agriculture of Egypt, which is wheat, the commodities of the negro, gold, silver, ivory, and perfumes, would be brought by the Sabean shepherds, their carriers, a nation of great power, which should join themselves with you.

Again, Ezekiel says,[250] “And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I have set a fire in Egypt, and when all her helpers shall be destroyed.”--“In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships, to make the careless Ethiopians afraid.” Now, Nebuchadnezzar was to destroy Egypt[251], from the frontiers of Palestine, to the mountains above Atbara, where the Cushite dwelt. Between this and Egypt is a great desert; the country beyond it, and on both sides, was possessed by half a million of men. The Cushite, or negro merchant, was secure under these circumstances from any insult by land, but they were open to the sea, and had no defender, and messengers, therefore, in ships or a fleet had easy access to them, to alarm and keep them at home, that they did not fall into danger by marching into Egypt against Nebuchadnezzar, or interrupting the service upon which God had sent him. But this does not appear from translating Cush, _Ethiopian_; the nearest Ethiopian to Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful and capable of opposing him, were the Ethiopian shepherds of the Thebaid, and these were not accessible to ships; and the shepherds, so posted near to the scene of destruction to be committed by Nebuchadnezzar, were enemies to the Cushites living in towns, and they had repeatedly themselves destroyed them, and therefore had no temptation to be other than spectators.

In several other places, the same prophet speaks of Cush as the commercial nation, sympathising with their countrymen dwelling in the towns in Egypt, independent of the shepherds, who were really their enemies, both in civil and religious matters. “And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt[252].” Now Ethiopia, as I have before said, that is, the low country of the shepherds, nearest Egypt, had no common cause with the Cushites that lived in towns there; it was their countrymen, the Cushites in Ethiopia, who mourned for those that fell in Egypt, who were merchants, traders, and dwelt in cities like themselves.

I shall mention but one instance more: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?[253]” Here Cush is rendered Ethiopian, and many Ethiopians being white, it does not appear why they should be fixed upon, or chosen for the question more than other people. But had Cush been translated Negro, or Black-moor, the question would have been very easily understood, Can the negro change his skin, or the leopard his spots?

Jeremiah[254] speaks of the chiefs of the mingled people that dwell in the deserts. And Ezekiel[255] also mentions them independent of all the others, whether Shepherds, or Cushites, or Libyans their neighbours, by the name of the Mingled People. Isaiah[256] calls them “a nation scattered and peeled; a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled:” which is a sufficient description of them, as having been expelled their own country, and settled in one that had suffered greatly by a deluge a short time before.

CHAP. III.

_Origin of Characters or Letters--Ethiopic the first Language--How and why the Hebrew Letter was formed._

The reader will observe what I have already said concerning the language of Habesh, or the Mingled Nations, that they have not characters of their own; but when written, which is very seldom, it must be by using the Geez alphabet. Kircher, however, says, there are two characters to be found in Abyssinia; one he calls the Sacred Old Syrian, the other the Vulgar, or Common Geez character, of which we are now speaking. But this is certainly a mistake; there never was, that I know, but two original characters which obtained in Egypt. The first was the Geez, the second the Saitic, and both these were the oldest characters in the world, and both derived from hieroglyphics.

Although it is impossible to avoid saying something here of the origin of languages, the reader must not expect that I should go very deep into the fashionable opinions concerning them, or believe that all the old deities of the Pagan nations were the patriarchs of the Old Testament. With all respect to Sanchoniatho and his followers, I can no more believe that Osiris, the first king of Egypt, was a real personage, and that Tot was his secretary, than I can believe Saturn to be the patriarch Abraham, and Rachel and Leah, Venus and Minerva. I will not fatigue the reader with a detail of useless reasons; if Osiris is a real personage, if he was king of Egypt, and Tot his secretary, they surely travelled to very good purpose, as all the people of Europe and Asia seem to be agreed, that in person they first communicated letters and the art of writing to them, but at very different, and very distant periods.

Thebes was built by a colony of Ethiopians from Sirè, the city of Seir, or the Dog Star. Diodorus Siculus says, that the Greeks, by putting O before Siris, had made the word unintelligible to the Egyptians: Siris, then, was Osiris; but he was not the Sun, no more than he was Abraham, nor was he a real personage. He was Syrius, or the dog-star, designed under the figure of a dog, because of the warning he gave to Atbara, where the first observations were made at his heliacal rising, or his disengaging himself from the rays of the sun, so as to be visible to the naked eye. He was the Latrator Anubis, and his first appearance was figuratively compared to the barking of a dog, by the warning it gave to prepare for the approaching inundation. I believe, therefore, this was the first hieroglyphic; and that Isis, Osiris, and Tot, were all after inventions relating to it; and, in saying this, I am so far warranted, because there is not in Axum (once a large city) any other hieroglyphic but of the dog-star, as far as I can judge from the huge fragments of figures of this animal, remains of which, in differrent postures, are still distinctly to be seen upon the pedestals everywhere among the ruins.

It is not to be doubted, that hieroglyphics then, but not astronomy, were invented at Thebes, where the theory of the dog-star was particularly investigated, because connected with their rural year. Ptolemy[257] has preserved us an observation of an helaical rising of Sirius on the 4th day after the summer solstice, which answers to the 2250 year before Christ; and there are great reasons to believe the Thebans were good practical astronomers long before that period[258]; early, as it may be thought, this gives to Thebes a much greater antiquity than does the chronicle of Axum just cited.

As such observations were to be of service for ever, they became more valuable and useful in proportion to their priority. The most ancient of them would be of use to the astronomers of this day, for Sir Isaac Newton appeals to these of Chiron the Centaur. Equations may indeed be discovered in a number of centuries, which, by reason of the smallness of their quantities, may very probably have escaped the most attentive and scrupulous care of two or three generations; and many alterations in the starry firmament, old stars being nearly extinguished, and new emerging, would appear from a comparative slate of the heavens made for a series of ages. And a Theban _Herschel_[259] would have given us the history of planets he then observed, which, after appearing for ages, are now visible no more, or have taken a different form.

The dial, or gold circle of Osimandyas, shews what an immense progress they had made in astronomy in so little time. This, too, is a proof of an early fall and revival of the arts in Egypt, for the knowledge and use of Armillæ had been lost with the destruction of Thebes, and were not again discovered, that is, revived, till the reign of Ptolemy Soter, 300 years before the Christian æra. I consider that immense quantity of hieroglyphics, with which the walls of the temples, and faces of the obelisks, are covered, as containing so many astronomical observations.

I look upon these as the ephemerides of some thousand years, and that sufficiently accounts for their number. Their date and accuracy were indisputable; they were exhibited in the most public places, to be consulted as occasion required; and, by the deepness of the engraving, and hardness of the materials, and the thickness and solidity of the block itself upon which they were carved, they bade defiance at once to violence and time.

I know that most of the learned writers are of sentiments very different from mine in these respects. They look for mysteries and hidden meanings, moral and philosophical treatises, as the subjects of these hieroglyphics. A sceptre, they say, is the hieroglyphic of a king. But where do we meet a sceptre upon an antique Egyptian monument? or who told us this was an emblem of royalty among the Egyptians at the time of the first invention of this figurative writing? Again, the serpent with the tail in its mouth denotes the eternity of God, that he is without beginning and without end. This is a Christian truth, and a Christian belief, but no where to be found in the polytheism of the inventors of hieroglyphics. Was Cronos or Ouranus without beginning and without end? Was this the case with Osiris and Tot, whose fathers and mothers births and marriages are known? If this was a truth, independent of revelation, and imprinted from the beginning in the minds of men; if it was destined to be an eternal truth, which must have appeared by every man finding it in his own breast, from the beginning, how unnecessary must the trouble have been to write a common known truth like this, at the expence of six weeks labour, upon a table of porphyry or granite.

It is not with philosophy as with astronomy; the older the observations, the more use they are of to posterity. A lecture of an Egyptian priest upon divinity, morality, or natural history, would not pay the trouble, at this day, of engraving it upon stone; and one of the reasons that I think no such subjects were ever treated in hieroglyphics is, that in all those I ever had an opportunity of seeing, and very few people have seen more, I have constantly found the same figures repeated, which obviously, and without dispute, allude to the history of the Nile, and its different periods of increase; the mode of measuring it, the Etesian winds; in short, such observations as we every day see in an almanack, in which we cannot suppose, that forsaking the obvious import, where the good they did was evident, they should ascribe different meanings to the hieroglyphic, to which no key has been left, and therefore their future inutility must have been foreseen.

I shall content myself in this wide field, to fix upon one famous hieroglyphical personage, which is _Tot_, the secretary of Osiris, whose function I shall endeavour to explain; if I fail, I am in good company; I give it only as my opinion, and submit it chearfully to the correction of others. The word _Tot_ is Ethiopic, and there can be little doubt it means the dog-star. It was the name given to the first month of the Egyptian year. The meaning of the name, in the language of the province of Siré, is an _idol_, composed of different heterogeneous pieces; it is found having this signification in many of their books. Thus a naked man is not a _Tot_, but the body of a naked man, with a dog’s head, an ass’s head, or a serpent instead of a head, is a _Tot_. According to the import of that word, it is, I suppose, an almanack, or section of the phænomena in the heavens which are to happen in the limited time it is made to comprehend, when exposed for the information of the public; and the more extensive its use is intended to be, the greater number of emblems, or signs of observation, it is charged with.

Besides many other emblems or figures, the common Tot, I think, has in his hand a cross with a handle, as it is called _Crux Ansata_, which has occasioned great speculation among the decypherers. This cross, fixed to a circle, is supposed to denote the _four elements_, and to be the symbol of the influence the sun has over them. Jamblichus[260] records, that this cross, in the hand of Tot, is the name of the _divine Being_ that travels through the world. Sozomen[261] thinks it means the _life_ to come, the same with the ineffable image of eternity. Others, strange difference! say it is the _phallus_, or human genitals, while a later[262] writer maintains it to be the mariner’s compass. My opinion, on the contrary is, that, as this figure was exposed to the public for the reason I have mentioned, the Crux Ansata in his hand was nothing else but a monogram of his own name TO, and [TOT] signifying TOT, or as we write Almanack upon a collection published for the same purpose.

The changing of these emblems, and the multitude of them, produced the necessity of contrasting their size, and this again a consequential alteration in the original forms; and a stile, or small portable instrument, became all that was necessary for finishing these small _Tots_, instead of a large graver or carving tool, employed in making the large ones. But men, at last, were so much used to the alteration, as to know it better than under its primitive form, and the engraving became what we may call the first elements, or root, in preference to the original.

The reader will see, that, in my history of the civil wars in Abyssinia, the king, forced by rebellion to retire to the province of Tigré, and being at Axum, found a stone covered with hieroglyphics, which, by the many inquiries I made after inscriptions, and some conversations I had had with him, he guessed was of the kind which I wanted. Full of that princely goodness and condescension that he ever honoured me with, throughout my whole stay, he brought it with him when he returned from Tigré, and was restored to his throne at Gondar.

It seems to me to be one of those private Tots, or portable almanacks, of the most curious kind. The length of the whole stone is fourteen inches, and six inches broad, upon, a base three inches high, projecting from the block itself, and covered with hieroglyphics. A naked figure of a man, near six inches, stands upon two crocodiles, their heads turned different ways. In each of his hands he holds two serpents, and a scorpion, all by the tail, and in the right hand hangs a noose, in which is suspended a ram or goat. On the left hand he holds a lion by the tail. The figure is in great relief; and the head of it with that kind of cap or ornament which is generally painted upon the head of the figure called Isis, but this figure is that of a man. On each side of the whole-length figure, and above it, upon the face of the stone where it projects, are marked a number of hieroglyphics of all kinds. Over this is a very remarkable representation; it is an old head, with very strong features, and a large bushy beard, and upon it a high cap ribbed or striped. This I take to be the Cnuph, or Animus Mundi, though Apuleus, with very little probability, says this was made in the likeness of no creature whatever. The back of the stone is divided into eight compartments[263], from the top to the bottom, and these are filled with hieroglyphics in the last stage, before they took the entire resemblance of letters. Many are perfectly formed; the Crux Ansata appears in one of the compartments, and Tot in another. Upon the edge, just above where it is broken, is 1119, so fair and perfect in form, that it might serve as an example of caligraphy, even in the present times; 45 and 19, and some other arithmetical figures, are found up and down among the hieroglyphics.

This I suppose was what formerly the Egyptians called a book, or almanack; a collection of these was probably hung up in some conspicuous place, to inform the public of the state of the heavens, and seasons, and diseases, to be expected in the course of them, as is the case in the English almanacks at this day. Hermes is said to have composed 36,535 books, probably of this sort, or they might contain the correspondent astronomical observations made in a certain time at Meroë, Ophir, Axum, or Thebes, communicated to be hung up for the use of the neighbouring cities. Porphyry[264] gives a particular account of the Egyptian almanacks. “What is comprised in the Egyptian almanacks, says he, contains but a small part of the Hermaic institutions; all that relates to the rising and setting of the moon and planets, and of the stars and their influence, and also some advice upon diseases.”

It is very remarkable, that, besides my Tot here described, there are five or six, precisely the same in all respects, already in the British Museum; one of them, the largest of the whole, is made of sycamore, the others are of metal. There is another, I am told, in Lord Shelburn’s collection; this I never had an opportunity of seeing; but a very principal attention seems to have been paid to make all of them light and portable, and it would seem that by these having been formed so exactly similar, they were the Tots intended to be exposed in different cities or places, and were neither more nor less than Egyptian almanacks.

Whether letters were known to Noah before the flood, is no where said from any authority, and the inquiry into it is therefore useless. It is difficult, in my opinion, to imagine, that any society, engaged in different occupations, could subsist long without them. There seems to be less doubt, that they were invented, soon after the dispersion, long before Moses, and in common use among the Gentiles of his time.

It seems also probable, that the first alphabet was Ethiopic, first founded on hieroglyphics, and afterwards modelled into more current, and less laborious figures, for the sake of applying them to the expedition of business. Mr Fourmont is so much of this opinion, that he says it is evident the three first letters of the Ethiopic alphabet are hieroglyphics yet, and that the Beta resembles the door of a house or temple. But, with great submission, the doors of houses and temples, when first built, were square at the top, for arches were not known. The Beta was taken from the doors of the first Troglodytes in the mountains, which were rounded, and gave the hint for turning the arch, when architecture advanced nearer to perfection.

Others are for giving to letters a divine original: they say they were taught to Abraham by God himself; but this is no where vouched; though it cannot be denied, that it appears from scripture there were two sorts of characters known to Moses, when God spoke to him on Mount Sinai. The first two tables, we are told, were wrote by the finger of God, in what character is not said, but Moses received them to read to the people, so he surely understood them. But, when he had broken these two tables, and had another meeting with God on the mount on the subject of the law, God directs him specially not to write in the Egyptian character or hieroglyphics, but in the current hand used by the Ethiopian merchants, _like the letters_ upon a signet; that is, he should not write in hieroglyphics by a _picture_, representing the _thing_, for that the law forbids; and the bad consequences of this were evident; but he should write the law in the current hand, by characters representing sounds, (though nothing else in heaven or on earth,) or by the letters that the Ishmaelites, Cushites, and India trading nations had long used in business for signing their invoices, engagements, &c. and this was the meaning of being _like the letters of a signet_.

Hence, it is very clear, God did not invent letters, nor did Moses, who understood both characters before the promulgation of the law upon Mount Sinai, having learned them in Egypt, and during his long stay among the Cushites, and Shepherds in Arabia Petrea. Hence it should appear also, that the sacred character of the Egyptian was considered as profane, and forbid to the Hebrews, and that the common Ethiopic was the Hebrew sacred character, in which the copy of the law was first wrote. The text is very clear and explicit: “And the stones shall be with the _names_ of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their _names, like_ the engravings of _signet_; every one with his _name_, shall they be according to the twelve tribes[265].” Which is plainly, You shall not write in the way used till this day, for it leads the people into idolatry; you shall not type Judah by a _lion_, Zebulun by _ship_, Issachar by an _ass_ couching between two burdens; but, instead of writing by pictures, you shall take the other known hand, the merchants writing, which signifies _sounds_, not _things_; write the names Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, in the letters, such as the merchants use upon their signets. And, on Aaron’s breast-plate of pure gold, was to be written, in the same alphabet, like the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO THE LORD[266].

These signets, of the remotest antiquity in the East, are worn still upon every man’s hand to this day, having the name of the person that wears them, or some sentence upon it always religious. The Greeks, after the Egyptians, continued the other method, and described figures upon their signet; the use of both has been always common in Britain.

We find afterwards, that, in place of stone or gold, for greater convenience Moses wrote in a book, “And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished;[267]”--

Although, then, Moses certainly did not invent either, or any character, it is probable that he made two, perhaps more, alterations in the Ethiopic alphabet as it then stood, with a view to increase the difference still more between the writing then in use among the nations, and what he intended to be peculiar to the Jews. The first was altering the direction, and writing from right to left, whereas, the Ethiopian was, and is to this day, written from left to right, as was the hieroglyphical alphabet[268]. The second was taking away the points, which, from all times, must have existed and been, as it were, a part of the Ethiopic letters invented with them, and I do not see how it is possible it ever could have been read without them; so that, which way soever the dispute may turn concerning the antiquity of the application of the Masoretic points, the invention was no new one, but did exist as early as language was written. And I apprehend, that these alterations were very rapidly adopted after the writing of the law, and applied to the new character as it then stood; because, not long after, Moses was ordered to submit the law itself to the people, which would have been perfectly useless, had not reading and the character been familiar to them at that time.

It appears to me also, that the Ethiopic words were always separated, and could not run together, or be joined as the Hebrew, and that the running the words together into one must have been matter of choice in the Hebrew, to increase the difference in writing the two languages, as the contrary had been practised in the Ethiopian language. Though there is really little resemblance between the Ethiopic and the Hebrew letters, and not much more between that and the Samaritan, yet I have a very great suspicion the languages were once much nearer a-kin than this disagreement of their alphabet promises, and, for this reason, that a very great number of words are found throughout the Old Testament that have really no root, nor can be derived from any Hebrew origin, and yet all have, in the Ethiopic, a plain, clear, unequivocal origin, to and from which they can be traced without force or difficulty.

I shall now finish what I have to say upon this subject, by observing, that the Ethiopic alphabet consists of twenty-six letters, each of these, by a virgula, or point annexed, varying in sound, so as to become, in effect, forty-two distinct letters. But I must further add, that at first they had but twenty-five of these original letters, the Latin P being wanting, so that they were obliged to substitute another letter in the place of it. Paulus, for example, they called Taulus, Oulus, or Caulus. Petros they pronounced Ketros. At last they substituted T, and added this to the end of their alphabet, giving it the force of P, though it was really a repetition of a character, rather than invention. Besides these there are twenty others of the nature of diphthongs, but I should suppose some of these are not of the same antiquity with the letters of the alphabet, but have been invented in later times by the scribes for convenience.

The reader will understand, that, speaking of the Ethiopic at present, I mean only the Geez language, the language of the Shepherds, and of the books. None of the other many languages spoken in Abyssinia have characters for writing. But when the Amharic became substituted, in common use and conversation, to the Geez, after the restoration of the Royal family, from their long banishment in Shoa, seven new characters were necessarily added to answer the pronunciation of this new language, but no book was ever yet written in any other language except Geez. On the contrary, there is an old law in this country, handed down by tradition only, that whoever should attempt to translate the holy scripture into Amharic, or any other language, his throat should be cut after the manner in which they kill sheep, his family sold to slavery, and his house razed to the ground; and, whether the fear of this law was true or feigned, it was a great obstacle to me in getting those translations of the Song of Solomon made which I intend for specimens of the different languages of those distinct nations.

The Geez is exceedingly harsh and unharmonious. It is full of these two letters, D and T, on which an accent is put that nearly resembles stammering. Considering the small extent of sea that divides this country from Arabia, we are not to wonder that it has great affinity to the Arabic. It is not difficult to be acquired by those who understand any other of the oriental languages; and, for a reason I have given some time ago, that the roots of many Hebrew words are only to be found here, I think it absolutely necessary to all those that would obtain a critical skill in that language.

Wemmers, a Carmelite, has wrote a small Ethiopic dictionary in thin quarto, which, as far as it goes, has considerable merit; and I am told there are others of the same kind extant, written chiefly by Catholic priests. But by far the most copious, distinct, and best-digested work, is that of Job Ludolf, a German of great learning in the Eastern languages, and who has published a grammar and dictionary of the Geez in folio. This read with attention is more than sufficient to make any person of very moderate genius a great proficient in the Ethiopic language. He has likewise written a short essay towards a dictionary and grammar of the Amharic, which, considering the very small help he had, shews his surprising talents and capacity. Much, however, remains still to do; and it is indeed scarcely possible to bring this to any tolerable degree of forwardness for want of books, unless a man of genius, while in the country itself, were to give his time and application to it: It is not much more difficult than the former, and less connected with the Hebrew or Arabic, but has a more harmonious pronunciation.

CHAP. IV.

_Some Account of the Trade Winds and Monsoons--Application of this to the Voyage to Ophir and Tarshish._

It is a matter of real affliction, which shews the vanity of all human attainments, that the preceding pages have been employed in describing, and, as it were, drawing from oblivion, the history of those very nations that first conveyed to the world, not the elements of literature only, but all sorts of learning, arts, and sciences in their full detail and perfection. We see that these had taken deep root, and were not easily extirpated. The first great and fatal blow they received was from the destruction of Thebes, and its monarchy, by the first invasion of the Shepherds under Salatis, which shook them to the very foundation. The next was in the conquest of the Thebaid under Sabaco and his Shepherds. The third was when the empire of Lower Egypt (I do not think of the Thebaid) was transferred to Memphis, and that city taken, as writers say, by the Shepherds of Abaris only, or of the Delta, though it is scarcely probable, that, in so favourite a cause as the destruction of cities, the whole Shepherds did not lend their assistance.

These were the calamities, we may suppose, under which the arts in Egypt fell; for, as to the foreign conquests of Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonians, they affected cities and the persons of individuals only. They were temporary, never intended to have lasting consequences; their beginning and end were prophesied at the same time. That of the Assyrians was a plundering expedition only, as we are told by scripture itself, intended to last but forty years[269], half the life of man, given, for a particular purpose, for the indemnification of the king Nebuchadnezzar, for the hardships he sustained at the siege of Tyre, where the obstinacy of the inhabitants, in destroying their wealth, deprived the conqueror of his expected booty. The Babylonians were a people the most polished after the Egyptians. Egypt under them suffered by rapacity, but not by ignorance, as it did in all the conquests of the Shepherds.

After Thebes was destroyed by the first Shepherds, commerce, and it is probable the arts with it, fled for a time from Egypt, and centered in Edom, a city and territory, tho’ we know little of its history, at that period the richest in the world. David, in the very neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon, calls Edom the strong city; “Who will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me into Edom[270]?” David, from an old quarrel, and probably from the recent instigations of the Tyrians his friends, invaded Edom[271], destroyed the city, and dispersed the people. He was the great military power then upon the continent; Tyre and Edom were rivals; and his conquest of that last great and trading state, which he united to his empire, would yet have lost him the trade he sought to cultivate, by the very means he used to obtain it, had not Tyre been in a capacity to succeed to Edom, and to collect its mariners and artificers, scattered abroad by the conquest.

David took possession of two ports, Eloth and Ezion-gaber[272], from which he carried on the trade to Ophir and Tarshish, to a very great extent, to the day of his death. We are struck with astonishment when we reflect upon the sum that Prince received in so short a time from these mines of Ophir. For what is said to be given by King David[273] and his Princes for the building of the Temple of Jerusalem, exceeds in value eight hundred millions of our money, if the talent there spoken of is a Hebrew talent[274], and not a weight of the same denomination, the value of which was less, and peculiarly reserved for and used in the traffic of these precious metals, gold and silver. It was, probably, an African or Indian weight, proper to the same mines, whence was gotten the gold appropriated to fine commodities only, as is the case with our ounce Troy different from the Averdupoise.

Solomon, who succeeded David in his kingdom, was his successor likewise in the friendship of Hiram king of Tyre. Solomon visited Eloth and Ezion-gaber[275] in person, and fortified them. He collected a number of pilots, shipwrights, and mariners, dispersed by his father’s conquest of Edom, most of whom had taken refuge in Tyre and Sidon, the commercial states in the Mediterranean. Hiram supplied him with sailors in abundance; but the sailors so furnished from Tyre were not capable of performing the service which Solomon required, without the direction of pilots and mariners used to the navigation of the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Such were those mariners who formerly lived in Edom, whom Solomon had now collected in Eloth and Ezion-gaber.

This last-mentioned navigation was very different in all respects from that of the Mediterranean, which, in respect to the former, might be compared to a pond, every side being confined with shores little distant the one from the other; even that small extent of sea was so full of islands, that there was much greater art required in the pilot to avoid land than to reach it. It was, besides, subject to variable winds, being to the northward of 30° of latitude, the limits to which Providence hath confined those winds all over the globe; whereas the navigation of the Indian Ocean was governed by laws more convenient and regular, though altogether different from those that obtained in the Mediterranean. Before I proceed, it will be necessary to explain this phænomenon.

It is known to all those who are ever so little versant in the history of Egypt, that the wind from the north prevails in that valley all the summer months, and is called the _Etesian winds_; it sweeps the valley from north to south, that being the direction of Egypt, and of the Nile, which runs through the midst of it. The two chains of mountains, which confine Egypt on the east and on the west, constrain the wind to take this precise direction.

It is natural to suppose the same would be the case in the Arabian Gulf, had that narrow sea been in a direction parallel to the land of Egypt, or due north and south. The Arabian Gulf, however, or what we call the Red Sea, lies from nearly north-west to south-east, from Suez to Mocha. It then turns nearly east and west till it joins the Indian Ocean at the Straits of Babelmandeb, as we have already said, and may be further seen by consulting the map. Now, the Etesian winds, which are due north in Egypt, here take the direction of the Gulf, and blow in that direction steadily all the season, while it continues north in the valley of Egypt; that is, from April to October the wind blows north-west up the Arabian Gulf towards the Straits; and, from November till March, directly contrary, down the Arabian Gulf, from the Straits of Babelmandeb to Suez and the isthmus.

These winds are by some corruptly called the _trade-winds_; but this name given to them is a very erroneous one, and apt to confound narratives, and make them unintelligible. A trade-wind is a wind which, all the year through, blows, and has ever blown, from the same point of the horizon; such is the south-west, south of the Line, in the Indian and Pacific Ocean. On the contrary, these winds, of which we have now spoken, are called _monsoons_; each year they blow six months from the northward, and the other six months from the southward, in the Arabian Gulf: While in the Indian Ocean, without the Straits of Babelmandeb, they blow just the contrary at the same seasons; that is, in summer from the southward, and in winter from the northward, subject to a small inflexion to the east and to the west.

The reader will observe, then, that, a vessel sailing from Suez or the Elanitic Gulf, in any of the summer months, will find a steady wind at north-west, which will carry it in the direction of the Gulf to Mocha. At Mocha, the coast is east and west to the Straits of Babelmandeb, so that the vessel from Mocha will have variable winds for a short space, but mostly westerly, and these will carry her on to the Straits. She is then done with the monsoon in the Gulf, which was from the north, and, being in the Indian Ocean, is taken up by the monsoon which blows in the summer months there, and is directly contrary to what obtains in the Gulf. This is a south-wester, which carries the vessel with a flowing sail to any part in India, without delay or impediment.

The same happens upon her return home. She sails in the winter months by the monsoon proper to that sea, that is, with a north-east, which carries her through the Straits of Babelmandeb. She finds, within the Gulf, a wind at south-east, directly contrary to what was in the ocean; but then her course is contrary likewise, so that a south-easter, answering to the direction of the Gulf, carries her directly to Suez, or the Elanitic Gulf, to whichever way she proposes going. Hitherto all is plain, simple, and easy to be understood; and this was the reason why, in the earliest ages, the India trade was carried on without difficulty.

Many doubts, however, have arisen about a port called _Ophir_, whence the immense quantities of gold and silver came, which were necessary at this time, when provision was making for building the Temple of Jerusalem. In what part of the world this Ophir was has not been yet agreed. Connected with this voyage, too, was one to Tarshish, which suffers the same difficulties; one and the same fleet performed them both in the same season.

In order to come to a certainty where this Ophir was, it will be necessary to examine what scripture says of it, and to keep precisely to every thing like description which we can find there, without indulging our fancy farther. _First_, then, the trade to Ophir was carried on from the Elanitic Gulf through the Indian Ocean. _Secondly_, The returns were gold, silver, and ivory, but especially silver[276]. _Thirdly_, The time of the going and coming of the fleet was precisely three years[277], at no period more nor less.

Now, if Solomon’s fleet sailed from the Elanitic Gulf to the Indian Ocean, this voyage of necessity must have been made by monsoons, for no other winds reign in that ocean. And, what certainly shews this was the case, is the precise term of three years, in which the fleet went and came between Ophir and Ezion-gaber. For it is plain, so as to supersede the necessity of proof or argument, that, had this voyage been made with variable winds, no limited term of years ever could have been observed in its going and returning. The fleet might have returned from Ophir in two years, in three, four, or five years; but, with variable winds, the return precisely in three years was not possible, whatever part of the globe Ophir might be situated in.

Neither Spain nor Peru could be Ophir; part of these voyages must have been made by variable winds, and the return consequently uncertain. The island of Ceylon, in the East Indies, could not be Ophir; the voyage thither is indeed made by monsoons, but we have shewed that a year is all that can be spent in a voyage to the East Indies; besides, Ceylon has neither gold nor silver, though it has ivory. St. Domingo has neither gold, nor silver, nor ivory. When the Tyrians discovered Spain, they found a profusion of silver in huge masses, but this they brought to Tyre by the Mediterranean, and then sent it to the Red Sea over land to answer the returns from India. Tarshish, too, is not found to be a port in any of these voyages, so that part of the description fails, nor were there ever elephants bred in Spain.

These mines of Ophir were probably what furnished the East with gold in the earliest times; great traces of excavation must, therefore, have appeared; yet in none of the places just mentioned are there great remains of any mines that have been wrought. The ancient traces of silver-mines in Spain are not to be found, and there never were any of gold. John Dos Santos[278], a Dominican friar, says, that on the coast of Africa, in the kingdom of Sofala, the main-land opposite to Madagascar, there are mines of gold and silver, than which none can be more abundant, especially in silver. They bear the traces of having been wrought from the earliest ages. They were actually open and working when the Portuguese conquered that part of the peninsula, and were probably given up since the discovery of the new world, rather from political than any other reasons.

John Dos Santos says, that he landed at Sofala in the year 1586; that he sailed up the great river Cuama as far as Tetè, where, always desirous to be in the neighbourhood of gold, his Order had placed their convent. Thence he penetrated for above two hundred leagues into the country, and saw the gold mines then working, at a mountain called Afura[279]. At a considerable distance from these are the silver mines of Chicoua; at both places there is great appearance of ancient excavations; and at both places the houses of the kings are built with mud and straw, whilst there are large remains of massy buildings of stone and lime.

It is a tradition which generally obtains in that country, that these works belonged to the Queen of Saba, and were built at the time, and for the purpose of the trade on the Red Sea: this tradition is common to all the Cafrs in that country. Eupolemus, an ancient author quoted by Eusebius[280], speaking of David, says, that he built ships at calls them, _metal-men_, to Orphi, or Ophir, an island in the Red Sea. Now, by the Red Sea, he understands the Indian Ocean[281]; and by Orphi, he probably meant the island of Madagascar; or Orphi (or Ophir) might have been the name of the Continent, instead of Sofala, that is, Sofala where the mines are might have been the main-land of Orphi.

The kings of the isles are often mentioned in this voyage; Socotra, Madagascar, the Commorras, and many other small islands thereabout, are probably those the scripture calls the _Isles_. All, then, at last reduces itself to the finding a place, either Sofala, or any other place adjoining to it, which avowedly can furnish gold, silver, and ivory in quantity, has large tokens of ancient excavations, and is at the same time under such restrictions from monsoons, that three years are absolutely necessary to perform the voyage, that it needs no more, and cannot be done in less, and this is Ophir.

Let us now try these mines of Dos Santos by the laws of the monsoons, which we have already laid down in describing the voyage to India. The fleet, or ship, for Sofala, parting in June from Ezion-gaber, would run down before the northern monsoon to Mocha. Here, not the monsoon, but the direction of the Gulf changes, and the violence of the south-westers, which then reign in the Indian Ocean, make themselves at times felt even in Mocha Roads. The vessel therefore comes to an anchor in the harbour of Mocha, and here she waits for moderate weather and a fair wind, which carries her out of the Straits of Babelmandeb, through the few leagues where the wind is variable. If her course was now to the East Indies, that is east-north-east, or north-east and by north, she would find a strong south-west wind that would carry her to any part of India, as soon as she cleared Cape Gardefan, to which she was bound.

But matters are widely different if she is bound for Sofala; her course is nearly south-west, and she meets at Cape Gardefan a strong south-wester that blows directly in her teeth. Being obliged to return into the gulf, she mistakes this for a trade-wind, because she is not able to make her voyage to Mocha but by the summer monsoon, which carries her no farther than the Straits of Babelmandeb, and then leaves her in the face of a contrary wind, a strong current to the northward, and violent swell.

The attempting this voyage with sails, in these circumstances, was absolutely impossible, as their vessels went only before the wind: if it was performed at all, it must have been by oars[282], and great havock and loss of men must have been the consequence of the several trials. This is not conjecture only; the prophet Ezekiel describes the very fact. Speaking of the Tyrian voyages probably of this very one he says, “Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters (the ocean): the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas[283].” In short, the east, that is the north-east wind, was the very monsoon that was to carry them to Sofala, yet having no sails, being upon a lee-shore, a very bold coast, and great swell, it was absolutely impossible with oars to save themselves from destruction.

At last philosophy and observation, together with the unwearied perseverance of man bent upon his own views and interest, removed these difficulties, and shewed the mariners of the Arabian Gulf, that these periodical winds, which, in the beginning, they looked upon as invincible barriers to the trading to Sofala, when once understood, were the very means of performing this voyage safely and expeditiously.

The vessel trading to Sofala sailed, as I have said, from the bottom of the Arabian Gulf in summer, with the monsoon at north, which carried her to Mocha. There the monsoon failed her by the change of the direction of the Gulf. The south-west winds, which blow without Cape Gardefan in the Indian Ocean, forced themselves round the Cape so as to be felt in the road of Mocha, and make it uneasy riding there. But these soon changed, the weather became moderate, and the vessel, I suppose in the month of August, was safe at anchor under Cape Gardefan, where was the port which, many years afterwards, was called Promontorium Aromatum. Here the ship was obliged to stay all November, because all these summer months the wind south of the Cape was a strong south-wester, as hath been before said, directly in the teeth of the voyage to Sofala. But this time was not lost; part of the goods bought to be ready for the return was ivory, frankincense, and myrrh; and the ship was then at the principal mart for these.

I suppose in November the vessel sailed with the wind at north-east, with which she would soon have made her voyage: But off the coast of Melinda, in the beginning of December, she there met an anomalous monsoon at south-west, in our days first observed by Dr Halley, which cut off her voyage to Sofala, and obliged her to put in to the small harbour of _Mocha_, near Melinda, but nearer still to Tarshish, which we find here by accident, and which we think a strong corroboration that we are right as to the rest of the voyage. In the Annals of Abyssinia, we see that Amda Sion, making war upon that coast in the 14th century, in a list of the rebellious Moorish vassals, mentions the Chief of Tarshish as one of them, in the very situation where we have now placed him.

Solomon’s vessel, then, was obliged to stay at Tarshish till the month of April of the second year. In May, the wind set in at north-east, and probably carried her that same month to Sofala. All the time she spent at Tarshish was not lost, for part of her cargo was to be brought from that place, and she probably bought, bespoke, or left it there. From May of the second year, to the end of that monsoon in October, the vessel could not stir; the wind was north-east. But this time, far from being lost, was necessary to the traders for getting in their cargo, which we shall suppose was ready for them.

The ship sails, on her return, in the month of November of the second year, with the monsoon south-west, which in a very few weeks would have carried her into the Arabian Gulf. But off Mocha, near Melinda and Tarshish, she met the north-east monsoon, and was obliged to go into that port and stay there till the end of that monsoon; after which a south-wester came to her relief in May of the third year. With the May monsoon she ran to Mocha within the Straits, and was there confined by the summer monsoon blowing up the Arabian Gulf from Suez, and meeting her. Here she lay till that monsoon, which in summer blows northerly from Suez, changed to a south-east one in October or November, and that very easily brought her up into the Elanitic Gulf, the middle or end of December of the third year. She had no need of more time to complete her voyage, and it was not possible she could do it in less. In short, she changed the monsoon six times, which is thirty-six months, or three years exactly; and there is not another combination of monsoons over the globe, as far as I know, capable to effect the same. The reader will please to consult the map, and keep it before him, which will remove any difficulties he may have. It is for his instruction this map has been made, not for that of the learned prelate[284] to whom it is inscribed, much more capable of giving additional lights, than in need of receiving any information I can give, even on this subject.

The celebrated Montesquieu conjectures, that Ophir was really on the coast of Africa; and the conjecture of that great man merits more attention than the assertions of ordinary people. He is too sagacious, and too enlightened, either to doubt of the reality of the voyage itself, or to seek for Ophir and Tarshish in China. Uninformed, however, of the particular direction of the monsoons upon the coast, first very slightly spoken of by Eudoxus, and lately observed and delineated by Dr Halley, he was staggered upon considering that the whole distance, which employed a vessel in Solomon’s time for three years, was a thousand leagues, scarcely more than the work of a month. He, therefore, supposes, that the reason of delay was owing to the imperfection of the vessels, and goes into very ingenious calculations, reasonings, and conclusions thereupon. He conjectures, therefore, that the ships employed by Solomon were what he calls _junks_[285] of the Red Sea, made of papyrus, and covered with hides or leather.

Pliny[286] had said, that one of these junks of the Red Sea was twenty days on a voyage, which a Greek or Roman vessel would have performed in seven; and Strabo[287] had said the same thing before him.

This relative slowness, or swiftness, will not solve the difficulty. For, if these junks[288] were the vessels employed to Ophir, the long voyage, much more they would have been employed on the short one, to and from India; now they performed this within a year, which was all a Roman or Greek vessel could do, therefore this was not the cause. Those employed by Solomon were Tyrian and Idumean vessels, the best ships and sailers of their age. Whoever has seen the prodigious swell, the violent currents, and strong south-westers beyond the Straits of Babelmandeb, will not need any argument to persuade him, that no vessel made of papyrus, or leather, could live an hour upon that sea. The junks, indeed, were light and convenient boats, made to cross the narrow gulf between the Sabeans and Homerites, or Cushites, at Azab upon the Red Sea, and carry provisions from Arabia Felix to the more desert coast of Azab. I have hinted, that the names of places sufficiently demonstrate the great loss of men that happened to the traders to Sofala before the knowledge of the monsoons, and the introduction of the use of sails.

I shall now consider how far the thing is confirmed by the names of places in the language of the country, such as they have retained among them to the present day.

There are three Mochas mentioned in this voyage, situated in countries very dissimilar to, and distant from, each other. The first is in Arabia Deserta, in lat. 30° nearly, not far from the bottom of the Gulf of Suez. The second is in lat. 13°, a small distance from the Straits of Babelmandeb. The third Mocha is in lat. 3° south, near Tarshish, on the coast of Melinda. Now, the meaning of Mocha, in the Ethiopic, is _prison_; and is particularly given to these three places, because, in any of them, a ship is forced to stay or be detained for months, till the changing of the monsoon sets her at liberty to pursue her voyage. At Mocha, near the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, a vessel, wanting to proceed southward to Babelmandeb, is kept here in prison all winter, till the summer monsoon sets her at liberty. At Mocha, in Arabia Felix, the same happens to any vessel wanting to proceed to Suez in the summer months; she may come up from the Straits of Babelmandeb to Mocha Road by the accidental direction of the head of the Gulf; but, in the month of May, the north-west wind obliges her to put into Mocha, and there to stay till the south-easter relieves her in November. After you double Gardefan, the summer monsoon, at north-east, is carrying your vessel full sail to Sofala, when the anomalous monsoon takes her off the coast of Melinda, and forces her into Tarshish, where she is imprisoned for six months in the Mocha there. So that this word is very emphatically applied to those places where ships are necessarily detained by the change of monsoons, and proves the truth of what I have said.

The last Cape on the Abyssinian shore, before you run into the Straits, is Cape Defan, called by the Portuguese, _Cape Dafui_. This has no meaning in any language; the Abyssinians, on whose side it is, call it _Cape Defan_, the Cape of Burial. It was probably there where the east wind drove ashore the bodies of such as had been shipwrecked in the voyage. The point of the same coast, which, stretches out into the Gulf, before you arrive at Babelmandeb, was, by the Romans, called _Promontorium Aromatum_, and since, by the Portuguese, _Cape Gardesui_. But the name given it by the Abyssinians and sailors on the Gulf is, _Cape Gardesan_, the Straits of Burial.

Still nearer the Straits is a small port in the kingdom of Adel, called _Mete_, _i. e._ Death, or, he or they are dead. And more to the westward, in the same kingdom, is Mount Felix, corruptly so called by the Portuguese. The Latins call it Elephas Mons, the Mountain of the Elephant; and the natives, Jibbel Feel, which has the same signification. The Portuguese, who did not know that Jibbel Feel was Elephas Mons, being misled by the sound, have called it _Jibbel Felix_, the Happy Mountain, a name to which it has no sort of title.

The Straits by which we enter the Arabian Gulf are by the Portuguese called Babelmandeb, which is nonsense. The name by which it goes among the natives is Babelmandeb, the Gate or Port of Affliction. And near it Ptolemy[289] places a town he calls, in the Greek, Mandaeth, which appears to me to be only a corruption of Mandeb. The Promontory that makes the south side of the Straits, and the city thereupon, is _Diræ_, which means the Hades, or Hell, by Ptolemy[290] called Δηρη. This, too, is a translation of the ancient name, because Δηρη (or Diræ) has no signification in the Greek. A cluster of islands you meet in the canal, after passing Mocha, is called Jibbel Zekir, or, the Islands of Prayer for the remembrance of the dead. And still, in the same course up the Gulf, others are called Sebaat Gzier, Praise or Glory be to God, as we may suppose, for the return from this dangerous navigation.

All the coast to the eastward, to where Gardefan stretches out into the ocean, is the territory of Saba, which immemorially has been the mart of frankincense, myrrh, and balsam. Behind Saba, upon the Indian Ocean, is the _Regio Cinnamonifera_, where a considerable quantity of that wild cinnamon grows, which the Italian druggists call _canella_.

Inland near to Azab, as I have before observed, are large ruins, some of them of small stones and lime adhering strongly together. There is especially an aqueduct, which brought formerly a large quantity of water from a fountain in the mountains, which must have greatly contributed to the beauty, health, and pleasure of Saba. This is built with large massy blocks of marble, brought from the neighbouring mountains, placed upon one another without lime or cement, but joined with thick cramps, or bars of brass. There are likewise a number of wells, not six feet wide, composed of pieces of marble hewn to parts of a circle, and joined with the same bars of brass also. This is exceedingly surprising, for Agatharcides[291] tells us, that the Alileans and Cassandrins, in the southern parts of Arabia, (just opposite to Azab), had among them gold in such plenty, that they would give double the weight of gold for iron, triple its weight for brass, and ten times its weight for silver; that, in digging the earth, they found pieces of gold as big as olive-stones, but others much larger.

This seems to me extraordinary, if brass was at such a price in Arabia, that it could be here employed in the meanest and most common uses. However this be, the inhabitants of the Continent, and of the peninsula of Arabia opposite to it, of all denominations agree, that this was the royal seat of the Queen of Saba, famous in ecclesiastical history for her journey to Jerusalem; that these works belonged to her, and were erected at the place of her residence; that all the gold, silver, and perfumes came from her kingdom of Sofala, which was Ophir, and which reached from thence to Azab, upon the borders of the Red Sea, along the coast of the Indian Ocean.

It will very possibly be thought, that this is the place in which I should mention the journey that the Queen of Saba made into Palestine; but as the dignity of the expedition itself, and the place it holds in Jewish antiquities, merits that it should be treated in a place by itself, so the connection that it is supposed to have with the foundation of the monarchy of Abyssinia, the country whose history I am going to write, makes this particularly proper for the sake of connection; and I shall, therefore, continue the history of the trade of the Arabian Gulf to a period in which I can resume the narrative of this expedition without occasioning any interruption to either.

CHAP. V.

_Fluctuating State of the India Trade--Hurt by Military Expeditions of the Persians--Revives under the Ptolemies--Falls to Decay under the Romans._

The prosperous days of the commerce with the Elanitic Gulf seemed to be at this time nearly past; yet, after the revolt of the ten tribes, Edom remaining to the house of David, they still carried on a sort of trade from the Elanitic Gulf, though attended with many difficulties. This continued till the reign of Jehosaphat[292]; but, on Jehoram’s succeeding that prince, the Edomites[293] revolted and chose a king of their own, and were never after subject to the kings of Judah till the reign of Uzziah[294], who conquered Eloth, fortified it, and having peopled it with a colony of his own, revived the old traffic. This subsisted till the reign of Ahaz, when Rezin king of Damascus took Eloth[295], and expelled the Jews, planting in their stead a colony of Syrians. But he did not long enjoy this good fortune, for the year after, Rezin[296] was conquered by Tilgath-pileser; and one of the fruits of this victory was the taking of Eloth, which never after returned to the Jews, or was of any profit to Jerusalem.

The repeated wars and conquest to which the cities on the Elanitic Gulf had been subject, the extirpation of the Edomites, all the great events that immediately followed one another, of course disturbed the usual channel of trade by the Red Sea, whose ports were now consequently become unsafe by being in possession of strangers, robbers, and soldiers; it changed, therefore, to a place nearer the center of police and good government, than fortified and frontier towns could be supposed to be. The Indian and African merchants, by convention, met in Assyria, as they had done in Semiramis’s time; the one by the Persian Gulf and Euphrates, the other through Arabia. Assyria, therefore, became the mart of the India trade in the East.

The conquests of Nabopollaser, and his son Nebuchadnezzar, had brought a prodigious quantity of bullion, both silver and gold, to Babylon his capital. For he had plundered Tyre[297], and robbed Solomon’s Temple[298] of all the gold that had been brought from Ophir; and he had, besides, conquered Egypt and laid it waste, and cut off the communication of trade in all these places, by almost extirpating the people. Immense riches flowed to him, therefore, on all sides, and it was a circumstance particularly favourable to merchants in that country, that it was governed by written laws that screened their properties from any remarkable violence or injustice.

I suppose the phrase in scripture, “The law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not[299],” must mean only written laws, by which those countries were governed, without being left to the discretion of the judge, as all the East was, and as it actually now is.

In this situation the country was at the birth of Cyrus, who, having taken Babylon[300] and slain Belshazzer[301], became master of the whole trade and riches of the East. Whatever character writers give of this great Prince, his conduct, with regard to the commerce of the country, shews him to have been a weak one: For, not content with the prodigious prosperity to which his dominions had arrived, by the misfortune of other nations, and perhaps by the good faith kept by his subjects to merchants, enforced by those written laws, he undertook the most absurd and disastrous project of molesting the traders themselves, and invading India, that all at once he might render himself master of their riches. He executed this scheme just as absurdly as he formed it; for, knowing that large caravans of merchants came into Persia and Assyria from India, through the Ariana, (the desert coast that runs all along the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf, almost entirely destitute of water, and very nearly as much so of provisions, both which caravans always carry with them), he attempted to enter India by the very same road with a large army, the very same way his predecessor Semiramis had projected 1300 years before; and as her army had perished, so did his to a man, without having ever had it in his power to take one pepper-corn by force from any part of India.

The same fortune attended his son and successor Cambyses, who, observing the quantity of gold brought from Ethiopia into Egypt, resolved to march to the source, and at once make himself master of those treasures by rapine, which he thought came too slowly through the medium of commerce.

Cambyses’s expedition into Africa is too well known for me to dwell upon it in this place. It hath obtained a celebrity by the absurdity of the project, by the enormous cruelty and havock that attended the course of it, and by the great and very just punishment that closed it in the end. It was one of those many monstrous extravagancies which made up the life of the greatest madman that ever disgraced the annals of antiquity. The basest mind is perhaps the most capable of avarice; and when this passion has taken possession of the human heart, it is strong enough to excite us to undertakings as great as any of those dictated by the noblest of our virtues.

Cambyses, amidst the commission of the most horrid excesses during the conquest of Egypt, was informed that, from the south of that country, there was constantly brought a quantity of pure gold, independent of what came from the top of the Arabic Gulf, which was now carried into Assyria, and circulated in the trade of his country. This supply of gold belonged properly and exclusively to Egypt; and a very lucrative, though not very extensive commerce, was, by its means, carried on with India. He found out that the people, possessing these treasures, were called _Macrobii_, which signifies _long livers_; and that they possessed a country divided from him by lakes, mountains, and deserts. But what still affected him most was, that in his way were a multitude of warlike Shepherds, with whom the reader is already sufficiently acquainted.

Cambyses, to flatter, and make peace with them, fell furiously upon all the gods and temples in Egypt; he murdered the sacred ox, the apis, destroyed Memphis, and all the public buildings wherever he went. This was a gratification to the Shepherds, being equally enemies to those that worshipped beasts, or lived in cities. After this introduction, he concluded peace with them in the most solemn manner, each nation vowing eternal amity with the other. Notwithstanding which, no sooner was he arrived at Thebes (in Egypt) than he detached a large army to plunder the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, the greatest object of the worship of these _shepherds_; which army utterly perished without a man remaining, covered, as I suppose, by the moving sands. He then began his march against the _Macrobii_, keeping close to the Nile. The country there being too high to receive any benefit from the inundation of the river, produced no corn, so that part of his army died for want of provision.

Another detachment of his army proceeded to the country of the Shepherds, who, indeed, furnished him with food; but, exasperated at the sacrilege he had committed against their god, they conduced his troops through places where they could procure no water. After suffering all this loss, he was not yet arrived beyond 24°, the parallel of Syené. From hence he dispatched ambassadors, or spies, to discover the country before him, finding he could no longer rely upon the Shepherds. These found it full of black warlike people, of great size, and prodigious strength of body; active, and continually exercised in hunting the lion, the elephant, and other monstrous beasts which live in these forests.

The inhabitants so abounded with gold, that the most common utensils and instruments were made of that metal; whilst, at the same time, they were utter strangers to bread of any kind whatever; and, not only so, but their country was, by its nature, incapable of producing any sort of grain from which bread could be made. They subsisted upon raw flesh alone, dried in the sun, especially that of the rhinoceros, the elephant, and giraffa, which they had slain in hunting. On such food they have ever since lived, and live to this day, and on such food I myself have lived with them; yet still it appears strange, that people confined to this diet, without variety or change, should have it for their characteristic that they were long livers.

They were not at all alarmed at the arrival of Cambyses’s ambassadors. On the contrary, they treated them as an inferior species of men. Upon asking them about their diet, and hearing it was upon bread, they called it _dung_, I suppose as having the appearance of that bread which I have seen the miserable Agows, their neighbours, make from seeds of bastard rye, which they collect in their fields under the burning rays of the sun. They laughed at Cambyses’s requisition of submitting to him, and did not conceal their contempt of his idea of bringing an army thither.

They treated ironically his hopes of conquest, even supporting all difficulties of the desert overcome, and his army ready to enter their country, and counseled him to return while he was well, at least for a time, till he should produce a man of his army that could bend the bow that they then sent him; in which case, he might continue to advance, and have hope of conquest.--The reason of their reference to the bow will be seen afterwards. I mention these circumstances of the quantity of gold, the hunting of elephants, their living upon the raw flesh, and, above all, the circumstances of the bow, as things which I myself can testify to have met with among this very people. It is, indeed, highly satisfactory in travelling, to be able to explain truths which, from a want of knowledge of the country alone, have been treated as falsehoods, and placed to the discredit of historians.

The Persians were all famous archers. The mortification, therefore, they experienced, by receiving the bow they could not bend, was a very sensible one, though the narrative of the quantity of gold the messengers had seen made a much greater impression upon Cambyses. To procure this treasure was, however, impracticable, as he had no provision, nor was there any in the way of his march. His army, therefore, wasted daily by death and dispersion; and he had the mortification to be obliged to retreat into Egypt, after part of his troops had been reduced to the necessity of eating each other[302].

Darius, king of Persia, attempted to open this trade in a much more worthy and liberal manner, as he sent ships down the river Indus into the ocean, whence they entered the Red Sea. It is probable, in this voyage, he acquired all the knowledge necessary for establishing this trade in Persia; for he must have passed through the Persian Gulf, and along the whole eastern coast of Arabia; he must have seen the marts of perfumes and spices that were at the mouth of the Red Sea, and the manner of bartering for gold and silver, as he was necessarily in those trading places which were upon the very same coast from which the bullion was brought. I do not know, then, why M. de Montesquieu[303] has treated this expedition of Darius so contemptuously, as it appears to have been executed without great trouble or expence, and terminated without loss or hardship; the strongest proof that it was at first wisely planed. The prince himself was famous for his love of learning, which we find by his anxiety to be admitted among the Magi, and the sense he had of that honour, in causing it to be engraved upon his tomb.

The expedition of Alexander into India was, of all events, that which most threatened the destruction of the commerce of the Continent, or the dispersing it into different channels throughout the East: First, by the destruction of Tyre, which must have, for a time, annihilated the trade by the Arabian Gulf; then by his march through Egypt into the country of the Shepherds, and his intended further progress into Ethiopia to the head of the Nile. If we may judge of what we hear of him in that part of his expedition, we should be apt not to believe, as others are fond of doing, that he had schemes of commerce mingled with those of conquests. His anxiety about his own birth at the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, this first question that he asked of the priest, “Where the Nile had its source,” seemed to denote a mind busied about other objects; for else he was then in the very place for information, being in the temple of that horned god[304], the deity of the Shepherds, the African carriers of the Indian produce; a temple which, though in the midst of sand, and destitute of gold or silver, possessed more and better information concerning the trade of India and Africa, than could be found in any other place on the Continent. Yet we do not hear of one question being made, or one arrangement taken, relative to opening the India trade with Thebes, or with Alexandria, which he built afterwards.

After having viewed the main ocean to the south, he ordered Nearchus with his fleet to coast along the Persian Gulf, accompanied by part of the army on land for their mutual assistance, as there were a great many hardships which followed the march of the army by land, and much difficulty and danger attended the shipping as they were sailing in unknown seas against the monsoons. Nearchus himself informed the king at Babylon of his successful voyage, who gave him orders to continue it into the Red Sea, which he happily accomplished to the bottom of the Arabian Gulf.

We are told it was his intention to carry on the India trade by the Gulf of Persia, for which reason he broke down all the cataracts and dams which the Persians had built over the rivers communicating with the Euphrates. No use, however, seems to have been made of his knowledge of Arabia and Ethiopia, which makes me imagine this expedition of Alexander’s fleet was not an idea of his own. It is, indeed, said, that when Alexander came into India, the southern or Indian Ocean was perfectly unknown; but I am rather inclined to believe from this circumstance, that this voyage was made from some memorials remaining concerning the voyage of Darius. The fact and circumstances of Darius’s voyage are come down to us, and, by these very same means, it must be probable they reached Alexander, who I do not believe ever intended to carry on the India trade at Babylon.

To render it impossible, indeed, he could not have done three things more effectual than he did, when he destroyed Tyre, and dispersed its inhabitants, persecuted the Orites, or land-carriers, in the Ariana, and built Alexandria upon the Mediterranean; which last step fixed the Indian trade in that city, and would have kept it there eternally, had the Cape of Good Hope never been discovered.

The Ptolemies, the wisest princes that ever sat upon the throne of Egypt, applied with the utmost care and attention to cultivate the trade of India, to keep up perfect and friendly understanding with every country that supplied any branch of it, and, instead of disturbing it either in Asia, Arabia, or Ethiopia, as their predecessors had done, they used their utmost efforts to encourage it in all quarters.

Ptolemy I. was then reigning in Alexandria, the foundation of whose greatness he not only laid, but lived to see it arrive at the greatest perfection. It was his constant saying, that the true glory of a king was not in being rich himself, but making his subjects so. He, therefore, opened his ports to all trading nations, encouraged strangers of every language, protected caravans, and a free navigation by sea, by which, in a few years, he made Alexandria the great store-house of merchandize, from India, Arabia, and Ethiopia. He did still further to insure the duration of his kingdom, at the same time that he shewed the utmost disinterestedness for the future happiness of his people. He educated his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, with the utmost care, and the happy genius of that prince had answered his father’s utmost expectations; and, when he arrived at the age of governing, the father, worn out by the fatigue of long wars, surrendered the kingdom to his son.

Ptolemy had been a soldier from his infancy, and consequently kept up a proper military force, that made him every where respected in these warlike and unsettled times. He had a fleet of two hundred ships of war constantly ready in the port of Alexandria, the only part for which he had apprehensions. All behind him was wisely governed, whilst it enjoyed a most flourishing trade, to the prosperity of which peace is necessary. He died in peace and old age, after having merited the glorious name of _Soter_, or _Saviour of the kingdom_, which he himself had founded, the greatest part of which differed from him in language, colour, habit, and religion.

It is with astonishment we see how thoroughly he had established the trade of India, Ethiopia, and Arabia, and what progress he had already made towards uniting it with that of Europe, by a passage in Athenæus[305], who mentions a festival and entertainment given by his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, to the people of Alexandria at his accession, while his father was alive, but had just given up his crown.

There was in this procession a great number of Indian women, besides of other countries; and by Indians we may understand, not only the Asiatic Indians, but the Abyssinians, and the inhabitants of the higher part of Africa, as all these countries were comprehended under the common appellation of _India_. These were in the habit of slaves, and each led, or was followed by, a camel loaded with incense of Sheher, and cinnamon, besides other aromatics. After these came a number of Ethiopian blacks carrying the teeth of 600 elephants. Another troop had a prodigious quantity of ebony; and again others loaded with that finest gold, which is not dug from the mine, but washed from the mountains by the tropical rains in small pieces, or pellets, which the natives and traders at this day call _Tibbar_. Next came a pack of 24,000 Indian dogs, all Asiatics, from the peninsula of India, followed by a prodigious number of foreign animals, both beasts and birds, paroquets, and other birds of Ethiopia, carried in cages; 130 Ethiopian sheep, 300 Arabian, and 20 from the Isle Nubia[306]; 26 Indian buffaloes, white as snow, and eight from Ethiopia; three brown bears, and a white one, which last must have been from the north of Europe; 14 leopards, 16 panthers, four lynxes, one giraffa, and a rhinoceros of Ethiopia.

When we reflect upon this prodigious mixture of animals, all so easily procured at one time, without preparation, we may imagine, that the quantity of merchandises, for common demand, which accompanied them, must have been in the proper proportion.

The current of trade ran towards Alexandria with the greatest impetuosity, all the articles of luxury of the East were to be found there. Gold and silver, which were sent formerly to Tyre, came now down to the Isthmus (for Tyre was no more) by a much shorter carriage, thence to Memphis, whence it was sent down the Nile to Alexandria. The gold from the west and south parts of the Continent reached the same port with much less time and risk, as there was now no Red Sea to pass; and here was found the merchandise of Arabia and India in the greatest profusion.

To facilitate the communication with Arabia, Ptolemy built a town on the coast of the Red Sea, in the country of the Shepherds, and called it _Berenice_[307], after his mother. This was intended as a place of necessary refreshment for all the traders up and down the Gulf, whether of India or Ethiopia; hence the cargoes of merchants, who were afraid of losing the monsoons, or had lost them, were carried by the inhabitants of the country, in three days, to the Nile, and there embarked for Alexandria. To make the communication between the Nile and the Red Sea still more commodious, this prince tried an attempt (which had twice before miscarried with very great loss) to bring a canal[308] from the Red Sea to the Nile, which he actually accomplished, joining it to the Pelusiac, or Eastern branch of the Nile. Locks and sluices moreover are mentioned as having been employed even in those early days by Ptolemy, but very trifling ones could be needed, for the difference of level is there but very small.

This noble canal, one hundred yards broad, was not of that use to trade which was expected; merchants were weary of the length of time consumed in going to the very bottom of the Gulf, and afterwards with this inland navigation of the canal, and that of the Nile, to Alexandria. It was therefore much more expeditious to unload at Berenice, and, after three days journey, send their merchandise directly down to Alexandria. Thus the canal was disused, the goods passed from Berenice to the Nile by land, and that road continues open for the same purpose to this day.

It should appear, that Ptolemy had employed the vessels of India and the Red Sea, to carry on his commerce with the peninsula, and that the manner of trading directly to India with his own ships, was either not known or forgotten. He therefore sent two ambassadors, or messengers, Megasthenes and Denis, to observe and report what was the state of India since the death of Alexander. These two performed their voyage safely and speedily. The account they gave of India, if it was strictly a true one, was, in all respects, perfectly calculated to animate people to the further prosecution of that trade. In the mean time, in order to procure more convenience for vessels trading on the Red Sea, he resolved to attempt the penetrating into that part of Ethiopia which lies on that sea, and, as historians imagine, with an intention to plunder the inhabitants of their riches.

It must not, however, be supposed, that Ptolemy was not enough acquainted with the productions of a country so near to Egypt, as to know this part of it had neither gold nor silver, whilst it was full of forests likewise; for it was that part of Ethiopia called Barbaria, at this day Barabra, inhabited by shepherds wandering with their cattle about the neighbouring mountains according as the rains fall. Another more probable conjecture was, that he wanted, by bringing about a change of manners in these people, to make them useful to him in a matter that was of the highest importance.

Ptolemy, like his father, had a very powerful fleet and army, he but was inferior to many of the princes, his rivals, in elephants, of which great use was then made in war. These Ethiopians were hunters, and killed them for their subsistence. Ptolemy, however, wished to have them taken alive, being numerous, and hoped both to furnish himself, and dispose of them as an article of trade, to his neighbours.

There is something indeed ridiculous in the manner in which he executed this expedition. Aware of the difficulty of subsisting in that country, he chose only a hundred Greek horsemen, whom he covered with coats of monstrous appearance and size, which left nothing visible but the eyes of the rider. Their horses too were disguised by huge trappings, which took from them all proportion and shape. In this manner they entered this part of Ethiopia, spreading terror every where by their appearance, to which their strength and courage bore a strict proportion whenever they came to action. But neither force nor intreaty could gain any thing upon these Shepherds, or ever make them change or forsake the food they had been so long accustomed to; and all the fruit Ptolemy reaped from this expedition, was to build a city, by the sea-side, in the south-east corner of this country, which he called Ptolemais Theron, or Ptolemais in the country of wild beasts.

I have already observed, but shall again repeat it, that the reason why ships, in going up and down the Red Sea, kept always upon the Ethiopian shore, and why the greatest number of cities were always built upon that side is, that water is much more abundant on the Ethiopian side than the Arabian, and it was therefore of the greatest consequence to trade to have that coast fully discovered and civilized. Indeed it is more than probable, that nothing further was intended by the expedition of the hundred Greeks, just now mentioned, than to gain sufficient intelligence how this might be done most perfectly.

Ptolemy Evergetes, son and successor of Ptolemy Philadelphus, availed himself of this discovery. Having provided himself amply with necessaries for his army, and ordered a fleet to coast along beside him, up the Red Sea, he penetrated quite through the country of the Shepherds into that of the Ethiopian Troglodytes, who are black and woolly-headed, and inhabit the low country quite to the mountains of Abyssinia. Nay[309], he even ascended those mountains, forced the inhabitants to submission, built a large temple at Axum, the capital of Sirè, and raised a great many obelisks, several of which are standing to this day. Afterwards proceeding to the south-east, he descended into the cinnamon and myrrh country, behind Cape Gardefan, (the Cape that terminates the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean) from this crossed over to Arabia, to the Homerites, being the same people with the Abyssinians, only on the Arabian shore. He then conquered several of the Arabian princes, who first resisted him, and had it in his power to have put an end to the trade of India there, had he not been as great a politician as he was a warrior. He used his victory, therefore, in no other manner, than to exhort and oblige these princes to protect trade, encourage strangers, and, by every means, provide for the surety of neutral intercourse, by making rigorous examples of robbers by sea and land.

The reigns of the latter Ptolemies were calculated to bring this commerce to a decline, had it not been for two great events, the fall of Carthage, destroyed by Scipio, and that of Corinth, by the consul Mummius. The importance of these events to Alexandria seems to have sustained the prosperity of Egypt, even against the ravages committed in the war between Ptolemy the VI. and VII. Alexandria was then besieged, and not only deprived of its riches, but reduced to the utmost want of necessaries, and the horrid behaviour of Ptolemy VII. (had it continued) would have soon rendered that city desolate. The consequence of such a conduct, however, made a strong impression on the prince himself, who, at once recalling his unjust edicts, by which he had banished all foreign merchants from Alexandria, became on a sudden wholly addicted to commerce, the encourager of arts and sciences, and the protector of strangers.

The impolitic conduct in the beginning of his reign, however, had affected trade even in India. For the story preserved by Posidonius, and very improperly criticised by Strabo, seems to import little less. One day, the troops posted on the Arabian Gulf found a ship abandoned to the waves, on board of which was one Indian only, half dead with hunger and thirst, whom they brought to the king. This Indian declared he sailed from his own country, and, having lost his course and spent all his provisions, he was carried to the place where he was found, without knowing where he was, and after having survived the rest of his companions: he concluded an imperfect narrative, by offering to be a guide to any person his majesty would send to India. His proposals were accordingly accepted, and Eudoxus was named by the king to accompany him. Strabo[310] indeed laughs at this story. However, we must say, he has not seized the most ridiculous parts of it.

We are told that the king ordered the Indian to be taught Greek, and waited with patience till he had learned that language. Surely, before any person could thus instruct him, the master must have had some language in common with his scholar, or he had better have taught Eudoxus the Indian language, as it would have been as easy, and of much more use in the voyage he was to undertake. Besides, is it possible to believe, after the many years the Egyptians traded backwards and forwards to India, that there was not a man in Alexandria who could interpret for him to the king, when such a number of Egyptians went every year to India to trade, and stayed there for months each time? Could Ptolemy Philadelphus, at his father’s festival, find 600 Indian female slaves, all at once, in Alexandria; and, after the trade had lasted so much longer, were the people from India decreased, or would their language be less understood? The king’s wisdom, moreover, did not shew itself greatly, when he was going to trust a ship with his subjects to so skilful a pilot as this Indian, who, in the first voyage, had lost himself and all his companions.

India, however, and the Indian seas, were as well known in Egypt as they are now; and the magnificence and shew which attended Eudoxus’s embassy seems to prove, that whatever truth there is in the Indian being found, Eudoxus’ errand must have been to remove the bad effects that the king’s extortions and robberies, committed upon all strangers in the beginning of his reign, had made upon the trading nations. Eudoxus returned, but after the death of Ptolemy. The necessity, however, of this voyage appeared still great enough to make Cleopatra his widow project a second to the same place, and greater preparations were made than for the former one.

But Eudoxus, trying experiments probably about the courses of the trade-winds, lost his passage, and was thrown upon the coast of Ethiopia; where, having landed, and made himself agreeable to the natives, he brought home to Egypt a particular description of that country and its produce, which furnished all the discovery necessary to instruct the Ptolemies in every thing that related to the ancient trade of Arabia. In the course of the voyage, Eudoxus discovered the part of the prow of a vessel which had been broken off by a storm. The figure of a horse made it an object of inquiry; and some of the sailors on board, who had been employed in European voyages, immediately knew this wreck to be part of one of those vessels used to trade on the western ocean. Eudoxus[311] instantly perceived all the importance of the discovery, which amounted to nothing less, than that there was a passage round Africa from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean. Full of this thought, he returned to Egypt, and, having shewn the prow of his vessel to European shipmasters, they all declared that this had been part of a vessel which had belonged to Cadiz, in Spain.

This discovery, great as it was, was to none of more importance than to Eudoxus; for, some time after, falling under the displeasure of Ptolemy Lathyrus, VIIIth of that name, and being in danger of his life, he fled and embarked on the Red Sea, sailed round the peninsula of Africa, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and came safely to Cadiz.

The spirit of inquiry, and desire of travelling, spread itself instantly through Egypt, upon this voyage of Eudoxus; and different travellers pushed their discoveries into the heart of the country, where some of the nations are reported to have been so ignorant as not to know the use of fire: ignorance almost incredible, had we not an instance of it in our own times. It was in the reign of Ptolemy IX. that Agatharcides[312] drew up his description of the Red Sea.

The reigns of the other Ptolemies ending in the XIIIth of that name, though full of great events, have nothing material to our present subject. Their constant expence and profusion must have occasioned a great consumption of trading articles, and very little else was wanting; or, if there had, it must have arrived at its height in the reign of the celebrated Cleopatra; whose magnificence, beauty, and great talents, made her a wonder, greater than any in her capital. In her time, all nations flocked, as well for curiosity as trade, to Alexandria; Arabs, Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Jews, and Medes; and all were received and protected by this princess, who spoke to each of them in his own language[313].

The discovery of Spain, and the possession of the mines of Attica from which they drew their silver, and the revolution that happened in Egypt itself, seemed to have superseded the communication with the coast of Africa; for, in Strabo’s time, few of the ports of the Indian Ocean, even those nearest the Red Sea, were known. I should, indeed, suppose, that the trade to India by Egypt decreased from the very time of the conquest by Cæsar. The mines the Romans had at the source of the river Betis[314], in Spain, did not produce them above L.15,000 a-year; this was not a sufficient capital for carrying on the trade to India, and therefore the immense riches of the Romans seem to have been derived from the greatness of the prices, not from the extent of the trade. In fact[315], we are told that 100 _per cent_. was a profit in common trade upon the Indian commodities. Egypt now, and all its neighbourhood, began to wear a face of war, to which it had been a stranger for so many ages. The north of Africa was in constant troubles, after the first ruin of Carthage; so that we may imagine the trade to India began again, on that side, to be carried on pretty much in the same manner it had been before the days of Alexander. But it had enlarged itself very much on the Persian side, and found an easy, short inlet, into the north of Europe, which then furnished them a market and consumption of spices.

I must confess, notwithstanding, if it is true what Strabo says he heard himself in Egypt, that the Romans employed one hundred and twenty vessels in the Indian trade[316], it must at that time have lost very little of its vigour. We must, however, imagine, that great part of this was for the account, and with the funds of foreign merchants. The Jews in Alexandria, until the reign of Ptolemy Phiscon, had carried on a very extensive part of the India trade. All Syria was mercantile; and lead, iron, and copper, supplied, in some manner, the deficiency of gold and silver, which never again was in such abundance till after the discovery of America.

But the ancient trade to India, by the Arabian Gulf and Africa, carried on by the medium of these two metals, remained at home undiminished with the Ethiopians, defended by large extensive deserts, and happy with the enjoyment of riches and security, till a fresh discovery again introduced to them both partners and masters in their trade.

One of the reasons that makes me imagine the Indian trade was not flourishing, or in great esteem, immediately upon the Roman conquest of Egypt, is, that Augustus, very soon after, attempted to conquer Arabia. He sent Elius Gallus, with an army from Egypt into Arabia, who found there a number of effeminate, timid people, scarcely to be driven to self-defence by violence, and ignorant of every thing that related to war. Elius, however, found that they overmatched him in cunning, and the perfect knowledge of the country, which their constant employment as carriers had taught them. His guides led him round from hardship to hardship, till his army almost perished with hunger and thirst, without seeing any of those riches his master had sent him to take possession of.

Thus was the Arabian expedition of Augustus conceived with the same views as those of Semiramis, Cyrus, and Cambyses, deservedly as unhappy in its issue as these first had been.

That the African trade, moreover, was lost, appears from Strabo[317], and his reasoning upon the voyage of Eudoxus, which he treats as a fable. But his reasoning proves just the contrary, and this voyage was one foundation for opening this trade again, and making this coast more perfectly known. This likewise appears clear from Ptolemy[318], who, speaking of a promontory or cape opposite to Madagascar, on the coast of Africa, says it was inhabited by anthropophagi, or man-eaters, and that all beyond 8° south was unknown, and that this cape extended to and joined the continent of India[319].

CHAP. VI.

_Queen of Saba visits Jerusalem--Abyssinian Tradition concerning Her--Supposed Founder of that Monarchy--Abyssinia embraces the Jewish Religion--Jewish Hierarchy still retained by the Falasha--Some Conjectures concerning their Copy of the Old Testament._

It is now that I am to fulfil my promise to the reader, of giving him some account of the visit made by the Queen of Sheba[320], as we erroneously call her, and the consequences of that visit; the foundation of an Ethiopian monarchy, and the continuation of the sceptre in the tribe of Judah, down to this day. If I am obliged to go back in point of time, it is, that I may preserve both the account of the trade of the Arabian Gulf, and of this Jewish kingdom, distinct and unbroken.

We are not to wonder, if the prodigious hurry and flow of business, and the immensely valuable transactions they had with each other, had greatly familiarized the Tyrians and Jews, with their correspondents the Cushites and Shepherds on the coast of Africa. This had gone so far, as very naturally to have created a desire in the queen of Azab, the sovereign of that country, to go herself and see the application of such immense treasures that had been exported from her country for a series of years, and the prince who so magnificently employed them. There can be no doubt of this expedition, as Pagan, Arab, Moor, Abyssinian, and all the countries round, vouch it pretty much in the terms of scripture.

Many[321] have thought this queen was an Arab. But Saba was a separate state, and the Sabeans a distinct people from the Ethiopians and the Arabs, and have continued so till very lately. We know, from history, that it was a custom among these Sabeans, to have women for their sovereigns in preference to men, a custom which still subsists among their descendents.

---- _Medis levibusque Sabæis, Imperat hie sexus Reginarumque sub armis, Barbariæ[322], pars magna jacet._ CLAUDIAN.

Her name, the Arabs say, was _Belkis_; the Abyssìnians, _Maqueda_. Our Saviour calls her _Queen of the South_, without mentioning any other name, but gives his sanction to the truth of the voyage. “The Queen of the South (or Saba, or Azab) shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here[323].” No other particulars, however, are mentioned about her in scripture; and it is not probable our Saviour would say she came from the uttermost parts of the earth, if she had been an Arab, and had near 50° of the Continent behind her. The gold, the myrrh, cassia, and frankincense, were all the produce of her own country; and the many reasons Pineda[324] gives to shew she was an Arab, more than convince me that she was an Ethiopian or Cushite shepherd.

A strong objection to her being an Arab, is, that the Sabean Arabs, or Homerites, the people that lived opposite to Azab on the Arabian shore, had kings instead of queens, which latter the Shepherds had, and still have. Moreover, the kings of the Homerites were never seen abroad, and were stoned to death if they appeared in public; subjects of this stamp would not very readily suffer their queen to go to Jerusalem, even supposing they had a queen, which they had not.

Whether she was a Jewess or a Pagan is uncertain; Sabaism was the religion of all the East. It was the constant attendant and stumbling-block of the Jews; but considering the multitude of that people then trading from Jerusalem, and the long time it continued, it is not improbable she was a Jewess. “And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions[325].” Our Saviour, moreover, speaks of her with praise, pointing her out as an example to the Jews[326]. And, in her thanksgiving before Solomon, she alludes to _God’s blessing_ on the _seed_ of Israel for ever[327], which is by no means the language of a Pagan, but of a person skilled in the ancient history of the Jews.

She likewise appears to have been a person of learning, and that sort of learning which was then almost peculiar to Palestine, not to Ethiopia. For we see that one of the reasons of her coming, was to examine whether Solomon was really the learned man he was said to be. She came to try him in allegories, or parables, in which Nathan had instructed Solomon.

The learning of the East, and of the neighbouring kings that corresponded with each other, especially in Palestine and Syria, consisted chiefly in these: “And Joash king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the Cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.”--“Thou sayest, Lo, thou hast smitten the Edomites, and thine heart lifteth thee up to boast: abide now at home, why shouldest thou meddle to thine hurt, that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and Judah with thee[328]?”

The annals of Abyssinia, being very full upon this point, have taken a middle opinion, and by no means an improbable one. They say she was a Pagan when she left Azab, but being full of admiration at the sight of Solomon’s works, she was converted to Judaism in Jerusalem, and bore him a son, whom she called Menilek, and who was their first king. However strongly they assert this, and however dangerous it would be to doubt it in Abyssinia, I will not here aver it for truth, nor much less still will I positively contradict it, as scripture has said nothing about it. I suppose, whether true or not, in the circumstances she was, whilst Solomon also, so far from being very nice in his choice, was particularly addicted to Idumeans[329], and other strange women, he could not more naturally engage himself in any amour than in one with the queen of Saba, with whom he had so long entertained the most lucrative connections, and most perfect friendship, and who, on her part, by so long a journey, had surely made sufficient advances.

The Abyssinians, both Jews and Christians, believe the xlvth psalm to be a prophecy of this queen’s voyage to Jerusalem; that she was attended by a daughter of Hiram’s from Tyre to Jerusalem, and that the last part contains a declaration of her having a son by Solomon, who was to be king over a nation of Gentiles.

To Saba, or Azab, then, she returned with her son Menilek, whom, after keeping him some years, she sent back to his father to be instructed. Solomon did not neglect his charge, and he was anointed and crowned king of Ethiopia, in the temple of Jerusalem, and at his inauguration took the name of David. After this he returned to Azab, and brought with him a colony of Jews, among whom were many doctors of the law of Moses, particularly one of each tribe, to make judges in his kingdom, from whom the present Umbares (or Supreme Judges, three of whom always attend the king) are said and believed to be descended. With these came also Azarias, the son of Zadok the priest, and brought with him a Hebrew transcript of the law, which was delivered into his custody, as he bore the title of Nebrit, or High Priest; and this charge, though the book itself was burnt with the church of Axum in the Moorish war of Adel, is still continued, as it is said, in the lineage of Azarias, who are Nebrits, or keepers of the church of Axum, at this day. All Abyssinia was thereupon converted, and the government of the church and state modelled according to what was then in use at Jerusalem.

By the last act of the queen of Saba’s reign, she settled the mode of succession in her country for the future. First, she enacted, that the crown should be hereditary in the family of Solomon for ever. Secondly, that, after her, no woman should be capable of wearing that crown or being queen, but that it should descend to the heir male, however distant, in exclusion of all heirs female whatever, however near; and that these two articles should be considered as the fundamental laws of the kingdom, never to be altered or abolished. And, lastly, That the heirs male of the royal house, should always be sent prisoners to a high mountain, where they were to continue till their death, or till the succession should open to them.

What was the reason of this last regulation is not known, it being peculiar to Abyssinia, but the custom of having women for sovereigns, which was a very old one, prevailed among the neighbouring shepherds in the last century, as we shall see in the course of this history, and, for what we know, prevails to this day. It obtained in Nubia till Augustus’s time, when Petreius, his lieutenant in Egypt, subdued her country, and took the queen Candace prisoner. It endured also after Tiberius, as we learn from St Philip’s baptising the eunuch[330] servant of queen Candace, who must have been successor to the former; for she, when taken prisoner by Petreius, is represented as an infirm woman, having but one eye[331]. Candace indeed was the name of all the sovereigns, in the same manner Cæsar was of the Roman emperors. As for the last severe part, the punishment of the princes, it was probably intended to prevent some disorders among the princes of her house, that she had observed frequently to happen in the house of David[332] at Jerusalem.

The queen of Saba having made these laws irrevocable to all her posterity, died, after a long reign of forty years, in 986 before Christ, placing her son Menilek upon the throne, whose posterity, the annals of Abyssinia would teach us to believe, have ever since reigned. So far we must indeed bear witness to them, that this is no new doctrine, but has been stedfastly and uniformly maintained from their earliest account of time; first, when Jews, then in later days after they had embraced christianity. We may further add, that the testimony of all the neighbouring nations is with them upon this subject, whether they be friends or enemies. They only differ in name of the queen, or in giving her two names.

This difference, at such a distance of time, should not break scores, especially as we shall see that the queens in the present day have sometimes three or four names, and all the kings three, whence has arisen a very great confusion in their history. And as for her being an Arab, the objection is still easier got over. For all the inhabitants of Arabia Felix, especially those of the coast opposite to Saba, were reputed Abyssins, and their country part of Abyssinia, from the earliest ages, to the Mahometan conquest and after. They were her subjects; first, Sabean Pagans like herself, then converted (as the tradition says) to Judaism, during the time of the building of the temple, and continuing Jews from that time to the year 622 after Christ, when they became Mahometans.

I shall therefore now give a list of their kings of the race of Solomon, descended from the queen of Saba, whose device is a lion passant, proper upon a field gules, and their motto, “_Mo Anbasa am Nizilet Solomon am Negadè Jude_;” which signifies, ‘the lion of the race of Solomon and tribe of Judah hath overcome.’ The Portuguese missionaries, in place of a lion passant, which is really the king’s bearing, have given him, in some of their publications, a lion rampant, purposely, as is supposed, to put a cross into the paw of this Jewish lion; but he is now returned to the lion passant, that he was in the time of Solomon, without any symbol either of religion or peace in his paws.

LIST OF THE KINGS OF ABYSSINIA,

FROM

MAQUEDA, QUEEN OF SABA, TO THE NATIVITY.

Years.

Menilek, or David I. reigned 4 Hendedya, or Zagdur, 1 Awida, 11 Ausyi, 3 Sawé, 31 Gesaya, 15 Katar, 15 Mouta, 20 Bahas, 9 Kawida, 2 Kanaza, 10 Katzina, 9 Wazeha, 1 Hazer, 2 Kalas, 6 Solaya, 16 Falaya, 26 Aglebu, 3 Asisena, 1 Brus, 29 Mohesa, 1 Bazen, 16

Menilek succeeded to the throne in the 986th year before Christ; and this number of years must be exhausted in the reign of these twenty-two kings, when each reign, in that case, will amount to more than forty-four years, which is impossible. The reign of the twenty-one kings of Israel, at a medium, is a little more than twenty-two years at an average, and that is thought abundantly high. And, even upon that footing of comparison, there will be wanting a great deal more than half the number of years between Menilek and Bazen, so that this account is apparently false. But I have another very material objection to it, as well as the preceding one, which is, that there is not one name in the whole list that has an Ethiopic root or derivation.

The reader will give what credit he pleases to this very ancient list. For my part, I content myself with disproving nothing but what is impossible, or contrary to the authority of scripture, or my own private knowledge. There are other lists still, which I have seen, all of no better authority than this. I shall only observe, upon this last, that there is a king in it, about nine years before our Saviour’s nativity, that did me the honour of using my name two thousand years before it came into Britain, spelled in the same manner that name anciently was, before folly, and the love of novelty, wantonly corrupted it.

The Greeks, to divert the king, had told him this circumstance, and he was exceedingly entertained at it. Sometimes, when he had seen either Michael, or Fasil[333], or any of the great ones do me any favour, or speak handsomely of me, he would say gravely, that he was to summon the council to inquire into my pedigree, whether I was descended of the heirs-male of that Brus who was king nine years before the nativity; that I was likely to be a dangerous person, and it was time I should be sent to Wechné, unless I chose to lose my leg or arm, if I was found, by the judges, related to him by the heirs-male. To which I answered, that however he made a jest of this, one of my predecessors was certainly a king, though not of Abyssinia, not nine years before, but 1200 after our redemption; that the arms of my family were a lion like his; but, however creditable his majesty’s apprehensions as to Abyssinia might be to me, I could venture to assure him, the only connections I had the honour ever to have had _with him_, were by the _heirs-female_.

At other times, when I was exceedingly low-spirited, and despairing of ever again seeing Britain, he, who well knew the cause, used to say to the Serach Massery, “Prepare the Sendick and Nagareet; let the judges be called, and the household troops appear under arms, for Brus is to be buried: he is an Ozoro of the line of Solomon, and, for any thing I know, may be heir to the crown. Bring likewise plenty of brandy, for they all get drunk at burials in his country.” These were days of sun-shine, when such jests passed; there were cloudy ones enough that followed, which much more than compensated the very transitory enjoyment of these.

Although the years laid down in the book of Axum do not precisely agree with our account, yet they are so near, that we cannot doubt that the revolt of the ten tribes, and destruction of Rehoboam’s fleet which followed, occasioned the removal of Menilek’s capital to Tigré[334]. But, whatever was the cause, Menilek did remove his court from Azab to a place near Axum, at this day called _Adega Daid_, the House of David; and, at no great distance, is another called _Azabo_, from his ancient metropolis, where there are old remains of building of stone and lime, a certain proof that Axum was then fallen, else he would have naturally gone thither immediately upon forsaking his mother’s capital of Azab.

That country, round by Cape Gardefan, and south towards Sofala, along the Indian Ocean, was long governed by an officer called _Baharnagash_, the meaning of which is, King of the Sea, or Sea Coast. Another officer of the same title was governor of Yemen, or Arabia Felix, which, from the earliest times, belonged to Abyssinia, down to the Mahometan conquest. The king himself was called _Nagash_, or Najashi, so were the governors of several provinces, especially Gojam; and great confusion has risen from the multitude of these kings. We find, for example, sometimes three upon the throne at one time, which is exceedingly improbable in any country. We are, therefore, to suppose, that one of these only is king, and two of them are the Najashi, or Nagash, we have just described; for, as the regulation of the queen of Saba banished the heirs-male to the mountain, we cannot conceive how three brothers could be upon the throne at the same time, as this law subsists to the present day. This, although it is one, is not the only reason of the confusion, as I shall mention another in the sequel.

As we are about to take our leave of the Jewish religion and government in the line of Solomon, it is here the proper place that I should add what we have to say of the Falasha, of whom we have already had occasion to speak, when we gave a specimen of their language, among those of the stranger nations, whom we imagine to have come originally from Palestine. I did not spare my utmost pains in inquiring into the history of this curious people, and lived in friendship with several esteemed the most knowing and learned among them, and I am persuaded, as far as they knew, they told me the truth.

The account they give of themselves, which is supported only by tradition among them, is, that they came with Menilek from Jerusalem, so that they agree perfectly with the Abyssinians in the story of the queen of Saba, who, they say,· was a Jewess, and her nation Jews before the time of Solomon; that she lived at Saba, or Azaba, the myrrh and frankincense country upon the Arabian Gulf. They say further, that she went to Jerusalem, under protection of Hiram king of Tyre, whose daughter is said in the xlvth Psalm to have attended her thither; that she went not in ships, nor through Arabia, for fear or the Ishmaelites, but from Azab round by Masuah and Suakem, and was escorted by the Shepherds, her own subjects, to Jerusalem, and back again, making use of her own country vehicle, the camel, and that hers was a white one, of prodigious size and exquisite beauty.

They agree also, in every particular, with the Abyssinians, about the remaining part of the story, the birth and inauguration of Menilek, who was their first king; also the coming of Azarias, and twelve elders from the twelve tribes, and other doctors of the law, whose posterity they deny to have ever apostatised to Christianity, as the Abyssinians pretend they did at the conversion. They say, that, when the trade of the Red Sea fell into the hands of strangers, and all communication was shut up between them and Jerusalem, the cities were abandoned, and the inhabitants relinquished the coast; that they were the inhabitants of these cities, by trade mostly brick and tile-makers, potters, thatchers of houses, and such like mechanics, employed in them; and finding the low country of Dembea afforded materials for exercising these trades, they carried the article of pottery in that province to a degree of perfection scarcely to be imagined.

Being very industrious, these people multiplied exceedingly, and were very powerful at the time of the conversion to Christianity, or, as they term it, the Apostacy under Abreha and Atzbeha. At this time they declared a prince of the tribe of Judah, and of the race of Solomon and Menilek, to be their sovereign. The name of this prince was Phineas, who refused to abandon the religion of his forefathers, and from him their sovereigns are lineally descended; so they have still a prince of the house of Judah, although the Abyssinians, by way of reproach, have called this family Bet Israel, intimating that they were rebels, and revolted from the family of Solomon and tribe of Judah, and there is little doubt, but that some of the successors of Azarias adhered to their ancient faith also. Although there was no bloodshed upon difference of religion, yet, each having a distinct king with the same pretensions, many battles were fought from motives of ambition, and rivalship of sovereign power.

About the year 960, an attempt was made by this family to mount the throne of Abyssinia, as we shall see hereafter; when the princes of the house of Solomon were nearly extirpated upon the rock Damo. This, it is probable, produced more animosity and bloodshed. At last the power of the Falasha was so much weakened, that they were obliged to leave the flat country of Dembea, having no cavalry to maintain themselves there, and to take possession of the rugged, and almost inaccessible rocks, in that high ridge called the Mountains of Samen. One of these, which nature seems to have formed for a fortress, they chose for their metropolis, and it was ever after called the Jews Rock.

A great overthrow, which they received in the year 1600, brought them to the very brink of ruin. In that battle Gideon and Judith, their king and queen, were slain. They have since adopted a more peaceable and dutiful behaviour, pay taxes, and are suffered to enjoy their own government. Their king and queen’s name was again Gideon and Judith, when I was in Abyssinia, and these names seem to be preferred for those of the Royal family. At that time they were supposed to amount to 100,000 effective men. Something like this, the sober and most knowing Abyssinians are obliged to allow to be truth; but the circumstances of the conversion from Judaism are probably not all before us.

The only copy of the Old Testament, which they have, is in Geez, the same made use of by the Abyssinian Christians, who are the only scribes, and sell these copies to the Jews; and, it is very singular that no controversy, or dispute about the text, has ever yet arisen between the professors of the two religions. They have no keriketib, or various readings; they never heard of talmud, targum, or cabala: Neither have they any _fringes[335] or ribband_ upon their _garments_, nor is there, as far as I could learn, one scribe among them.

I asked them, being from Judea, whence they got that language which they spoke, whether it was one of the languages of the nations which they had learned on the coast of the Red Sea. They apprehended, but it was mere conjecture, that the language which they spoke was that of those nations they had found on the Red Sea, after their leaving Judea and settling there; and the reason they gave was certainly a pertinent one; that they came into Abyssinia, speaking Hebrew, with the advantage of having books in that language; but they had now forgot their Hebrew[336], and it was therefore not probable they should retain any other language in which they had no books, and which they never had learned to express by letters.

I asked them, since they came from Jerusalem, how it happened they had not Hebrew, or Samaritan copies of the law, at least the Pentateuch or Octateuch. They said they were in possession of both when they came from Jerusalem; but their fleet being destroyed, in the reign of Rehoboam, and communication becoming very uncertain by the Syrian wars, they were, from necessity, obliged to have the scriptures translated, or make use of the copies in the hands of the Shepherds, who, according to them, before Solomon’s time, were all Jews.

I asked them where the Shepherds got their copy, because, notwithstanding the invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, who was the foreign obstacle the longest in their way, the Ishmaelite Arabs had access through Arabia to Jerusalem and Syria, and carried on a great trade thither by land. They professed very candidly they could not give a satisfactory answer to that, as the time was very distant, and war had destroyed all the memorials of these transactions. I asked if they really ever had any memorials of their own country, or history of any other. They answered, with some hesitation, they had no reason to say they ever had any; if they had, they were all destroyed in the war with Gragné. This is all that I could ever learn from this people, and it required great patience and prudence in making the interrogations, and separating truth from falsehood; for many of them, (as is invariably the case with barbarians) if they once divine the reason of your inquiry, will say whatever they think will please you.

They deny the sceptre has ever departed from Judah, as they have a prince of that house reigning, and understand the prophecy of the gathering of the Gentiles at the coming of Shiloh, is to be fulfilled on the appearance of the Messiah, who is not yet come, when all the inhabitants of the world are to be Jews. But I must confess they did not give an explanation of this either clearly or readily, or seem to have ever considered it before. They were not at all heated by the subject, nor interested, as far as I could discern, in the difference between us, nor fond of talking upon their religion at all, though very ready at all quotations, when a person was present who spoke Amharic, with the barbarous accent that they do; and this makes me conceive that their ancestors were not in Palestine, or present in those disputes or transactions that attended the death of our Saviour, and have subsisted ever after. They pretend that the book of Enoch was the first book of scripture they ever received. They knew nothing of that of Seth, but place Job immediately after Enoch, so that they have no idea of the time in which Job lived, but said they believed it to be soon after the flood; and they look upon the book bearing his name to be the performance of that prophet.

Many difficulties occur from this account of the Falasha; for, though they say they came from Jerusalem in the time of Solomon, and from different tribes, yet there is but one language amongst them all, and that is not Hebrew or Samaritan, neither of which they read or understand; nor is their answer to this objection satisfactory, for very obvious reasons.

Ludolf, the most learned man that has writ upon the subject, says, that it is apparent the Ethiopic Old Testament, at least the Pentateuch, was copied from the Septuagint, because of the many Grecisms to be found in it; and the names of birds and precious stones, and some other passages that appear literally to be translated from the Greek. He imagines also, that the present Abyssinian version is the work of Frumentius their first bishop, when Abyssinia was converted to Christianity under Abreha and Atzbeha, about the year 333 after Christ, or a few years later.

Although I brought with me all the Abyssinian books of the Old Testament, (if it is a translation) I have not yet had time to make the comparison here alluded to, but have left them, for the curiosity of the public, deposited in the British Museum, hoping that some man of learning or curiosity would do this for me. In the mean time I must observe, that it is much more natural to suppose that the Greeks, comparing the copies together, expunged the words or passages they found differing from the Septuagint, and replaced them from thence, as this would not offend the Jews, who very well knew that those who translated the Septuagint version were all Jews themselves.

Now, as the Abyssinian copy of the Holy Scriptures, in Mr Ludolf’s opinion, was translated by Frumentius above 330 after Christ, and the Septuagint version, in the days of Philadelphus, or Ptolemy II. above 160 years before Christ, it will follow, that, if the present Jews use the copy translated by Frumentius, and, if that was taken from the Septuagint, the Jews must have been above 400 years without any books whatsoever at the time of the conversion by Frumentius: So they must have had all the Jewish law, which is in perfect vigour and force among them, all their Levitical observances, their purifications, atonements, abstinences, and sacrifices, all depending upon their memory, without writing, at least for that long space of 400 years.

This, though not absolutely impossible, is surely very nearly so. We know, that, at Jerusalem itself, the seat of Jewish law and learning, idolatry happening to prevail, during the short reigns of only four kings, the law, in that interval, became so perfectly forgotten and unknown, that a copy of it being accidentally found and read by Josiah, that prince, upon his first learning its contents, was so astonished at the deviations from it, that he apprehended the immediate destruction of the whole city and people. To this I shall only add, that whoever considers the stiff-neckedness, stubbornness, and obstinacy, which were ever the characters of this Jewish nation, they will not easily believe that they did ever _willingly_ “receive the _Old_ Testament from a people who were the avowed champions of the _New_.”

They have, indeed, no knowledge of the New Testament but from conversation; and do not curse it, but treat it as a folly where it supposes the Messiah come, who, they seem to think, is to be a temporal prince, prophet, priest, and conqueror.

Still, it is not probable that a Jew would receive the law and the prophets from a Christian, without absolute necessity, though they might very well receive such a copy from a brother Jew, which all the Abyssinians were, when this translation was made. Nor would this, as I say, hinder them from following a copy really made by Jews from the text itself, such as the Septuagint actually was. But, I confess, great difficulties occur on every side, and I despair of having them solved, unless by an able, deliberate analysis of the specimen of the Falasha language which I have preserved, in which I earnestly request the concurrence of the learned. A book of the length of the Canticles contains words enough to judge upon the question, Whence the Falasha came, and what is the probable cause they had not a translation in their own tongue, since a version became necessary?

I have less doubt that Frumentius translated the New Testament, as he must have had assistance from those of his own communion in Egypt; and this is a further reason why I believe that, at his coming, he found the Old Testament already translated into the Ethiopic language and character, because Bagla, or Geez, was an unknown letter, and the language unknown, not only to him, but likewise to every province in Abyssinia, except Tigré; so that it would have cost him no more pains to teach the nation the Greek character and Greek language, than to have translated the New Testament into Ethiopic, using the Geez character, which was equally unknown, unless in Tigré. The saving of time and labour would have been very material to him; he would have used the whole scriptures, as received in his own church, and the Greek letter and language would have been just as easily attained in Amhara as the Geez; and those people, even of the province of Tigré, that had not yet learned to read, would have written the Greek character as easily as their own. I do not know that so early there was any Arabic translation of the Old Testament; if there was, the same reasons would have militated for his preferring this; and still he had but the New Testament to undertake. But having found the books of the Old Testament already translated into Geez, this altered the case; and he, very properly, continued the gospel in that language and letter also, that it might be a testimony for the Christians, and against the Jews, as it was intended.

CHAP. VII.

_Books in Use in Abyssinia--Enoch--Abyssinia not converted by the Apostles--Conversion from Judaism to Christianity by Frumentius._

The Abyssinians have the whole scriptures entire as we have, and count the same number of books; but they divide them in another manner, at least in private hands, few of them, from extreme poverty, being able to purchase the whole, either of the historical or prophetical books of the Old Testament. The same may be said of the New, for copies containing the whole of it are very scarce. Indeed no where, unless in churches, do you see more than the Gospels, or the Acts of the Apostles, in one person’s possession, and it must not be an ordinary man that possesses even these.

Many books of the Old Testament are forgot, so that it is the same trouble to procure them, even in churches, for the purpose of copying, as to consult old records long covered with dust and rubbish. The Revelation of St John is a piece of favourite reading among them. Its title is, _the Vision of John Abou Kalamsis_, which seems to me to be a corruption of _Apocalypsis_. At the same time, we can hardly imagine that Frumentius, a Greek and a man of letters, should make so strange a mistake. There is no such thing as distinctions between canonical and apocryphal books. Bell and the Dragon, and the Acts of the Apostles, are read with equal devotion, and, for the most part, I am afraid, with equal edification; and it is in the spirit of truth, and not of ridicule, that I say St George and his Dragon, from idle legends only, are objects of veneration, nearly as great as any of the heroes in the Old Testament, or saints in the New. The Song of Solomon is a favourite piece of reading among the old priests, but forbidden to the young ones, to the deacons, laymen, and women. The Abyssinians believe, that this song was made by Solomon in praise of Pharaoh’s daughter; and do not think, as some of our divines are disposed to do, that there is in it any mystery or allegory respecting Christ and the church. It may be asked, Why did I choose to have this book translated, seeing that it was to be attended with this particular difficulty? To this I answer, The choice was not mine, nor did I at once know all the difficulty. The first I pitched upon was the book of Ruth, as being the shortest; but the subject did not please the scribes and priests who were to copy for me, and I found it would not do. They then chose the Song of Solomon, and engaged to go through with it; and I recommended it to two or three young scribes, who completed the copy by themselves and their friends. I was obliged to procure licence for these scribes whom I employed in translating it into the different languages; but it was a permission of course, and met with no real, though some pretended difficulty.

A nephew of Abba Salama[337], the Acab Saat, a young man of no common genius, asked leave from his uncle before he began the translation; to which Salama answered, alluding to an old law, That, if he attempted such a thing, he should be killed as they do sheep; but, if I would give _him_ the money, he would permit it. I should not have taken any notice of this; but some of the young men having told it to Ras Michael[338], who perfectly guessed the matter, he called upon the scribe, and asked what his uncle had said to him, who told him very plainly, that, if he began the translation, his throat should be cut like that of a sheep. One day Michael asked Abba Salama, whether that was true; he answered in the affirmative, and seemed disposed to be talkative. “Then,” said the Ras to the young man, “your uncle declares, if you write the book for Yagoube, he shall cut your throat like a sheep; and I say to you, I swear by St Michael, I will put you to death like an ass if you don’t write it; consider with yourself which of the risks you’ll run, and come to me in eight days, and make your choice.” But, before the eighth day, he brought me the book, very well pleased at having an excuse for receiving the price of the copy. Abba Salama complained of this at another time when I was present, and the name of _frank_ was invidiously mentioned; but he only got a stern look and word from the Ras: “Hold your tongue, Sir, you don’t know what you say; you don’t know that you are a fool, Sir, but I do; if you talk much you will publish it to all the world.”

After the New Testament they place the constitutions of the Apostles, which they call _Synnodos_, which, as far as the cases or doctrines apply, we may say is the written law of the country. These were translated out of the Arabic. They have next a general liturgy, or book of common prayer, besides several others peculiar to certain festivals, under whose names they go. The next is a very large voluminous book, called _Haimanout Abou_, chiefly a collection from the works of different Greek fathers, treating of, or explaining several heresies, or disputed points of faith, in the ancient Greek Church. Translations of the works of St Athanasius, St Bazil, St John Chrysostome, and St Cyril, are likewise current among them. The two last I never saw; and only fragments of St Athanasius; but they are certainly extant.

The next is the Synaxar, or the Flos Sanctorum, in which the miracles and lives, or lies of their saints, are at large recorded, in four monstrous volumes in folio, stuffed full of fables of the most incredible kind. They have a saint that wrestled with the devil in shape of a serpent nine miles long, threw him from a mountain, and killed him. Another saint who converted the devil, who turned monk, and lived in great holiness for forty years after his conversion, doing penance for having tempted our Saviour upon the mountain: what became of him after they do not say. Again, another saint, that never ate nor drank from his mother’s womb, went to Jerusalem, and said mass every day at the holy sepulchre, and came home at night in the shape of a stork. The last I shall mention was a saint, who, being very sick, and his stomach in disorder, took a longing for partridges; he called upon a brace of them to come to him, and immediately two roasted partridges came _flying_, and rested upon his plate, to be devoured. These stories are circumstantially told and vouched by unexceptionable people, and were a grievous stumbling-block to the Jesuits, who could not pretend their own miracles were either better established, or more worthy of belief.

There are other books of less size and consequence, particularly the Organon Denghel, or the Virgin Mary’s Musical Instrument, composed by Abba George about the year 1440, much valued for the purity of its language, though he himself was an Armenian. The last of this Ethiopic library is the book of Enoch[339]. Upon hearing this book first mentioned, many literati in Europe had a wonderful desire to see it, thinking that, no doubt, many secrets and unknown histories might be drawn from it. Upon this some impostor, getting an Ethiopic book into his hands, wrote for the title, _The Prophecies of Enoch_, upon the front page of it. M. Pierisc[340] no sooner heard of it than he purchased it of the impostor for a considerable sum of money: being placed afterwards in Cardinal Mazarine’s library, where Mr Ludolf had access to it, he found it was a Gnostic book upon mysteries in heaven and earth, but which mentioned not a word of Enoch, or his prophecy, from beginning to end; and, from this disappointment, he takes upon him to deny the existence of any such book any where else. This, however, is a mistake; for, as a public return for the many obligations I had received from every rank of that most humane, polite, and scientific nation, and more especially from the sovereign Louis XV. I gave to his cabinet a part of every thing curious I had collected abroad; which was received with that degree of consideration and attention that cannot fail to determine every traveller of a liberal mind to follow my example.

Amongst the articles I consigned to the library at Paris, was a very beautiful and magnificent copy of the prophecies of Enoch, in large quarto; another is amongst the books of scripture which I brought home, standing immediately before the book of Job, which is its proper place in the Abyssinian canon; and a third copy I have presented to the Bodleian library at Oxford, by the hands of Dr Douglas the Bishop of Carlisle. The more ancient history of that book is well known. The church at first looked upon it as apocryphal; and as it was quoted in the book of Jude, the same suspicion fell upon that book also. For this reason, the council of Nice threw the epistle of Jude out of the canon, but the council of Trent arguing better, replaced the apostle in the canon as before.

Here we may observe by the way, that Jude’s appealing to the apocryphal books did by no means import, that either he believed or warranted the truth of them. But it was an argument, _a fortiori_, which our Saviour himself often makes use of, and amounts to no more than this, You, says he to the Jews, deny certain facts, which must be from prejudice, because you have them allowed in your own books, and believe them there. And a very strong and fair way of arguing it is, but this is by no means any allowance that they are true. In the same manner, You, says Jude, do not believe the coming of Christ and a latter judgment; yet your ancient Enoch, whom you suppose was the seventh from Adam, tells you this plainly, and in so many words, long ago. And indeed the quotation is, word for word the same, in the second chapter of the book.

All that is material to say further concerning the book of Enoch is, that it is a Gnostic book, containing the age of the Emims, Anakims, and Egregores, supposed descendents of the sons of God, when they fell in love with the daughters of men, and had sons who were giants. These giants do not seem to have been so charitable to the sons and daughters of men, as their fathers had been. For, first, they began to eat all the beasts of the earth, they then fell upon the birds and fishes, and ate them also; their hunger being not yet satisfied, they ate all the corn, all men’s labour, all the trees and bushes, and, not content yet, they fell to eating the men themselves. The men (like our modern sailors with the savages) were not afraid of dying, but very much so of being eaten after death. At length they cry to God against the wrongs the giants had done them, and God sends a flood which drowns both them and the giants.

Such is the reparation which this ingenious author has thought proper to attribute to Providence, in answer to the first, and the best-founded complaints that were made to him by man. I think this exhausts about four or five of the first chapters. It is not the fourth part of the book; but my curiosity led me no further. The catastrophe of the giants, and the justice of the catastrophe, had fully satisfied me.

I cannot but recollect, that when it was known in England that I had presented this book to the library of the King of France, without staying a few days, to give me time to reach London, when our learned countrymen might have had an opportunity of perusing at leisure another copy of this book, Doctor Woide set out for Paris, with letters from the Secretary of State to Lord Stormont, Ambassador at that court, desiring him to assist the doctor in procuring access to my present, by permission from his Most Christian Majesty. This he accordingly obtained, and a translation of the work was brought over; but, I know not why, it has no where appeared. I fancy Dr Woide was not much more pleased with the conduct of the giants than I was.

I shall conclude with one particular, which is a curious one: The Synaxar (what the Catholics call their Flos Sanctorum, or the lives and miracles of their saints), giving the history of the Abyssinian conversion to Christianity in the year 333, says, that when Frumentius and Œdesius were introduced to the king, who was a minor, they found him reading the Psalms of David.

This book, or that of Enoch, does by no means prove that they were at that time Jews. For these two were in as great authority among the Pagans, who professed Sabaism, the first religion of the East, and especially of the _Shepherds_, as among the Jews. These being continued also in the same letter and character among the Abyssinians from the beginning, convinces me that there has not been any other writing in this country, or the south of Arabia, since that which rose from the Hieroglyphics.

The Abyssinian history begins now to rid itself of part of that confusion which is almost a constant attendant upon the very few annals yet preserved of barbarous nations in very ancient times. It is certain, from their history, that Bazen was contemporary with Augustus, that he reigned sixteen years, and that the birth of our Saviour fell on the 8th year of that prince, so that the 8th year of Bazen was the first of Christ.

Amha Yasous, prince of Shoa, a province to which the small remains of the line of Solomon fled upon a catastrophe, I shall have occasion to mention, gave me the following list of the kings of Abyssinia since the time of which we are now speaking. From him I procured all the books, of the Annals of Abyssinia, which have served me to compose this history, excepting two, one given me by the King, the other the Chronicle of Axum, by Ras Michael Governor of Tigré.

SHOA LIST OF PRINCES.

Bazen, Tzenaf Segued, Garima Asferi, Saraada, Tzion, Sargai, Bagamai, Jan Segued, Tzion Heges, Moal Genha, Saif Araad, Agedar, Abreha and Atzbeha, 333, Asfeha, Arphad and Amzi, Araad, Saladoba, Alamida, Tezhana, Caleb, 522, Guebra Mascal, Constantine, Bazzer, Azbeha, Armaha, Jan Asfeha, Jan Segued, Fere Sanai, Aderaaz, Aizor, Del Naad, 960[341].

This list is kept in the monastery of Debra Libanos in Shoa; the Abyssinians receive it without any sort of doubt, though to me it seems very exceptionable: If it were genuine, it would put this monarchy in a very respectable light in point of antiquity.

Great confusion has arisen in these old lists, from their kings having always two, and sometimes three names. The first is their christened name, their second a nick, or bye-name, and the third they take upon their inauguration. There is, likewise, another cause of mistake, which is, when two names occur, one of a king, the other the quality of a king only, these are set down as two brothers. For example, Atzbeha is the _blessed_, or _the saint_; and I very much suspect, therefore, that Atzbeha and Abreha, said to be two brothers, only mean Abraham the _blessed_, or _the saint_; because, in that prince’s time, the country was converted to Christianity; Caleb[342] and Elesbaas, were long thought to be contemporary princes, till it was found out, by inspecting the ancient authors of those times, that this was only the name or quality of _blessed_, or _saint_, given to Caleb, in consequence of his expedition into Arabia against Phineas king of the Jews, and persecutor of the Christians.

There are four very interesting events, in the course of the reign of these princes. The first and greatest we have already mentioned, the birth of Christ in the 8th year of Bazen. The second is the conversion of Abyssinia to Christianity, in the reign of Abreha and Atzbeha, in the year of Christ 333, according to our account. The third the war with the Jews under Caleb. The fourth, the massacre of the princes on the mountain of Damo. The time and circumstances of all these are well known, and I shall relate them in their turn with the brevity becoming a historian.

Some ecclesiastical[343] writers, rather from attachment to particular systems, than from any conviction that the opinion they espouse is truth, would persuade us, that the conversion of Abyssinia to Christianity happened at the beginning of this period, that is, soon after the reign of Bazen; others, that Saint Matthias, or Saint Bartholomew, or some others of the Apostles, after their mission to teach the nations, first preached here the faith of Christ, and converted this people to it. It is also said, that the eunuch baptized by Philip, upon his return to Candace, became the Apostle of that nation, which, from his preaching, believed in Christ and his gospel. All these might pass for dreams not worthy of examination, if they were not invented for particular purposes.

Till the death of Christ, who lived several years after Bazen, very few Jews had been converted even in Judea. We have no account in scripture that induces us to believe, that the Apostles went to any great distance from each other immediately after the crucifixion. Nay, we know positively, they did not, but lived in community together for a considerable time. Besides, it is not probable, if the Abyssinians were converted by any of the Apostles, that, for the space of 300 years, they should remain without bishops, and without church-government, in the neighbourhood of many states, where churches were already formed, without calling to their assistance some members of these churches, who might, at least, inform them of the purport of the councils held, and canons made by them, during that space of 300 years; for this was absolutely necessary to preserve orthodoxy, and the communion between this, and the churches of that time. And it should be observed, that if, in Philip’s time, the Christian religion had not penetrated (as we see in effect it had not) into the court of Candace, so much nearer Egypt, it did not surely reach so early into the more distant mountainous country of Abyssinia; and if the Ethiopia, where Candace reigned, was the same as Abyssinia, the story of the queen of Saba must be given up as a falsehood; for, in that case, there would be a woman sitting upon the throne of that country 500 years after she was excluded by a solemn deliberate fundamental law of the land.

But it is known, from credible writers, engaged in no controversy, that this Candace reigned upon the Nile in Atbara, much nearer Egypt. Her capital also was taken in the time of Augustus, a few years before the Conversion, by Philip; and we shall have occasion often to mention her successors and her kingdom, as existing in the reign of the Abyssinian kings, long after the Mahometan conquest; they existed when I passed through Atbara, and do undoubtedly exist there to this day. What puts an end to all this argument is a matter of fact, which is, that the Abyssinians continued Jews and Pagans, and were found to be so above 300 years after the time of the Apostles. Instead, therefore, of taking the first of this list (Bazen) for the prince under whom Abyssinia was converted from Judaism, as authors have advanced, in conformity to the Abyssinian annals, we shall fix upon the 13th (Abreha and Atzbeha, whom we believe to be but one prince) and, before we enter into the narrative of that remarkable event, we shall observe, that, from Bazen to Abreha, being 341 years inclusive, the eighth of Bazen being the first of Christ, by this account of the conversion, which happened under Abreha and Atzbeha, it must have been about 333 years after Christ, or 341 after Bazen.

But we certainly know, that the first bishop, ordained for the conversion of Abyssinia, was sent from Alexandria by St Athanasius, who was himself ordained to that See about the year 326. Therefore, any account, prior to this ordination and conversion, must be false, and this conversion and ordination must have therefore happened about the year 330, or possibly some few years later; for Socrates[344] says, that St Athanasius himself was then but newly elected to the See of Alexandria.

In order to clear our way of difficulties, before we begin the narrative of the conversion, we shall observe, in this place, the reason I just hinted at, why some ecclesiastical writers had attributed the conversion of Abyssinia to the Apostles. There was found, or pretended to be found in Alexandria, a canon, of a council said to be that of Nice, and this canon had never before been known, nor ever seen in any other place, or in any language, except the Arabic; and, from inspection, I may add, that it is such Arabic that scarce will convey the meaning it was intended. Indeed, if it be construed according to the strict rule of grammar, it will not convey any sense at all. This canon regulated the precedency of the Abuna of Ethiopia in all after councils, and it places him immediately after the prelate of Seleucia. This most honourable antiquity was looked upon and boasted of for their own purposes by the Jesuits, as a discovery of infinite value to the church of Ethiopia.

I shall only make one other observation to obviate a difficulty which will occur in reading what is to follow. The Abyssinian history plainly and positively says, that when Frumentius (the apostle of the Abyssinians) came first into that country, a queen reigned, which is an absolute contradiction to what we have already stated, and would seem to favour the story of queen Candace. To this I answer, That though it be true that all women are excluded from the Abyssinian throne, yet it is as true that there is a law, or custom, as strictly observed as the other, that the queen upon whose head the king shall have put the crown in his life-time, it matters not whether it be her husband or son, or any other relation, that woman is regent of the kingdom, and guardian of every minor king, as long as she shall live. Supposing, therefore, a queen to be crowned by her husband, which husband should die and leave a son, all the brothers and uncles of that son would be banished, and confined prisoners to the mountain, and the queen would have the care of the kingdom, and of the king, during his minority. If her son, moreover, was to die, and a minor succeed who was a collateral, or no relation to her, brought, perhaps, from the mountain, she would still be regent; nor does her office cease but by the king’s coming of age, whose education, cloathing, and maintenance, she, in the mean time, absolutely directs, according to her own will; nor can there be another regent during her life-time. This regent, for life, is called _Iteghè_; and this was probably the situation of the kingdom at the time we mention, as history informs us the king was then a minor, and consequently his education, as well as the government of his kingdom and household, were, as they appear to have been, in the queen, or _Iteghè’s_ hands; of this office I shall speak more in its proper place.

Meropius, a philosopher at Tyre, a Greek by nation and by religion, had taken a passage in a ship on the Red Sea to India, and had with him two young men, Frumentius and Œdesius, whom he intended to bring up to trade, after having given them a very liberal education. It happened their vessel was cast away on a rock upon the coast of Abyssinia. Meropius, defending himself, was slain by the natives, and the two boys carried to Axum, the capital of Abyssinia, where the Court then resided. Though young, they soon began to shew the advantages attending a liberal education. They acquired the language very speedily; and, as that country is naturally inclined to admire strangers, these were soon looked upon as two prodigies. Œdesius, probably the dullest of the two, was set over the king’s household and wardrobe, a place that has been filled constantly by a stranger of that nation to this very day. Frumentius was judged worthy by the queen to have the care of the young prince’s education, to which he dedicated, himself entirely.

After having instructed his pupil in all sorts of learning, he strongly impressed him with a love and veneration for the Christian religion; after which he himself set out for Alexandria, where, as has been already said, he found St. Athanasius[345] newly elected to that See.

He related to him briefly what had passed in Ethiopia, and the great hopes of the conversion of that nation, if proper pastors were sent to instruct them. Athanasius embraced that opportunity with all the earnestness that became his station and profession. He ordained Frumentius bishop of that country, who instantly returned and found the young king his pupil in the same good disposition as formerly; he embraced Christianity; the greatest part of Abyssinia followed his example, and the church of Ethiopia continued with this bishop in perfect unity and friendship till his death; and though great troubles arose from heresies being propagated in the East, that church, and the fountain whence it derived its faith (Alexandria,) remained uncontaminated by any false doctrine.

But it was not long after this, that Arianism broke out under Constantius the Emperor, and was strongly favoured by him. We have indeed a letter of St Athanasius to that Emperor, who had applied to him to depose Frumentius from his See for refusing to embrace that heresy, or admit it into his diocese.

It should seem, that this conversion of Abyssinia was quietly conducted, and without blood; and this is the more remarkable, that it was the second radical change of religion, effected in the same manner, and with the same facility and moderation. No fanatic preachers, no warm saints or madmen, ambitious to make or to be made martyrs, disturbed either of these happy events, in this wise, though barbarous nation, so as to involve them in bloodshed: no persecution was the consequence of this difference of tenets, and if wars did follow, it was from matters merely temporal.

CHAP. VIII.

_War of the Elephant--First Appearance of the Small-Pox--Jews persecute the Christians in Arabia--Defeated by the Abyssinians--Mahomet pretends a divine Mission--Opinion concerning the Koran--Revolution under Judith--Restoration of the Line of Solomon from Shoa._

In the reigns of the princes Abreha and Atzbeha, the Abyssinian annals mention an expedition to have happened into the farthest part of Arabia Felix, which the Arabian authors, and indeed Mahomet himself in the Koran calls by the name of the War of the Elephant, and the cause of it was this. There was a temple nearly in the middle of the peninsula of Arabia, that had been held in the greatest veneration for about 1400 years. The Arabs say, that Adam, when shut out of paradise, pitched his tent on this spot; while Eve, from some accident or other I am not acquainted with, died and was buried on the shore of the Red Sea, at Jidda. Two days journey east from this place, her grave, of green sods about fifty yards in length, is shewn to this day. In this temple also was a black stone, upon which Jacob saw the vision mentioned in scripture, of the angels descending, and ascending into Heaven. It is likewise said, with more appearance of probability, that this temple was built by Sesostris, in his voyage to Arabia Felix, and that he was worshipped there under the name of Osiris, as he then was in every part of Egypt.

The great veneration the neighbouring nations paid to this tower, and idol, suggested the very natural thought of making the temple the market for the trade from Africa and India; the liberty of which, we may suppose, had been in some measure restrained, by the settlements which foreign nations had made on both coasts of the Red Sea. To remedy which, they chose this town in the heart of the country, accessible on all sides, and commanded on none, calling it Becca, which signifies the House; though Mahomet, after breaking the idol and dedicating the temple to the true God, named it Mecca, under which name it has continued, the centre or great mart of the India trade to this day.

In order to divert this trade into a channel more convenient for his present dominions, Abreha built a very large church or temple, in the country of the Homerites, and nearer the Indian Ocean. To encourage also the resort to this place, he extended to it all the privileges, protection, and emoluments, that belonged to the Pagan temple of Mecca.

One particular tribe of Arabs, called Beni Koreish, had the care of the Caba, for so the round tower of Mecca was called. These people were exceedingly alarmed at the prospect of their temple being at once deserted, both by its votaries and merchants, to prevent which, a party of them, in the night, entered Abreha’s temple, and having first burned what part of it could be consumed, they polluted the part that remained, by besmearing it over with human excrements.

This violent sacrilege and affront was soon reported to Abreha, who, mounted upon a white elephant at the head of a considerable army, resolved, in return, to destroy the temple of Mecca. With this intent, he marched through that stripe of low country along the sea, called Tehama, where he met with no opposition, nor suffered any distress but from want of water; after which, at the head of his army, he sat down before Mecca, as he supposed.

Abou Thaleb (Mahomet’s grandfather, as it is thought) was then keeper of the Caba, who had interest with his countrymen the Beni Koreish to prevail upon them to make no resistance, nor shew any signs of wishing to make a defence. He had presented himself early to Abreha upon his march. There was a temple of Osiris at Taief, which, as a rival to that of Mecca, was looked upon by the Beni Koreish with a jealous eye. Abreha was so far misled by the intelligence given him by Abou Thaleb, that he mistook the Temple of Taief for that of Mecca, and razed it to the foundation, after which he prepared to return home.

He was soon after informed of his mistake, and not repenting of what he had already done, resolved to destroy Mecca also. Abou Thaleb, however, had never left his side; by his great hospitality, and the plenty he procured to the Emperor’s army, he so gained Abreha, that hearing, on inquiry, he was no mean man, but a prince of the tribe of Beni Koreish, noble Arabs, he obliged him to sit in his presence, and kept him constantly with him as a companion. At last, not knowing how to reward him sufficiently, Abreha desired him to ask any thing in his power to grant, and he would satisfy him. Abou Thaleb, taking him at his word, wished to be provided with a man, that should bring back forty oxen, the soldiers had stolen from him.

Abreha, who expected that the favour he was to ask, was to spare the Temple, which he had in that case resolved in his mind to do, could not conceal his astonishment at so silly a request, and he could not help testifying this to Abou Thaleb, in a manner that shewed it had lowered him in his esteem. Abou Thaleb, smiling, replied very calmly, If that before you is the Temple of God, as I believe it is, you shall never destroy it, if it is his will that it should stand: If it is not the Temple of God, or (which is the same thing) if he has ordained that you should destroy it, I shall not only assist you in demolishing it, but shall help you in carrying away the last stone of it upon my shoulders: But as for me, I am a shepherd, and the care of cattle is my profession; twenty of the oxen which are stolen are not my own, and I shall be put in prison for them to-morrow; for neither you nor I can believe that this is an affair God will interfere in; and therefore I apply to you for a soldier who will seek the thief, and bring back my oxen, that my liberty be not taken from me.

Abreha had now refreshed his army, and, from regard to his guest, had not touched the Temple; when, says the Arabian author, there appeared, coming from the sea, a flock of birds called Ababil, having faces like lions, and each of them in his claws, holding a small stone like a pea, which he let fall upon Abreha’s army, so that they all were destroyed. The author of the manuscript[346] from which I have taken this fable, and which is also related by several other historians, and mentioned by Mahomet in the Koran, does not seem to swallow the story implicitly. For he says, that there is no bird that has a face like a lion, that Abou Thaleb was a Pagan, Mahomet being not then come, and that the Christians were worshippers of the true God, the God of Mahomet; and, therefore, if any miracle was wrought here, it was a miracle of the devil, a victory in favour of Paganism, and destructive of the belief of the true God. In, conclusion, he says, that it was at this time that the small-pox and measles first broke out in Arabia, and almost totally destroyed the army of Abreha. But if the stone, as big as a pea, thrown by the Ababil, had killed Abreha’s army to the last man, it does not appear how any of them could die afterwards, either by the small-pox or measles.

All that is material, however, to us, in this fact, is, that the time of the siege of Mecca will be the æra of the first appearance of that terrible disease, the small-pox, which we shall set down about the year 356; and it is highly probable, from other circumstances, that the Abyssinian army was the first victim to it.

As for the church Abreha built near the Indian Ocean, it continued free from any further insult till the Mahometan conquest of Arabia Felix, when it was finally destroyed in the Khalifat[347] of Omar. This is the Abyssinian account, and this the Arabian history of the War of the Elephant, which I have stated as found in the books of the most credible writers of those times.

But it is my duty to put the reader upon his guard, against adopting literally what is here set down, without being satisfied of the validity of the objection that may be made against the narrative in general. Abreha reigned 27 years; he was converted to Christianity in 333, and died in 360; now, it is scarcely possible, in the short space of 27 years, that all Abyssinia and Arabia could be converted to Christianity. The conversion of the Abyssinians is represented to be a work of little time, but the Arab author, Hameesy, says, that even Arabia Felix was full of churches when this expedition took place, which is very improbable. And, what adds still more to the improbability, is, that part of the story which states that Abreha conversed with Mahomet’s father, or grandfather. For, supposing the expedition in 356, Mahomet’s birth was in 558, so there will remain 202 years, by much too long a period for two lives. I do believe we must bring this expedition down much lower than the reign of Abreha and Atzbeha, the reason of which we shall see afterwards.

As early as the commencement of the African trade with Palestine, the Jewish religion had spread itself far into Arabia, but, after the destruction of the temple by Titus, a great increase both of number and wealth had made that people absolute masters in many parts of that peninsula. In the Neged, and as far up as Medina, petty princes, calling themselves kings, were established; who, being trained in the wars of Palestine, became very formidable among the pacific commercial nations of Arabia, deeply sunk into Greek degeneracy.

Phineas, a prince of that nation from Medina, having beat St Aretas, the Governor of Najiran, began to persecute the Christians by a new species of cruelty, by ordering certain furnaces, or pits full of fire, to be prepared, into which he threw as many of the inhabitants of Najiran as refused to renounce Christianity. Among these was Aretas, so called by the Greeks, Aryat by the Arabs, and Hawaryat, which signifies the _evangelical_, by the Abyssinians, together with ninety of his companions. Mahomet, in his Koran, mentions, this tyrant by the name of the Master of the _fiery pits_, without either condemning or praising the execution; only saying, ‘the sufferers shall be witness against him at the last day.’

Justin, the Greek Emperor, was then employed in an unsuccessful war with the Persians, so that he could not give any assistance to the afflicted Christians in Arabia, but in the year 522 he sent an embassy to Caleb, or Elesbaas, king of Abyssinia, intreating him to interfere in favour of the Christians of Najiran, as he too was of the Greek church. On the Emperor’s first request, Caleb sent orders to Abreha, Governor of Yemen, to march to the assistance of Aretas, the son of him who was burnt, and who was then collecting troops. Strengthened by this reinforcement, the young soldier did not think proper to delay the revenging his father’s death, till the arrival of the Emperor; but having come up with Phineas, who was ferrying his troops over an arm of the sea, he entirely routed them, and obliged their prince, for fear of being taken, to swim with his horse to the nearest shore. It was not long before the Emperor had crossed the Red Sea with his army; nor had Phineas lost any time in collecting his scattered forces to oppose him. A battle was the consequence, in which the fortune of Caleb again prevailed.

It would appear that the part of Arabia, near Najiran, which was the scene of Caleb’s victory, belonged to the Grecian Emperor Justin, because Aretas applied directly to him at Constantinople for succour; and it was at Justin’s request only, that Caleb marched to the assistance of Aretas, as a friend, but not as a sovereign; and as such also, Abreha, Governor of Yemen, marched to assist Aretas, with the Abyssinian troops, from the south of Arabia, against the stranger Jews, who were invaders from Palestine, and who had no connection with the Abyssinian Jewish Homerites, natives of the south coast of Arabia, opposite to Saba.

But neither of the Jewish kingdoms were destroyed by the victories of Caleb, or Abreha, nor the subsequent conquest of the Persians. In the Neged, or north part of Arabia, they continued not only after the appearance of Mahomet, but till after the Hegira. For it was in the 8th year of that æra that Hybar, the Jew, was besieged in his own castle in Neged, and slain by Ali, Mahomet’s son-in-law, from that time called Hydar Ali, or Ali the Lion.

Now the Arabian manuscripts says positively that this Abreha, who assisted Aretas, was Governor of Arabia Felix, or Yemen; for, by this last name, I shall hereafter call the part of the peninsula of Arabia belonging to the Abyssinians; so that he might very well have been the prince who conversed with Mahomet’s father, and lost his army before Mecca, which will bring down the introduction of the small-pox to the year 522, just 100 years before the Hegira, and both Arabian and Abyssinian accounts might be then true.

The two officers who governed Yemen, and the opposite coast Azab, which, as we have above mentioned, belonged to Abyssinia, were stiled _Najashi_, as was the king also, and both of them were crowned with gold. I am, therefore, persuaded, this is the reason of the confusion of names we meet in Arabian manuscripts, that treat of the sovereigns of Yemen. This, moreover, is the foundation of the story found in Arabic manuscripts, that Jaffar, Mahomet’s brother, fled to the Najashi, who was governor of Yemen, and was kindly treated by him, and kept there till he joined his brother at the campaign of Hybarea. Soon after his great victory over the Beni Koreish, at the last battle of Beder Hunein, Mahomet is said to have written to the same Najashi a letter of thanks, for his kind entertainment of his brother, inviting him (as a reward) to embrace his religion, which the Najashi is supposed to have immediately complied with. Now, all this is in the Arabic books, and all this is true, as far as we can conjecture from the accounts of those times, very partially writ by a set of warm-headed bigotted zealots; such as all Arabic authors (historians of the time) undoubtedly are. The error only lies in the application of this story to the Najashi, or king of Abyssinia, situated far from the scene of these actions, on high cold mountains, very unfavourable to those rites, which, in low flat and warm countries, have been temptations to slothful and inactive men to embrace the Mahometan religion.

A most shameful prostitution of manners prevailed in the Greek church, as also innumerable heresies, which were first received as true tenets of their religion, but were soon after persecuted in a most uncharitable manner, as being erroneous. Their lies, their legends, their saints and miracles, and, above all, the abandoned behaviour of the priesthood, had brought their characters in Arabia almost as low as that of the detested Jew, and, had they been considered in their true light, they had been still lower.

The dictates of nature in the heart of the honest Pagan, constantly employed in long, lonely, and dangerous voyages, awakened him often to reflect who that Providence was that invisibly governed him, supplied his wants, and often mercifully saved him from the destruction into which his own ignorance or rashness were leading him. Poisoned by no system, perverted by no prejudice, he wished to know and adore his Benefactor, with purity and simplicity of heart, free from these fopperies and follies with which ignorant priests and monks had disguised his worship. Possessed of charity, steady in his duty to his parents, full of veneration for his superiors, attentive and merciful even to his beasts; in a word, containing in his heart the principles of the first religion, which God had inculcated in the heart of Noah, the Arab was already prepared to embrace a much more perfect one than what Christianity, at that time, disfigured by folly and superstition, appeared to him to be.

Mahomet, of the tribe of Beni Koreish (at whose instigation is uncertain) took upon himself to be the apostle of a new religion, pretending to have, for his only object, the worship of the true God. Ostensibly full of the morality of the Arab, of patience and self-denial, superior even to what is made necessary to salvation by the gospel, his religion, at the bottom, was but a system of blasphemy and falsehood, corruption and injustice. Mahomet and his tribe were most profoundly ignorant. There was not among them but one man that could write, and it was not doubted he was to be Mahomet’s secretary, but unfortunately Mahomet could not read his writing. The story of the angel who brought him leaves of the Koran is well known, and so is all the rest of the fable. The wiser part of his own relations, indeed, laughed at the impudence of his pretending to have a communication with angels. Having, however, gained, as his apostles, some of the best soldiers of the tribe of Beni Koreish, and persisting with great uniformity in all his measures, he established a new religion upon the ruins of idolatry and Sabaism, in the very temple of Mecca.

Nothing severe was injoined by Mahomet, and the frequent prayers and washings with water which he directed, were gratifications to a sedentary people in a very hot country. The lightness of this yoke, therefore, recommended it rapidly to those who were disgusted with long fasting, penances, and pilgrimages. The poison of this false, yet not severe religion, spread itself from that fountain to all the trading nations: India, Ethiopia, Africa, all Asia, suddenly embraced it; and every caravan carried into the bosom of its country people not more attached to trade, than zealous to preach and propagate their new faith. The Temple of Mecca (the old rendezvous of the Indian trade) perhaps was never more frequented than it is at this day, and the motives of the journey are equally trade and religion, as they were formerly.

I shall here mention, that the Arabs begun very soon to study letters, and came to be very partial to their own language; Mahomet himself so much so, that he held out his Koran, for its elegance alone, as a greater miracle than that of raising the dead. This was not universally allowed at that time; as there were even then compositions supposed to equal, if not to surpass it. In my time, I have seen in Britain a spirit of enthusiasm for this book in preference to all others, not inferior to that which possessed Mahomet’s followers. Modern unbelievers (Sale and his disciples) have gone every length, but to say directly that it was dictated by the Spirit of God. Excepting the command in Genesis chap. i. ver. 3. “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light;” they defy us to shew in scripture a passage equal in sublimity to many in the Koran. Following, without inquiring, what has been handed down from one to the other, they would cram us with absurdities, which no man of sense can swallow. They say the Koran is composed in a style the most pure, and chaste, and that the tribe of Beni Koreish was the most polite, learned, and noble of all the Arabs.

But to this I answer--The Beni Koreish were from the earliest days, according to their own[348] account, part established at Mecca, and part as robbers on the sea-coast, and they were all children of Ishmael. Whence then came their learning, or their superior nobility? Was it found in the desert, in the temple, or did the robbers bring it from the sea? Soiouthy, one of those most famous then for knowledge in the Arabic, has quoted from the Koran many hundred words, either Abyssinian, Indian, Persian, Ethiopic, Syrian, Hebrew, or Chaldaic, which he brings back to the root, and ascribes them to the nation they came from. Indeed it could not be otherwise; these caravans, continually crowding with their trade to Mecca, must have vitiated the original tongue by an introduction of new terms and new idioms, into a language labouring under a penury of vocabules. But shall any one for this persuade me, that a book is a model of pure, elegant, chaste English, in which there shall be a thousand words of Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, French, Spanish, Malabar Mexican, and Laponian? What would be thought of such a medley? or, at least, could it be recommended as a pattern for writing pure English?

What I say of the Koran may be applied to the language of Arabia in general: when it is called a copious language, and professors wisely tell you, that there are six hundred words for a sword, two hundred for honey, and three hundred that signify a lion, still I must observe, that this is not a copious language, but a confusion of languages: these, instead of distinct names, are only different epithets. For example, a lion in English may be called a young lion, a white lion, a small lion, a big lion: I style him moreover the fierce, the cruel, the enemy to man, the beast of the desert, the king of beasts, the lover of blood. Thus it is in Arabic; and yet it is said that all these are words for a lion. Take another example in a sword; the cutter, the divider, the friend of man, the master of towns, the maker of widows, the sharp, the straight, the crooked; which may be said in English as well as in Arabic.

The Arabs were a people who lived in a country, for the most part, desert; their dwellings were tents, and their principal occupation feeding and breeding cattle, and they married with their own family. The language therefore of such a people should be very poor; there is no variety of images in their whole country. They were always bad poets, as their works will testify; and if, contrary to the general rule, the language of Arabia Deserta became a copious one, it must have been by the mixture of so many nations meeting and trading at Mecca. It must, at the same time, have been the most corrupt, where there was the greatest concourse of strangers, and this was certainly among the Beni Koreish at the Caba. When, therefore, I hear people praising the Koran for the purity of its style, it puts me in mind of the old man in the comedy, whose reason for loving his nephew was, that he could read Greek; and being asked if he understood the Greek so read, he answered, Not a word of it, but the rumbling of the sound pleased him.

The war that had distracted all Arabia, first between the Greeks and Persians, then between Mahomet and the Arabs, in support of his divine mission, had very much hurt the trade carried on by universal consent at the Temple of Mecca. Caravans, when they dared venture out, were surprised upon every road, by the partizans of one side or the other. Both merchants and trade had taken their departure to the southward, and established themselves south of the Arabian Gulf, in places which (in ancient times) had been the markets for commerce, and the rendezvous of merchants. Azab, or Saba, was rebuilt; also Raheeta, Zeyla, Tajoura, Soomaal, in the Arabian Gulf, and a number of other towns on the Indian Ocean. The conquest of the Abyssinian territories in Arabia forced all those that yet remained to take refuge on the African side, in the little districts which now grew into consideration. Adel, Mara, Hadea, Aussa, Wypo, Tarshish, and a number of other states, now assumed the name of kingdoms, and soon obtained power and wealth superior to many older ones.

The Governor of Yemen (or Najashi) converted now to the faith of Mahomet, retired to the African side of the Gulf. His government, long ago, having been shaken to the very foundation by the Arabian war, was at last totally destroyed. But the Indian trade at Adel wore a face of prosperity, that had the features of ancient times.

Without taking notice of every objection, and answering it, which has too polemical an appearance for a work of this kind, I hope I have removed the greatest part of the reader’s difficulties, which have, for a long time, lain in the way, towards his understanding this part of the history. There is one, however, remains, which the Arabian historians have mentioned, viz. that this Najashi, who embraced the faith of Mahomet, was avowedly of the royal family of Abyssinia. To this I answer, he certainly was a person of that rank, and was undoubtedly a nobleman, as there is no nobility in that country but from relationship to the king, and no person can be related to the king by the male line. But the females, even the daughters of those princes who are banished to the mountain, marry whom they please; and all the descendents of that marriage become noble, because they must be allied to the king. So far then they may truly assert, that the Mahometan Governor of Yemen, and his posterity, were this way related to the king of Abyssinia. But the supposition that any heirs male of this family became mussulmen, is, beyond any sort of doubt, without foundation or probability.

Omar, after subduing Egypt, destroyed the valuable library at Alexandria, but his successors thought very differently from him in the article of profane learning. Greek books of all kinds (especially those of Geometry, Astronomy, and Medicine,) were searched for every where and translated. Sciences flourished and were encouraged. Trade at the same time kept pace, and increased with knowledge. Geography and astronomy were every where diligently studied and solidly applied to make the voyages of men from place to place safe and expeditious. The Jews (constant servants of the Arabs) imbibed a considerable share of their taste for earning.

They had, at this time, increased very much in number. By the violence of the Mahometan conquests in Arabia and Egypt, where their sect did principally prevail, they became very powerful in Abyssinia. Arianism, and all the various heresies that distracted the Greek church, were received there in their turn from Egypt; the bonds of Christianity were dissolved, and people in general were much more willing to favour a new religion, than to agree with, or countenance any particular one of their own, if it differed from that which they adopted in the merest trifle. This had destroyed their metropolis in Egypt, just now delivered up to the Saracens; and the disposition of the Abyssinians seemed so very much to resemble their brethren the Cophts, that a revolution in favour of Judaism was thought full as feasible in the country, as it had been in Egypt in favour of the newly-preached, but unequivocal religion of Mahomet.

An independent sovereignty, in one family of Jews, had always been preserved on the mountain of Samen, and the royal residence was upon a high-pointed rock, called the Jews Rock: Several other inaccessible mountains served as natural fortresses for this people, now grown very considerable by frequent accessions of strength from Palestine and Arabia, whence the Jews had been expelled. Gideon and Judith were then king and queen of the Jews, and their daughter Judith (whom in Amhara they call _Esther_, and sometimes _Saat_, i. e. _fire_[349],) was a woman of great beauty, and talents for intrigue; had been married to the governor of a small district called Bugna, in the neighbourhood of Lasta, both which countries were likewise much infected with Judaism.

Judith had made so strong a party, that she resolved to attempt the subversion of the Christian religion, and, with it, the succession in the line of Solomon. The children of the royal family were at this time, in virtue of the old law, confined on the almost inaccessible mountain of Damo in Tigrè. The short reign, sudden and unexpected death of the late king Aizor, and the desolation and contagion which an epidemical disease had spread both in court and capital, the weak state of Del Naad who was to succeed Aizor and was an infant; all these circumstances together, impressed Judith with an idea that now was the time to place her family upon the throne, and establish her religion by the extirpation of the race of Solomon. Accordingly she surprised the rock Damo, and slew the whole princes there, to the number, it is said, of about 400.

Some nobles of Amhara, upon the first news of the catastrophe at Damo, conveyed the infant king Del Naad, now the only remaining prince of his race, into the powerful and loyal province of Shoa, and by this means the royal family was preserved to be again restored. Judith took possession of the throne in defiance of the law of the queen of Saba, by this the first interruption of the succession in the line of Solomon, and, contrary to what might have been expected from the violent means she had used to acquire the crown, she not only enjoyed it herself during a long reign of 40 years, but transmitted it also to five of her posterity, all of them barbarous names, originating probably in Lasta: These are said to be,

Totadem, Jan Shum, Garima Shum, Harbai, Marari.

Authors, as well Abyssinian as European, have differed widely about the duration of these reigns. All that the Abyssinians are agreed upon is, that this whole period was one scene of murder, violence, and oppression.

Judith and her descendents were succeeded by relations of their own, a noble family of Lasta. The history of this revolution, or cause of it, are lost and unknown in the country, and therefore vainly fought after elsewhere. What we know is, that with them the court returned to the Christian religion, and that they were still as different from their predecessors in manners as in religion. Though usurpers, as were the others, their names are preserved with every mark of respect and veneration. They are,

Tecla Haimanout, Kedus Harbé, Itibarek, Lalibala, Imeranha Christos, Naacueto Laab.

Not being kings of the line of Solomon, no part of their history is recorded in the annals, unless that of Lalibala, who lived in the end of the twelfth, or beginning of the thirteenth century, and was a saint. The whole period of the usurpation, comprehending the long reign of Judith, will by this account be a little more than 300 years, in which time eleven princes are said to have sat upon the throne of Solomon, so that, supposing her death to have been in the year 1000, each of these princes, at an average, will have been a little more than twenty-four years, and this is too much. But all this period is involved in darkness. We might guess, but since we are not able to do more, it answers no good purpose to do so much. I have followed the histories and traditions which are thought the most authentic in the country, the subject of which they treat, and where I found them; and though they may differ from other accounts given by European authors, this does not influence me, as I know that none of these authors could have any other authorities than those I have seen, and the difference only must be the fruit of idle imagination, and ill-founded conjectures of their own.

In the reign of Lalibala, near about the 1200, there was a great persecution in Egypt against the Christians, after the Saracen conquest, and especially against the masons, builders, and hewers of stone, who were looked upon by the Arabs as the greatest of abominations; this prince opened an asylum in his dominions to all fugitives of that kind, of whom he collected a prodigious number. Having before him as specimens the ancient works of the Troglodytes, he directed a number of churches to be hewn out of the solid rock in his native country of Lasta, where they remain untouched to this day, and where they will probably continue till the latest posterity. Large columns within are formed out of the solid rock, and every species of ornament preserved, that would have been executed in buildings of separate and detached stones, above ground.

This prince undertook to realize the favourite pretensions of the Abyssinians, to the power of turning the Nile out of its course, so that it should no longer be the cause of the fertility of Egypt, now in possession of the enemies of his religion. We may imagine, if it was in the power of man to accomplish this undertaking, it could have fallen into no better hands than those to whom Lalibala gave the execution of it; people driven from their native country by those Saracens who now were reaping the benefits of the river, in the places of those they had forced to seek habitations far from the benefit and pleasure afforded by its stream.

This prince did not adopt the wild idea of turning the course of the Nile out of its present channel; upon the possibility or impossibility of which, the argument (so warmly and so long agitated) always most improperly turns. His idea was to famish Egypt: and, as the fertility of that country depends not upon the ordinary stream, but the extraordinary increase of it by the tropical rains, he is said to have found, by an exact survey and calculation, that there ran on the summit, or highest part of the country, several rivers which could be intercepted by mines, and their stream directed into the low country southward, instead of joining the Nile, augmenting it and running northward. By this he found he should be able so to disappoint its increase, that it never would rise to a height proper to fit Egypt for cultivation. And thus far he was warranted in his ideas of succeeding (as I have been informed by the people of that country), that he did intersect and carry into the Indian Ocean, two very large rivers, which have ever since flowed that way, and he was carrying a level to the lake Zawaia, where many rivers empty themselves in the beginning of the rains, which would have effectually diverted the course of them all, and could not but in some degree diminish the current below.

Death, the ordinary enemy of all these stupendous Herculean undertakings, interposed too here, and put a stop to this enterprize of Lalibala. But Amha Yasous, prince of Shoa (in whose country part of these immense works were) a young man of great understanding, and with whom I lived several months in the most intimate friendship at Gondar, assured me that they were visible to this day; and that they were of a kind whose use could not be mistaken; that he himself had often visited them, and was convinced the undertaking was very possible with such hands, and in the circumstances things then were. He told me likewise, that, in a written account which he had seen in Shoa, it was said that this prince was not interrupted by death in his undertaking, but persuaded by the monks, that if a greater quantity of water was let down into the dry kingdoms of Hadea, Mara, and Adel, increasing in population every day, and, even now, almost equal in power to Abyssinia itself, these barren kingdoms would become the garden of the world; and such a number of Saracens, dislodged from Egypt by the first appearance of the Nile’s failing, would fly thither: that they would not only withdraw those countries from their obedience, but be strong enough to over-run the whole kingdom of Abyssinia. Upon this, as Amha Yasous informed me, Lalibala gave over his first scheme, which was the famishing of Egypt; and that his next was employing the men in subterraneous churches; a useless expence, but more level to the understanding of common men than the former.

Don Roderigo de Lima, ambassador from the king of Portugal, in 1522 saw the remains of these vast works, and travelled in them several days, as we learn from Alvarez, the chaplain and historian of that embassy[350], which we shall take notice of in its proper place.

Lalibala was distinguished both as a poet and an orator. The old fable, of a swarm of bees hanging to his lips in the cradle, is revived and applied to him as foretelling the sweetness of his elocution.

To Lalibala succeeded Imeranha Christos, remarkable for nothing but being son of such a father as Lalibala, and father to such a son as Naacueto Laab; both of them distinguished for works very extraordinary, though very different in their kind. The first, that is those of the father we have already hinted at, consisting in great mechanical undertakings. The other was an operation of the mind, of still more difficult nature, a victory over ambition, the voluntary abdication of a crown to which he succeeded without imputation of any crime.

Tecla Haimanout, a monk and native of Abyssinia, had been ordained Abuna, and had founded the famous monastery of Debra Libanos in Shoa. He was a man at once celebrated for the sanctity of his life, the goodness of his understanding, and love to his country; and, by an extraordinary influence, obtained over the reigning king Naacueto Laab, he persuaded him, for conscience sake, to resign a crown, which (however it might be said with truth, that he received it from his father) could never be purged from the stain and crime of usurpation.

In all this time, the line of Solomon had been continued from Del Naad, who, we have seen, had escaped from the massacre of Damo, under Judith. Content with possessing the loyal province of Shoa, they continued their royal residence there, without having made one attempt, as far as history tells us, towards recovering their ancient kingdom.

RACE OF SOLOMON BANISHED, BUT REIGNING IN SHOA.

Del Naad, Mahaber Wedem, Igba Sion, Tzenaf Araad, Nagash Zaré, Asfeha, Jacob, Bahar Segued, Adamas Segued, Icon Amlac.

Naacueto Laab, of the house of Zaguè, was, it seems, a just and peaceable prince.

Under the mediation of Abuna Tecla Haimanout, a treaty was made between him and Icon Amlac consisting of four articles, all very extraordinary in their kind.

The first was, that Naacueto Laab, prince of the house of Zaguè, should forthwith resign the kingdom of Abyssinia to Icon Amlac, reigning prince of the line of Solomon then in Shoa.

The second, that a portion of lands in Lasta should be given to Naacueto Laab and his heirs in absolute property, irrevocably and irredeemably; that he should preserve, as marks of sovereignty, two silver kettle-drums, or nagareets; that the points of the spears of his guard, the globes that surmounted his sendeck, (that is the pole upon which the colours are carried), should be silver, and that he should sit upon a gold stool, or chair, in form of that used by the kings of Abyssinia; and that both he and his descendents should be absolutely free from all homage, services, taxes, or public burdens for ever, and stiled Kings of Zaguè, or the Lasta king.

The third article was, That one third of the kingdom should be appropriated and ceded absolutely to the Abuna himself, for the maintenance of his own state, and support of the clergy, convents, and churches in the kingdom; and this became afterwards an æra, or epoch, in Abyssinian history, called the æra of partition.

The fourth, and last article, provided, that no native Abyssinian could thereafter be chosen Abuna, and this even tho’ he was ordained at, and sent from Cairo. In virtue of this treaty, concluded and solemnly sworn to, Icon Amlac took possession of his throne, and the other contracting parties of the provisions respectively allotted them.

The part of the treaty that should appear most liable to be broken was that which erected a kingdom within a kingdom. However, it is one of the remarkable facts in the annals of this country, that the article between Icon Amlac and the house of Zaguè was observed for near 500 years; for it was made before the year 1300, and never was broken, but by the treacherous murder of the Zaguean prince by Allo Fasil in the unfortunate war of Begemder, in the reign of Joas 1768, the year before I arrived in Abyssinia; neither has any Abuna native of Abyssinia ever been known since that period. As for the exorbitant grant of one third of the kingdom to the Abuna, it has been in great measure resumed, as we may naturally suppose, upon different pretences of misbehaviour, true or alledged, by the king or his ministers, the first great invasion of it being in the subsequent reign of king Theodorus, who, far from losing popularity by this infraction, has been ever reckoned a model for sovereigns.

_END OF VOLUME FIRST._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This epithet given to the springs from which the Nile rises, was borrowed from a very elegant English poem that appeared in Dr Maty’s Review for May 1786. It was sent to me by my friend Mr Barrington, to whom it was attributed, although from modesty he disclaims it. From whatever hand it comes, the poet is desired to accept of my humble thanks. It was received with universal applause wherever it was circulated, and a considerable number of copies was printed at the desire of the public. Accident seemed to have placed it in Dr Maty’s book with peculiar propriety, by having joined it to a fragment of Ariosto, then first published, in the same Review. It has since been attributed to Mr Mason.

[2] He was long a slave to the Bey of Constantina, and appears to have been a man of capacity.

[3] This will be explained afterwards.

[4] Ludolf, lib. i. cap. 15.

[5] This is a running figure cut through the middle like the check of a bank note.

[6] Hippo. Reg. from Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 109.

[7] Hippo. Reg. id. ib.

[8] Aphrodisium. id. ib.

[9] Thabarca, id. ib.

[10] Plin. Ep. xxxiii. l. 9.

[11] Liv. Epit. xxx. l. 9.

[12] Strabo lib xvii. p. 1189. It signifies the river of Cows, or Kine. P. Mela lib. i. cap. 7. Sil. It. lib. vi. l. 140.

[13] Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. Procop. lib. vi. cap. 5. de Ædif.

[14] Val. Max. lib. ii. cap. 6. § 15.

[15] Ptol. Geog. lib. iv.

[16] Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 106.

[17] Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 111.

[18] Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 108.

[19] Vide Itin. Anton.

[20] Procop. Bell. Vand. lib. ii. cap. 13.

[21] Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 111.

[22] Shaw’s Travels, chap. viii. p. 57.

[23] Shaw’s Travels, cap. v. p. 119.

[24] Sal. Bel. Jug. § 94. L. Flor. lib. iii. cap. 1.

[25] Shaw’s Travels, chap. v. p. 118.

[26] Itin. Anton. p. 3.

[27] Itin. Anton, p. 3.

[28] Shaw’s Travels, cap. v. p. 115.

[29] Cel. Geog. Antique, lib. iv. cap. 4. and cap. 5. p. 118.

[30] Itin. Anton. p. 2.

[31] Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 110.

[32] This fountain is called El Tarmid. Nub. Geog. p. 86.

[33] Sal. Bell. § 94.

[34] Itin. Anton, p. 4.

[35] Shaw’s Travels, cap. v. p. 126.

[36] Itin. Anton. p. 4.

[37] Id. Ibid.

[38] Shaw’s Travels, p. 117. cap. 5.

[39] Boch. Chan. lib. i. cap. 25. Shaw’s Travels, cap. iv. p. 115.

[40] Itin. Anton. p. 104.

[41] Ptol. Geog. p. 4.

[42] Shaw’s Travels, sect. vi. p. 156.

[43] Jerboa, see a figure of it in the Appendix.

[44] Itin. Anton. p. 4.

[45] The north boundary of the Holy Land.

[46] It is a post where a party of men are kept to receive a contribution, for maintaining the security of the roads, from all passengers.

[47] Ezek. chap. xxvi. ver. 5.

[48] Mrs Bruce died in 1784.

[49] The nucta, or dew, that falls on St John’s night, is supposed to have the virtue to stop the plague. I have considered this in the sequel.

[50] Strabo, lib. xiv. p. 781.

[51] It is called Mamilho.

[52] Newton’s Chronol. p. 183.

[53] Strabo, lib. xiv. p. 684.

[54] Strabo, lib. xiv. p. 780.

[55] This is an old prejudice. See Herodotus, lib. ii. p. 90. sect. 5.

[56] Berytus.

[57] Laodicea ad mare.

[58] Herod. lib. ii. p. 90.

[59] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 922.

[60] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 922.

[61] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 920. Q. Curt. lib. iv. cap. 8.

[62] Plin. lib. v. cap. 10. p. 273.

[63] We see many examples of such leaves both at Palmyra and Baalbec.

[64] Marmol, lib. xi. cap. 14. p. 276. tom. 3.

[65] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 922.

[66] A peasant Arab.

[67] Means a narrow or shallow entrance of a river from the ocean.

[68] Herod, p. 108.

[69] Shaw’s Travels, p. 293.

[70] See a figure of this animal in the Appendix.

[71] See Appendix.

[72] Shaw’s Travels, p. 294.

[73] The Mamaluke Beys.

[74] Vid. Introduction.

[75] Ptol. Geograph. lib. 4 Cap. 5.

[76] Shaw’s travels p. 294.

[77] Herod. lib. 2. cap. 8.

[78] This has been thought to mean the Convent of Figs, but it only signifies the Two Convents.

[79] See Mr Irvine’s Letters.

[80] Herod. lib. ii. p. 99.

[81] Herod. lib. ii. cap. 8.

[82] See the Chart of the Nile.

[83] Pococke, vol. I. cap. v. p. 39.

[84] Plin. lib. 5. cap. 9.

[85] Plin. lib. 36. cap. 12.

[86] Diod. Sic. p. 45. § 50.

[87] Shaw’s Travels, p. 296. in the latitude quoted.

[88] Shaw’s Travels, cap. 4. p. 298.

[89] Id. ibid. 299.

[90] Id. ibid.

[91] Id. ibid.

[92] Ptol. Geograph. lib. iv. cap. 5.

[93] Herod. lib. ii. p. 141. Ibid. p. 168. Ibid. p. 105. Ibid. p. 103. Edit. Steph.

[94] Herod. lib. ii. § 97. p. 123.

[95] Shaw’s Travels, cap. 4.

[96] Strabo. lib. vii. p. 914.

[97] Id. ibid.

[98] Id. ibid.

[99] Strabo, ibid.

[100] Id. ibid.

[101] Named _Binny_. See Appendix.

[102] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 936.

[103] Norden’s travels, vol. ii. p. 19.

[104] Herod. lib. ii, cap. 19.

[105] Dagjour.

[106] Norden’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 17.

[107] I cannot here omit to rectify another small mistake of the translator, which involves him in a difference with this Author which he did not mean.--

Mr Norden, in the French, says, that the master of his vessel being much frightened, “avoit perdu la tramontane;” the true meaning of which is, That he had lost his judgment, not lost the north wind, as it is translated, which is really nonsense. _Norden’s Travels_, vol. ii. p. 59.

[108] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 936.

[109] Signifies the Narrow Passage, and is meant what _Phylæ_ is in Latin.

[110] Messoudi

[111] Itin. Anton. p. 14.

[112] It is called Hamseen, because it is expected to blow all Pentecost.

[113] Theophrast. Hist. Plan. lib. iii. cap. 8--lib. iv. cap. 2.

[114] Strabo lib. vii. p. 941.

[115] A poor saint.

[116] Diod. Sic. lib. I.

[117] Plin. lib. 26. cap. 14.

[118] See Norden’s views of the Temples at Esné and Edfu. Vol. ii. plate 6. p. 80.

[119] This inclined figure of the sides, is frequently found in the small boxes within the mummy-chests.

[120] Diod. Sic. lib. 1.

[121] See the figure of this Insect in Paul Lucas.

[122] Gen. xxxi. 27, Isa. chap. xxx. ver. 32.

[123] Eccles. chap. i. ver. 10.

[124] Ezek. chap. xxviii. ver. 13.

[125] Nay, prior to this, the harp is mentioned as a common instrument in Abraham’s time 1370 years before Christ, Gen. chap. xxxii. ver. 27.

[126] Diod. Sic. Bib. lib. i. p. 42. § d.

[127] Strabo, lib. 17. p. 943.

[128] Nah. ch. 3. ver. 8, & 9.

[129] A similar instrument, erected by Eratosthenes at Alexandria, cut of copper, was used by Hipparchus and Ptolemy.--Alm. lib. I. cap. II. 3. cap. 2. Vide his remarks on Mr Greave’s Pyramidographia, p. 134.

[130] Signior Donati.

[131] Diod. Sic. Bib. lib. I. p. 45. § c.

[132] Vide Norden’s map of the Nile.

[133] Juven. Sat. 15. ver. 76.

[134] Idris Welled Hamran, our guide through the great desert, dwelt in this village.

[135] The ancient Adei.

[136] The Bishareen are the Arabs who live in the frontier between the two nations. They are the nominal subjects of Sennaar, but, in fact, indiscreet banditti, at least as to strangers.

[137] They were _Shepherds_ Indigenæ, not Arabs.

[138] _Qui Ludit in Hospite fixo_--Was a character long ago given to the Moors. HORACE ODE.

[139] This kind of oath was in use among the Arabs, or _Shepherds_, early as the time of Abraham, Gen. xxi. 22, 23. xxvi. 28.

[140] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 944.

[141] This word, improperly used and spelled by M. de Volney, has nothing to do with these Ansaris.

[142] Cicero de Somnio Scipronis.

[143] Pliny, lib. ii. cap. 73.

[144] Strabo, lib. xvii. p. 944.

[145] Strabo, lib. ii. p. 133.

[146] Spectacle de la Nature.

[147] Strabo, lib. 17. p. 944.

[148] L’histoire d’astronomie, de M. de la Lande, vol. i. lib. 2.

[149] Vide Mr Norden’s Voyage up the Nile.

[150] It is no town, but some sand and a few bushes, so called.

[151] Ptol. Almag. lib. 4. Geograph. pag. 104.

[152] The Arabs call these narrow passes in the mountains Fum, as the Hebrews did Pi, the mouth. Fum el Beder, is the mouth of Beder; Fum el Terfowey, the mouth or passage of Terfowey; Piha Hhiroth, the mouth of the valley cut through with ravines.

[153] Ptolem. Geograph. lib. 4. p. 103.

[154] That is, I am under your protection.

[155] On the east coast of Arabia Felix, Syagrum Promontorium.

[156] Itin. Anton. a Carth. p. 4.

[157] So the next stage from Syené is called Hiera Sycaminos, a sycamore-tree, Ptol. lib. 4. p. 108.

[158] Plin. lib. xxxvii. cap. 5.

[159] Ditto.

[160] Tavernier vol. II. Voyag.

[161] Theophrastus Περιλιθων.

[162] Clamps.

[163] It is a Keratophyte, growing at the bottom of the sea.

[164] Vide the track of this Navigation laid down on the Chart.

[165] Ezek. chap. xxvii. 6th and 29th verses.

[166] Ajam, in the language of Shepherds, signifies _rain-water_.

[167] Vide his Journal published by Abbé Vertot.

[168] Gen. chap. xiii. ver. 17th.

[169] Gen. chap. xiii. ver. 6th. Exod. chap. xiii. ver. 17th.

[170] Exod. ch. xii. 33.

[171] Such is the tradition among the Natives.

[172] Diod. Sic. Lib. 3. p. 122.

[173] Dionysii Periegesis, v. 38. et Comment. Eustathii in eundem. Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 765. Agathemeri Geographia, lib. ii. cap. 11.

[174] _Jerome Lobo_, the greatest liar of the Jesuits, ch. iv. p. 46. English translation.

[175] I saw one of these, which, from a root nearly central, threw out ramifications in a nearly circular form, measuring twenty-six feet diameter every way.

[176] Anciently called Pharos.

[177] The Koran is, therefore, called _El Farkan_, or the Divider, or Distinguisher between true faith and heresy.

[178] See the article Ashkoko in the Appendix.

[179] 2 Chron. chap. xx. ver. 37th.

[180] See the Map.

[181] El Har signifies extreme heat.

[182] Vide Irvine’s letters.

[183] Levit. chap. xvi. ver. 5.

[184] Native of Tripoli; it is Turkish.

[185] See the article Balessan in the Appendix.

[186] Cape Fever.

[187] This is a common sailor’s phrase for the Straits of Babelmandeb.

[188] Captain of the port.

[189] Philosoph. Transact. Vol. 27. p. 186.

[190] A late publication of Dr Madan’s, little understood, as it would seem.

[191] Sovereign of Arabia Felix, whose capital is _Sana_.

[192] Gen. xv. 18.

[193] Gen. xvi. 12.

[194] The island of the Shepherds.

[195] Or Porcupine.

[196] Yemen, or the high land of Arabia Felix, where water freezes.

[197] Arabia Deserta.

[198] Deregé, from that word in Hebrew.

[199] It signifies Pharaoh’s worm.

[200] Ligustrum Ægyptiacum Latifolium.

[201] Arabia Felix, or Yemen.

[202] That is, the Peek of Arabia Felix, or Yemen.

[203] Governor of the Province of Tigré in Abyssinia.

[204] See the article Pearl in the Appendix.

[205] Jibbel Teir, the Mountain of the Bird; corruptly, _Gibraltar_.

[206] Millet, or Indian corn.

[207] See the article Tortoise in the Appendix.

[208] A Subaltern Governor.

[209] Poncet’s Voyage, translated into English, printed for W. Lewis in 1709, in 12mo, page 121.

[210] This must not be attributed wholly to the weather. We spent much time in surveying the islands, and in observation.

[211] Exod. xxxviii 39.

[212] Lib. 21. cap. 6.

[213] These are far from being synonymous terms, as we shall see afterwards.

[214] See the article papyrus in the Appendix.

[215] Gen. xxxvii. 3 and 2 Sam. xiii. 18.

[216] Prov. vii. 16.

[217] Vide Appendix, where this tree is described.

[218] The quantity of similar drugs brought from the New World.

[219] Boch. lib. 4. cap. 3.

[220] Herod. lib. 2. cap. 29.

[221] Joseph. antiquit. Jud.

[222] At Gerri in my return through the desert.

[223] It is very probable, some of these words signified different degrees among them, as we shall see in the sequel.

[224] Diod. Sic. lib. 1. cap.

[225] This was the name of the king of Amalek; he was an Arab shepherd, slain by Samuel, 1 Sam. xv. 33.

[226] Ludolf lib. 1 cap. 4.

[227] That is, they shall cut off from the cattle their usual retreat to the desert, by taking possession of those places, and meeting them there where ordinarily they never come, and which therefore are the refuge of the cattle.

[228] Gen. chap. xxxvii. ver. 25. 28.

[229] Ezek. chap. xxvii. ver. 13.

[230] Rev. chap. xviii. ver. 13.

[231] Gen. vi. 14.

[232] Gen. xxxv. 4.

[233] 2 Kings, xvii. 4.

[234] Nahum, chap. iii. 8.

[235] Misphragmuthosis.

[236] Manethon, Apud. Josephum Apion. lib. 1. p. 460.

[237] Eight years less than the Greeks and other followers of the Septuagint.

[238] Isaiah, chap. xviii. ver. 2.

[239] Joshua, iii. 16.

[240] Procop. de bello vind. lib. 2. cap. 10.

A Moorish author, Ibn el Raquique, says, this inscription was on a stone on a mountain at Carthage. Marmol. lib. 1. cap. 25.

[241] Gen. ix. 25, 26, and 27. verses.

[242] These people likewise call themselves Agaazi, or Agagi, they have over-run the kingdom of Congo south of the Line, and on the Atlantic Ocean, as the Galla have done that part of the kingdom of Adel and Abyssinia, on the Eastern, or Indian Ocean. Purch. lib. ii. chap. 4. Sect. 8.

[243] Jerem. chap. xiii. ver. 23.--id. xxv. 24.--Ezek. chap. xxx. ver. 5.

[244] Numb. chap. xii. ver. 1.

[245] Exod. chap. iv. ver. 25.

[246] 2 Chron. chap. xiv. ver. 9.

[247] Gen. chap. 21. ver. 30.

[248] Gen. chap. 13. ver. 6. and 9.

[249] Isa. chap. xlv. ver. 14.

[250] Ezek. chap. xxx. ver. 8. and 9.

[251] Ezek. chap. xxix. ver. 10.

[252] Ezek. chap. xxx. ver. 4.

[253] Jerem. chap. xiii. ver. 23.

[254] Jerem. chap. xxv. ver. 24.

[255] Ezek. chap. xxx. ver. 5.

[256] Isa. chap. xviii. ver. 2.

[257] Uranologion. P. Petau.

[258] Banbridge, Ann. canicul.

[259] An astronomer greatly above my praise.

[260] Jamblich. de Myst. sect. 8. cap. 5.

[261] Sozomen, Eccles. Hist. lib. 7. cap. 15.

[262] Herw. theolog. Ethnica, p. 11.

[263] I apprehend this is owing to the circumstances of the climate, in the four months, the time of the inundation, the heavens were so covered as to afford no observations to be recorded.

[264] Porpyhry Epist. ad Anebonem.

[265] Exod. chap. xxviii. ver. 21.

[266] Exod. chap. xxviii. ver. 36.

[267] Deut. chap. xxxi. ver. 24.

[268] Vide the hieroglyphics on the drawing of the stone.

[269] Ezek. chap. xxix. ver. 11.

[270] Psalm. chap. lx. ver. 9. and Psal. cviii. ver. 10.

[271] 2 Sam. chap. viii. ver. 14. 1 Kings chap. xi. ver. 15, 16.

[272] 1 Kings, chap. ix. ver. 26. 2 Chron. chap. viii. ver. 17.

[273] 1 Chron. chap. xxii. ver. 14, 15, 16. Chap. xxix. ver. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,--Three thousand Hebrew talents of gold, reduced to our money, amount to twenty-one millions and six hundred thousand pounds Sterling.

[274] The value of a Hebrew talent appears from Exodus, chap. xxxviii. ver. 25, 26. For 603,550 persons being taxed at half a shekel each, they must have paid in the whole 301,775; now that sum is said to amount to 100 talents, 1775 shekels only; deduct the two latter sums, and there will remain 300,000, which, divided by 108, will leave 3000 shekels for each of these talents.

[275] 2 Chron. chap. viii. ver. 17.

[276] 1 Kings, chap. x. ver. 22.

[277] 1 Kings, chap. x. ver. 22. 2 Chron. chap. ix. ver. 21.

[278] Vid. Voyage of Dos Santos, published by Le Grande.

[279] See the map of this voyage.

[280] Apud Euseb. Prœp. Evang. lib. 9.

[281] Dionysii Periegesis, ver. 38. and Comment. Eustathii in eundem. Strabo, lib. 16. p. 765. Agathemeri Geographia, lib. 2. cap. 11.

[282] Ezek. chap. xxvii. ver. 6.

[283] Ezek. chap. xxvii. ver. 26.

[284] Dr Douglas, Bishop of Carlisle.

[285] Vide L’Esprit des Loix, liv. xxi. cap. 6. p. 476.

[286] Plin. lib. vi. cap. 22.

[287] Strabo, lib. xv.

[288] I know there are contrary opinions, and the junks might have been various. Vide Salm.

[289] Pto. Geog. lib. 4. cap. 7.

[290] id. ibid.

[291] Agath. p. 60.

[292] 1 Kings, chap. xxii. ver. 48. 2 Chron. chap. xx. ver. 36.

[293] 2 Kings, chap. viii. ver. 22. 2 Chron. chap. xxi. ver. 10.

[294] 2 Kings, chap. xiv. ver. 22. 2 Chron. chap. 26. ver. ii.

[295] 2 Kings, chap. xvi. ver. 6.

[296] 2 Kings, chap. xvi. ver. 6.

[297] Ezek. chap. xxvi. ver. 7.

[298] 2 Kings, chap. xxiv ver. 13. and 2 Chron. chap. xxxvi. ver. 7.

[299] Dan. chap. vi. ver. 8. and Esther, chap. i. ver. 19.

[300] Ezra, chap. v. ver. 14 and chap. vi. ver. 5.

[301] Dan. chap. v. ver. 30.

[302] Lucan lib. x. ver. 280.

[303] Vide Montesq. liv. 21. chap 8.

[304] Lucan, lib. 9. ver. 515.

[305] Athen. lib. 5.

[306] This is probably from Atbara, or the old name of the island of Meroë, which had received that last name only as late as Cambyses.

[307] Plin. lib. 6. cap. 23.

[308] Strabo, lib. 17. p. 932.

[309] Mon. Aduli.

[310] Strabo, lib. ii. p. 98.

[311] Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 2. cap. 67.

[312] Dodwell’s Dissertat. vol. I. Scrip. Græc. Min. ld. Ox. 1698. 8vo.

[313] Plut. Vita. Ant. p. 913. tom. 1. part 2. Lubec. 1624. fol.

[314] Strabo, lib. 3.

[315] Plin. lib. vi. cap. 23.

[316] Strabo, lib. 2. p. 81.

[317] Strabo, lib. ii. p. 98.

[318] Ptol. lib. iv. cap. 9. p. 115.

[319] Ptol. lib. vii. cap. 3.

[320] It should properly be Saba, Azab, or Azaba, all signifying _South_.

[321] Such as Justin, Cyprian, Epiphanius, Cyril.

[322] By this is meant the country between the tropic and mountains of Abyssinia, the country of Shepherds, from _Berber_, Shepherd.

[323] Matth. chap. xii. ver. 42. Luke xi. 31.

[324] Pin. de reb. Solomon, lib. iv. cap. 14th.--Josephus thinks she was an Ethiopian, so do Origen, Augustin, and St Anselmo.

[325] 1 Kings, chap. x. ver 1. and 2 Chron. chap. ix. ver. 1.

[326] Matt. chap. xii. ver. 43. and Luke, chap xi. ver. 31.

[327] 1 Kings, chap. x. ver. 9. and 2 Chron. chap. ix. ver 8.

[328] 2 Chron. chap. xxv. ver. 18. 19.

[329] 1 Kings, chap. xi. ver. 1.

[330] Acts, chap. viii. ver. 27 and 38.

[331] This shews the falsehood of the remark Strabo makes, that it was a custom in Meroë, if their sovereign was any way mutilated, for the subjects to imitate the imperfection. In this case, Candace’s subjects would have all lost an eye. Strabo, lib. 17. p. 777, 778.

[332] 2 Sam. chap. xvi. ver. 22. 1 Kings, chap. ii. ver. 13.

[333] What immediately follows will be hereafter explained in the Narrative.

[334] The temple which the Queen of Saba had seen built, and so richly ornamented, was plundered the 5th year of Rehoboam, by Sesac, which is 13 years before Menilek died. So this could not but have disgusted him with the trade of his ancient habitation at Saba.

[335] Numb. chap. xv. ver. 38, 39. Deut. chap. 22. ver. 12.

[336] We see this happened to them in a much shorter time during the captivity, when they forgot their Hebrew, and spoke Chaldaec ever after.

[337] I shall have occasion to speak much of this priest in the sequel. He was a most inveterate and dangerous enemy to all Europeans, the principal ecclesiastical officer in the king’s house.

[338] Then Prime Minister, concerning whom much is to be said hereafter.

[339] Vid. Origen contra Celsum, lib. 5. Tertull. de Idolol. c. 4. Drus in suo Enoch. Bangius in Cœlo Orientis Exercit. 1. quæst. 5. and 6.

[340] Gassend in vita Pierisc, lib. 5.

[341] The length of these princes reigns are so great as to become incredible; but, as we have nothing further of their history but their names, we have no data upon which to reform them.

[342] Caleb el Atsbeha, which has been made Elesbaas throwing away the t.

[343] Surius Tom. 5. d. 24. Oct. Card. Baronius. Tom. 7. Annal. A. C. 522. N. 23.

[344] Ludolf, vol. 2 lib. iii. cap. 2.

[345] Vid. Baron, tom. 4. p. 331. et alibi passim.

[346] El Hameesy’s Siege of Mecca.

[347] Fetaat el Yemen.

[348] El Hameesy.

[349] She is also called by Victor, _Tredda Gahez_.

[350] See Alvarez, his relation of this Embassy.

[Transcriber’s Note:

Inconsistent double quotes and capitalization are as in the original.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]