Ethiopia -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Lobo, Jerónimo, 1596?-1678 -- Travel -- Ethiopia
resolute than I had ever done, and gave him to understand that when he
touched at Diou he might have occasion for our interest. This had some
effect upon him, and procured us a greater degree of civility than we had
met with before.
At length after forty days' sailing we landed at Diou, where we were met
by the whole city, it being reported that the patriarch was one of our
number; for there was not a gentleman who was not impatient to have the
pleasure of beholding that good man, now made famous by his labours and
sufferings. It is not in my power to represent the different passions
they were affected with at seeing us pale, meagre, without clothes--in a
word, almost naked and almost dead with fatigue and ill-usage. They
could not behold us in that miserable condition without reflecting on the
hardships we had undergone, and our brethren then underwent, in Suaquem
and Abyssinia. Amidst their thanks to God for our deliverance, they
could not help lamenting the condition of the patriarch and the other
missionaries who were in chains, or, at least, in the hands of professed
enemies to our holy religion. All this did not hinder them from
testifying in the most obliging manner their joy for our deliverance, and
paying such honours as surprised the Moors, and made them repent in a
moment of the ill-treatment they had shown us on board. One who had
discovered somewhat more humanity than the rest thought himself
sufficiently honoured when I took him by the hand and presented him to
the chief officer of the custom house, who promised to do all the favours
that were in his power.
When we passed by in sight of the fort, they gave us three salutes with
their cannon, an honour only paid to generals. The chief men of the
city, who waited for us on the shore, accompanied us through a crowd of
people, whom curiosity had drawn from all parts of our college. Though
our place of residence at Diou is one of the most beautiful in all the
Indies, we stayed there only a few days, and as soon as we had recovered
our fatigues went on board the ships that were appointed to convoy the
northern fleet. I was in the admiral's. We arrived at Goa in some
vessels bound for Camberia: here we lost a good old Abyssin convert, a
man much valued in his order, and who was actually prior of his convent
when he left Abyssinia, choosing rather to forsake all for religion than
to leave the way of salvation, which God had so mercifully favoured him
with the knowledge of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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