This last aspirant appeared at Venice about twenty years after the battle of Alcaçarquivir, a very plausible account of his escape from which he was enabled to give, further stating that he had subsequently reached Portugal, and revealed his presence there to his great uncle Henry, who was then reigning; but as he had then stated that, sick and broken-hearted at his overthrow by the infidel, he had no present intention of resuming his sceptre, no notice was taken of the notification. As soon as his wounds were healed, the _soi disant_ Don Sebastian stated, he, and two Portuguese nobles who were alleged to have saved themselves in his company, started on their travels, and travelled over Europe, Africa, and Asia, visiting the colonial possessions of Portugal, and even taking a personal share with the Persians in their war against the Turks. The King also paid visits to the Grand Llama of Thibet, and to Prester John in Ethiopia, encountering no end of marvellous adventures on his journeys, during which, however, his two companions, worn out with wounds and fatigues, succumbed to death. The royal wanderer then retired to a hermitage in the Georgian desert, and stayed there until the year 1597, when, admonished by a dream to resume his crown, he returned to Europe. He landed in Sicily, and at once despatched letters to several of his most attached nobles in Portugal. Catizoni, his messenger, was arrested on landing, and never heard of again; but through some unknown channels the tidings of which he was the bearer transpired, and threw the whole country into a profound state of excitement. Had the _soi disant_ monarch had courage to have landed in Portugal at this time, it is pretty generally believed that, whatever may have been the value of his claims to the name of Don Sebastian, the whole people would have acknowledged his rights; as one writer says, the nation "would have acknowledged a negro to be their lost king, so that he delivered them from the hated rule of the Spaniards."