After attempting to flee from Abyssinia and make their way to the coast of the Red Sea, the whole of the Portuguese colony of Fremona was handed over to the Turks at Masawa, and by them sent to Suakin. They underwent cruel sufferings at the hands of the Turks, but some of the missionaries, including Father Lobo, were allowed to ransom themselves, and return in a ship to India. Here Lobo endeavoured to induce the Viceroy of Portuguese India to send an expedition against the Turks of Suakin in order to release the priests that were left in their hands; but the viceroy declined to take this step without the consent of the Portuguese Government. Accordingly Father Lobo started for Lisbon, was shipwrecked on the coast of Natal, fell into the hands of the Dutch, but in spite of his extraordinary hardships, and difficulties wellnigh insurmountable, actually returned to Portugal; whence he went to plead at Rome the cause of Latin Christianity in Abyssinia. The missionaries left in the hands of the Turks at Suakin were eventually ransomed, and returned to India. The few Portuguese missionaries who for one cause or another were left in Abyssinia were all killed by the Abyssinians. [Illustration: DAPPER’S MAP (AMSTERDAM, 1686). Giving the falsified results of Portuguese explorations in East Africa.] Portuguese contact with Abyssinia, the Portuguese conquest of Zanzibar and long occupation of Mombassa very naturally led to this people acquiring in their intercourse with Arabs and Abyssinians some idea of the geography of inner Africa,--ideas which were added to by the information collected on the West Coast. Nevertheless, strange to say, they were less correct in their surmises than Claudius Ptolemæus. The maps of the Nile and the geography of inner Africa which they formed on the reports of their explorers and missionaries were altogether misleading. Their delineation of the whole interior of the western half of Africa bears absolutely no correspondence to actuality in geographical features; moreover, they were so ignorant of the simplest principles of hydrography as to make one lake give rise to several great rivers.[25] The only element of truth in all their guesses at the inner waterways of Africa lay in their delineation of Abyssinia. They put down with some likeness to actuality the Blue Nile, and they named correctly the principal countries that lie to the south of Abyssinia proper. But this contribution was vitiated by the exaggerations regarding distances,--exaggerations perpetrated chiefly by map-makers,--so that the Blue Nile and its tributaries, and such provinces as Gojam, Kaffa, Shoa, etc., instead of lying a considerable distance north of the equator, were dragged far to the south of the line, and these features were even made to encroach on the basin of the Congo. A good idea of the extent of Portuguese knowledge and fable concerning the geography of inner Africa may be obtained from a glance