at the celebrated Vatican map of Africa which, from information derived from the Portuguese and from the Abyssinian converts, was painted on one of the panels of a gallery at the Vatican in the seventeenth century. Several Portuguese adventurers were despatched in the sixteenth century across Africa from west to east to strike the Nile, but they were never heard of any more. Credit must be given to the Portuguese Jesuits for amassing much accurate knowledge regarding the scenery, people, and products of Abyssinia. There is a wonderfully interesting and very beautiful piece of tapestry in the Governor’s Palace at Valletta (Malta), which it is supposed was executed early in the eighteenth century from the information supplied by the Portuguese Jesuits. The characteristic fauna and flora, domestic animals, houses, and natives of Abyssinia are portrayed in this tapestry with great fidelity to nature. Later in the eighteenth century Portugal began to take up with some earnestness the scientific exploration of such African territories as remained to her after the revolt and the attacks of the East Coast Arabs, but these journeys and their results do not come within the scope of the present volume. Portuguese influence over Abyssinia had disappeared by the end of the seventeenth century, and almost all that remains of it is the name which the civilised world applies to this country. In the southeastern part of this powerful African state is the river Hawash, or Habash, which attempts to reach the Red Sea but finally expires in the barren sands of the Danakil country. The name of this river had been applied by the Arabs to the Semiticised people living north and west of its course. “Habash, Habshi”[26] was transmuted through the Portuguese speech to Abessi, Abessim, Abessinia. This in time was further misspelt in French and English as Abyssinie, Abyssinia. The Turks had always viewed with a great deal of jealousy and anger the attempts of Portugal to establish herself as mistress of the navigation of the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, and Arabian Sea. Consequently the Turks occupied and held Masawa, and drove away Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from easy contact with Abyssinia, which between 1633 and 1769 was only visited by one European, a French doctor named Poncet (1698).