Attracted towards the mystery of the Nile and of the so-called Christian civilisation of Abyssinia, that Duke of Saxe-Gotha who had taken Ludolf into his diplomatic service caused another Saxon, named Michael Wansleb (born at Erfurt), to learn Amharic first of all from Ludolf, and then to go to Abyssinia. Here he was expected to explore, and also to collect liturgies and other books likely to throw light on the Abyssinian version of Christianity, which the Duke believed would be found to be in harmony with Lutheranism. Wansleb never succeeded in getting to Abyssinia, but journeyed for some distance up the Nile and wrote on the subject of Egypt, publishing also in London, between 1661 and 1671, a number of Abyssinian liturgies and dissertations on the Amharic language. In 1668 the then recently founded Royal Society in England took up the question of the Portuguese explorations of the Nile sources, and ordered that the translation of a Portuguese manuscript by Sir Peter Wyche should be printed and published. This little work is described as “A Short Relation of the River Nile, etc.: Writings by an Eye-witness who lived many years in the Abyssine Empire.” Sir Peter Wyche probably did little else than translate and collate what seemed to him the most interesting extracts from the works of Paez and Lobo. These works were seemingly written first of all in Portuguese, but were never printed in that language. Paez’ manuscript was translated into Latin and published at Rome in 1652 by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. The Portuguese manuscript of Jeronimo Lobo was translated at length into English, and published in London by the Jesuit father F. Balthazar Tellez. Seemingly, however, this book was issued either in a Portuguese or a Latin version at Lisbon in 1670. It was translated into French from the original Portuguese manuscript by M. Le Grand in the early part of the eighteenth century, and this translation, with some additional matter, was rendered into English and published in London in 1735. The Royal Society’s paraphrase of which Sir Peter Wyche was author contains no new matter, but its date is worthy of remark,--1668. It would seem as though Sir Peter Wyche had had access to Lobo’s manuscript, or to the joint works of Lobo and Paez, before the actual publication of Lobo’s book in 1670. It is further remarkable as showing the intelligent interest taken in these geographical questions at that day by the cultivated classes in England. CHAPTER VII FRENCH INQUIRIES AND D’ANVILLE’S MAPS