Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 2 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773Bruce, James
History
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 2 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773
Bruce, James
Egypt -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- History; Natural history -- Ethiopia; Nile River
The old monk sings again; the cow is brought in great hurry, and
sacrificed, and pieces of it thrown to the rats and mice: again they
fall to work with double keenness, the mole-holes vanish, and a hard
rock appears. This being the last obstacle, they fall keenly upon the
rock, and the old monk chants till he is hoarse with singing; the heat
of the sun is excessive; no gold appears; John Akay loses his patience,
and asks when it may be seen? The monks lay the whole blame upon him,
because, they say, he had not enough of faith. They give over work;
with one consent fall to eating the cow, and then disperse.
Father Jerome, takes the opportunity of this disappointment to abuse
the monks. He presents the Baharnagash with two ounces of gold, and
some other trifles, instead of the treasure which he was to get in the
mountain: he obtains the request he came to solicit, and the patriarch
and fathers return to Addicota.
Facilidas, informed of the asylum afforded to the Jesuits who had fled
from Fremona, applied to John Akay, promising him forgivenness of what
was past if he would deliver the priests under his protection. This
John Akay declined to do from motives of delicacy. It was breaking his
word to deliver his guests into the hands of the king; but, by a very
strange refinement, he agreed to sell them to the Turks. Accordingly
they were delivered for a sum to the basha of Masuah, who received them
with much greater kindness than they had experienced in the Christian
country from which they fled.
Two Jesuits were purposely left behind, with the consent of John
Akay, unknown to Facilidas, in fervent hopes that some occasion would
soon offer of suffering martyrdom for the true faith; and in this
expectation they were not long disappointed, all those who were left in
Abyssinia having lost their lives by violent deaths, most of them on a
gibbet, by order of Facilidas, the last of whom was Bernard Nogeyra.
Facilidas, weary of the obstinacy of these missionaries, uneasy also
at the suspicions they created, that a number of Portuguese troops
would be poured in upon his country by the viceroy of India, concluded
a treaty with the bashas of Masuah and Suakem, for preventing any
Portuguese passing into Abyssinia, by shutting these ports against
them. Not above eight years before, that is, in the year 1624, Socinios
had sent a zebra, and several other curious articles, as presents
to the basha of Suakem, with a request to him not to obstruct, as
the Turks had used to do, the entrance of any Portuguese into his
dominions. But those times were now so changed, that both nations,
Turks and Abyssinians, had resolved, with one consent, to exclude them
all, for their mutual safety, peace, and advantage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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