Every body agreed that these explanations were the best possible, excepting the king, who perceived a degree of malice in the foretelling his death and certain loss of his army just at the instant he was taking the field. But he disguised his resentment under strong irony, with which he attacked these diviners incessantly. He had inquired accurately the day of his mother’s death: “How is it, says he to his chaplain, (or kees hatzé) that this comet should come to _foretel_ my mother’s death, when she was dead four days before it appeared?” Another day, to the same person he said, “I fear you do my mother too much honour at the expence of religion. Is it decent to suppose that such a star, the most remarkable appearance at the birth of Christ, should now be employed on no greater errand than to foretel the death of the daughter of Guebra Mascal?” These, and many more such railleries, accounted by these visionaries, as little short of impiety, so mortified Kostè (the kees hatzé,) a great believer in, and protector of the dreamers, that he resigned all his employments, and retired among the hermits into the desert of Werk-leva towards Sennaar, to study the aspects of the stars more accurately, and more at leisure. Though we neither pay this comet the superstitious reverence the idle fanatics of Abyssinia shewed it, nor yet treat it with that contempt which this great king’s good sense prompted him to do, we shall make some use of it, acknowledging our gratitude to the historian who has recorded it. We shall hereby endeavour to establish our chronology in opposition to that of the catholic writers, relating to the date of some transactions with which they were not cotemporaries, and only relate from hearsay, as happening before the arrival of the missionaries in this country. Yasous the Great, of whom we are now writing, came to the throne upon the death of his father Hannes in 1680; the 9th year of this reign then was 1689. Hedar is the 3d month of the Abyssinians, and answers to part of our November; and the 12th of that month, Hedar, is the feast of St Michael the archangel, or 8th day of our month November, N. S. Gondar is in lat. 12° 34´ 30´´ N. and in long. 37° 33´ 0´´ E. from the meridian of Greenwich. By the fiery appearance of the nucleus, or body of the comet, it certainly then was very near the sun, and either was going down upon it to its perihelion, or had already passed it, and was receding to its aphelion; but by its increasing tail, already at a great length, we may conjecture it was only then going down to its conjunction, and was then near approaching to the sun.