I shall now leave Don Roderigo to pursue his journey towards the king at Shoa. The history of it, and of his embassy, published at large by Alvarez his chaplain, has not met, from the historians of his own country, with a reception which favours the authenticity of its narrative. There are, indeed, in the whole of it, and especially where religion is concerned, many things very difficult of belief, which seem to be the work of the Jesuits some years posterior to the time in which Alvarez was in Abyssinia. Tellez condemns him, though a writer of those times; and Damianus Goez, one of the first historians, says, that he had seen a journal written in Alvarez’s own name, very different from the journal that is gone forth to the public. For my part, I can only say, that what is related of the first audience with the king, and many of the following pages, seem to me to be fabrications of people that never have been in Abyssinia; and, if this is the case, no imputation can be laid against Francisco Alvarez, as, perhaps, he is not the author of the misrepresentation in question. But, as to the cordiality with which the Catholic religion was received by the monks and people in general, during the long stay and bad reception Don Roderigo met with, I have no sort of doubt that this is a falsehood, and this must be charged directly to his account. We have already seen that, early as Zara Jacob’s time, the religion of the Franks was held in the utmost detestation, and that in Bæda Mariam’s reign the whole country was in rebellion, because the king had directed the Virgin Mary to be painted by one Branca Leon, a Venetian painter, then alive, and in court, when Don Roderigo de Lima was with the king in Shoa. Iscander and Naod were both strict in the tenets of the church of Alexandria; and two Abunas, Imaranha Christos, who lived till Iscander’s time, and Abuna Marcus, alive in Alvarez’s, had given no allowance for strange or foreign worship to be introduced. How the Catholic could be so favourably and generally received in the time of Alvarez is what I cannot conceive. Blood enough was spilt immediately afterwards, to shew that this affection to the Roman Catholic religion, if any such there was in Alvarez’s time, must have been merely transitory. When, therefore, I find any thing in this journal plainly misunderstood, I explain and vindicate it; where I see there is a fact deliberately misrepresented, such as the celebration of the Epiphany, I refute it from ocular demonstration. The rest of the journal I leave _in medio_ to the judgment of my reader, who will find it at his bookseller’s; only observing, that there can be no doubt that the journey itself was made by Don Roderigo, and the persons named with him. I have preserved the several stations of these travellers in my map, though a great part of the countries through which they passed is now in the hands of the Galla, and is as inaccessible to Abyssinians as it is to strangers.