CHAPTER VI

PORTUGAL AND ABYSSINIA

Portugal was created by the crusading spirit. The King of Castile, who had become the leading prince in the northern half of Spain, despatched a young Burgundian adventurer, Count Henry, to advance on the Douro from Galicia (in the northwest corner of the Spanish peninsula) and to drive the Moors into the sea,--either the Atlantic Ocean or the Straits of Gibraltar. Count Henry drove them at any rate half-way down that western coastland of the Spanish peninsula which we now call Portugal.[14] Lisbon was only eventually conquered from the Moors by the help of a large party of English volunteers who stopped to aid in this struggle with the Moslem while on their way to a Crusade in the Holy Land. Steadily, bit by bit, Count Henry and his successors, the kings of Portugal, drove the Moors southward into and out of the little province of Algarve, and then, flushed with continuous success, crossed the Straits, attacked them in Morocco, and added a large part of the present Empire of Morocco to the possessions of the Portuguese Crown.[15] These brilliant successes awoke a great spirit of discovery in Portugal,--a spirit fomented and encouraged by that noble and far-sighted man, Prince Henry the Navigator, who had himself shared in the Morocco wars. Rapidly the limits of the Portuguese explorations extended. First they rounded Cape Bojador on the northwest coast of Africa. Then they reached Sierra Leone, the gold coast, Benin (where they powerfully affected native art and industry), the Niger Delta, the Cameroons, the Congo, Angola, and the Cape of Good Hope. Once having passed this promontory, whence they had once retired baffled, their great navigator, Vasco da Gama, carried on the exploration of the coasts of Africa eastward and northward to Mombasa and thence to India. Succeeding vessels explored the Red Sea, and the expeditions they conveyed attempted to get into touch with Abyssinia, where, according to the rumours brought home by crusaders and Italian merchants from Egypt, there lay a Christian country ruled by a pious monarch, John the Priest.[16] But before ever Vasco da Gama had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the Portuguese, by contact with the Moors, had heard of Arab settlements on the East Coast of Africa, and of the insular character of the great continent. Their government, therefore, in 1486 despatched on a journey to Egypt, India, and eastern Africa Pero de Covilhaõ to spy out the land.

This was a very risky journey in those days when the jealousy of Venice was added to the fanaticism of the Moslems. But Pero de Covilhaõ fulfilled his mission. He visited Egypt, the Red Sea, and India. He then, on his return journey, touched at many of the Arab ports on the East African coast. Finally he disembarked at Masawa, and travelled to Abyssinia, the first intelligent European to enter that country for a very long period of time,--the first, in fact, since the Greek merchants and missionaries who traded and travelled under the Byzantine Empire. The King of Abyssinia was so delighted with the advent of this white man, yet so suspicious of his country’s motives, that he was detained as an unwilling guest in Abyssinia for several years, and died when on his way home. But the Portuguese fleet came to Masawa in 1520 with an embassy which remained in the country of Abyssinia for six years. In this embassy were the priests Bermudez and Francisco Alvarez. Alvarez afterwards (about 1550) wrote an interesting account of Abyssinia, describing more especially the province of Tigre, and alluding to the Atbara (there known as the Takaze) as the main Nile.

Bermudez became for a time the primate or patriarch of Abyssinia. The Jesuit missionaries, for the most part Portuguese, strove hard to replace the corrupt Greek Christianity of the country by the Latin rite. This action not unnaturally set up against them a strong body of opponents in the native Abyssinian priesthood. For a time, however, the civilisation they introduced, and their trading connection with India, made a great impression on the king and chieftains of Ethiopia, until, as will be seen later on, the country became suspicious of Portuguese intentions, observing the facility with which parts of East Africa, India, and the shores of the Persian Gulf had been conquered and occupied by the Portuguese. But before this jealousy was to culminate in the expulsion of the Portuguese from Abyssinia one hundred years later, the Christian rulers of that country were forced to appeal to Portugal for help and armed intervention. As already mentioned in Chapter V., an attack on Abyssinia had been made by a Muhammadan chieftain of the Danakil country,--Muhammad Granye, or Muhammad the Lame. This man was probably of Somali race, and ruled the country round about Tajurra Bay,--the French Somaliland of to-day. In alliance with the Arabs and Turks, he not only created the Somali kingdom of Adel, but ravaged the greater part of Abyssinia. His policy was distinctly anti-Christian, and it is conceivable that he might have extinguished for ever the Christian Semite rule over Abyssinia but for the intervention of the Portuguese. The Emperor David, about 1530, managed to send emissaries (probably Jesuit priests) to Lisbon to implore the assistance of the King of Portugal. The result was that Dom Estevaõ da Gama (son of the celebrated Vasco[17]) as Portuguese Admiral entered the Red Sea with the Portuguese fleet, and landed at Masawa four hundred Portuguese under the command of his brother Christophoro da Gama. The Portuguese brought with them firearms, with which apparently the Muhammadan invaders of Abyssinia were at first unprovided. They threw into the struggle with the Somalis and Arabs all the crusading ardour with which their ancestors had driven the Moors out of Portugal. Christophoro da Gama was a heroic figure, a very paladin. He excited the admiration of his Somali opponent, who at one stage of the struggle offered him a safe conduct to the coast and the means of departing from Abyssinia worth all the honours of war. Nevertheless, the four hundred Portuguese inflicted reverse after reverse on the thousands that followed the banner of Muhammad Granye, who at that time was practically master even of the mountainous regions of Abyssinia. Some of the Portuguese went to the assistance of the fugitive Emperor of Abyssinia. Those that remained under Christophoro da Gama, despite the constant defeats they inflicted on superior numbers, gradually found themselves isolated and vastly outnumbered. The Turks had taken alarm at Portuguese successes, and had sent to Muhammad Granye’s assistance a train of artillery, while two thousand Arabs with muskets crossed over from Mokha and joined the Somalis. Thus reinforced, Muhammad Granye attacked the Portuguese entrenched camp, which he ultimately carried, when the unfortunate Christophoro da Gama had one arm broken and his knee shattered. A few of the Portuguese escaped and joined the Abyssinians, but most of them were slaughtered by Muhammad Granye. Christophoro da Gama, however, though wounded, managed with ten of his men to escape on horseback to a forest. Here he was captured by Muhammad Granye, who, after inflicting much torture on him, offered, in admiration of his bravery, to set him at liberty and assist him to return to India, if only he would abjure Christianity. The blazing indignation with which he answered this proposal so enraged Muhammad Granye that he struck off his head with a sword. The body of Dom Christophoro was then cut into quarters and his remains buried in separate places. Ultimately, however, the bones are supposed to have been gathered together by Roman Catholic Abyssinians, and some seventy years later the skull of the martyr was thought to have been found by Jeronimo Lobo.

Amongst the Portuguese who escaped slaughter at the hands of Muhammad Granye was Pedro Leon, who had been body-servant to Christophoro da Gama. Assisted by the advice of this little band of Portuguese heroes, the Emperor of Abyssinia at last made a successful stand against the Muhammadan invader. In the furious battle which ensued, the Portuguese directed all their energies against that part of the Somali army where Muhammad Granye was commanding. Pedro Leon, filled with a holy rage, singled out the Somali king from amongst his men, and shot him through the head with a musket. Muhammad Granye did not die at once, but managed to escape for some distance from the battlefield, being always, however, resolutely followed on horseback by Pedro Leon. At last Muhammad fell down dead, and Leon, having satisfied himself of the fact, cut off one of his ears to prove to the Emperor of Abyssinia that it was he who had avenged Dom Christophoro. After the death of their leader the Muhammadan forces melted away, and Christian Abyssinia slowly recovered from the greatest crisis in its fortunes prior to the Italian invasion of 1896.

In 1615[18] a notable advance in Nile exploration was made. Father Pedro Paez was shown by the Abyssinians the sources of the Blue Nile on the Sagada or Sakala Mountain in the western part of the province of Gojam. Paez mentions that the river, before it enters Lake Tsana, is styled the Jemma, a term which scarcely differs from its name at the present day. He also alludes to, though he does not describe very carefully, Lake Tsana.

In 1622 Father Jeronimo Lobo left Lisbon and proceeded to Goa, whence, after staying for more than a year, he started for Abyssinia. News had reached the Portuguese at Goa, from such of the missionaries as remained in Abyssinia, that the Emperor of that country had decided to join the Roman Church. A pressing demand was made for more Portuguese missionaries to strengthen this conversion, and the missionaries were advised to enter Ethiopia by way of the river Nile, through Dongola and Sennar. Unfortunately the secretary to the missionaries in Abyssinia mixed up the word Dancala (Dongola) with the country of the Danakil (on the Red Sea),[19] and advised the Jesuits at Goa to land at Zeila (Somaliland), and make their way through the Danakil country to Abyssinia. It was attempted to carry out this unfortunate advice. The eight missionaries who started from Goa were to divide into two companies, one to go to Zeila, and the other to land at Melinda (Malindi) on the Zanzibar coast, and thence make their way overland to Abyssinia,--rather a “large order” at that date (to use modern slang). Those that went by sea to Zeila were seized by the Turks, though finally released at the intercession of the Emperor of Abyssinia, who bribed the Turkish Pasha with the present of a zebra.[20] The other four missionaries, among whom Lobo was one, were again divided into two lots. Two of the fathers that were to attempt entering southern Abyssinia from Somaliland were duly landed at Zeila. A Muhammadan chieftain who was styled king of the country (probably in the neighbourhood of Tajurra Bay) seized these unfortunate missionaries and threw them into prison. In spite of the entreaties of the Emperor of Abyssinia, this Muhammadan chieftain (some relation of the Muhammad Granye who had been killed by the Portuguese when he invaded Abyssinia seventy years previously) finally had the Jesuits beheaded.

Father Lobo and a companion were conveyed by a Portuguese ship to the island of Lamu on the Zanzibar coast. Thence with great difficulty they made their way in a boat along the coast to the mouth of the Juba River, where they came into contact with the “Galles,”[21] probably the existing Ogadein Somalis. These boisterous people soon made it apparent to the missionaries that any journey overland from Kismayu to Zeila and Abyssinia was an impossibility; so, after many hardships, they eventually made their way back to Mombasa and India.

In 1625[22] Lobo and his companion once more started for Abyssinia, and this time sailed past Sokotra Island and Cape Guardafui, and finally landed at Baylur (Bailul), a port opposite Mokha, on the coast of the little known Danakil country. Here they received a very friendly reception, owing to the precautions taken by the Emperor of Abyssinia; and the two Portuguese missionaries actually made their way through the country of the fierce Danakil and across the salt deserts and blazing steppes of that inhospitable region, which along the same route has probably never since been traversed by Europeans. “Our clothes tattered, and our feet bloody,” they climbed the Abyssinian mountains, rejoicing at the cool temperature, running water, and singing birds, and at length reached the Jesuit settlement of Fremona.[23] After undergoing many risks and dangers owing to the hostility with which the Abyssinians of Tigre regarded the Latin Christianity introduced by the Jesuits, Lobo started for the kingdom of Damot, which is in the southern part of Abyssinia proper, between the Blue Nile and Lake Tsana. Prior to his crossing the Blue Nile, he had paid a ceremonial visit to the Emperor of Abyssinia. He mentions that the Blue Nile (which he not unnaturally considers to be the main stream) is called by the Abyssinians Abavi. This may be an older form than Abai, and is perhaps a little nearer to the Hellenised Astapus. The Blue Nile, he found, as his predecessor Paez had declared, takes its rise on the declivity of a mountain called Sakala (Sagada), some distance to the south-southwest of Lake Tsana. The source of the Blue Nile he describes as follows: “This spring, or rather these two springs, are two holes, each about two feet in diameter, a short distance from each other. One is about five feet and a half in depth.... The other, which is somewhat less, has no bottom. We were assured by the inhabitants that none had ever been found. It is believed here that these springs are the vents of a great subterranean lake, and they have this circumstance to favour their opinion: that the ground is always moist, and so soft that the water boils up under foot as one walks upon it. This is more remarkable after rain, for then the ground yields and sinks so much that I believe it is chiefly supported by roots of trees that are interwoven one with another.” Father Lobo declares that the infant Blue Nile (which bears the name of Jimma) only enters Lake Tsana[24] on the southwest to leave that lake not far from its entry, turning abruptly to the east and south. It crosses Lake Tsana only at one end, “with so violent a rapidity that the waters of the Nile may be distinguished through all the passage, which is six leagues.” Fifteen miles from the point where the Nile leaves Lake Tsana it “forms one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the world,” under which Father Lobo rested himself “for the sake of the coolness.” He was charmed “with the thousand delightful rainbows which the sunbeams painted on the water in all their shining and lovely colours. The fall of this mighty stream from so great a height makes a noise which may be heard from a considerable distance, and the mist rising from this fall of water may be seen much further than the noise can be heard.” Father Lobo notes that at the cataracts which succeeded this splendid fall there was a bridge of timber (logs) over which the whole Abyssinian army had recently passed, but he goes on to state that the Emperor had since built a bridge of one arch in the same place, for which purpose masons were imported from India. This stone bridge was the first erected in Abyssinia.

Father Lobo makes a truthful observation regarding the source of the Nile floods, believing them to arise rather from the excessive rainfall on the high mountains of Abyssinia than from the melting of the snows in the summer. He declares, in fact, that he only saw snow on the Samien and Namera mountains, and in small quantity.

As to the country of Damot, to the south of Lake Tsana, in which he was sent to reside for a time, he expatiates enthusiastically on its beauty, fertility, and perfect climate. He also describes here--first of all Europeans--the wild banana, or Ensete, the name of which he declares means “the tree for hunger,” though it is difficult to understand, from our subsequent knowledge of the wild banana and from Father Lobo’s description, how it can be used as an article of food, as its fruit is almost inedible, while the leaves and watery trunk are quite unfit for food.

But Lobo’s residence in Damot was not lengthy, as, owing to the jealous suspicions of the Abyssinians, he was sent back to reside with the rest of the Jesuits in Tigre. Their settlement of Fremona, where some hundred Portuguese priests and seminarists were established, was attacked by the Abyssinians. The Portuguese defended themselves bravely, and for a time there was a truce. The friendly Emperor of Abyssinia had died, and the subsidiary chiefs all believed that Portugal intended to invade and annex Abyssinia. The prowess of the four hundred Portuguese who in the preceding century had, as the allies of the Abyssinians, completely routed the Muhammadan invaders, made them feel that a few thousand Portuguese warriors would soon add Abyssinia to the Portuguese Empire. At this juncture the Portuguese sent a strong expedition to chastise the Sultan of Tajurra who had killed the missionaries.

After attempting to flee from Abyssinia and make their way to the coast of the Red Sea, the whole of the Portuguese colony of Fremona was handed over to the Turks at Masawa, and by them sent to Suakin. They underwent cruel sufferings at the hands of the Turks, but some of the missionaries, including Father Lobo, were allowed to ransom themselves, and return in a ship to India. Here Lobo endeavoured to induce the Viceroy of Portuguese India to send an expedition against the Turks of Suakin in order to release the priests that were left in their hands; but the viceroy declined to take this step without the consent of the Portuguese Government. Accordingly Father Lobo started for Lisbon, was shipwrecked on the coast of Natal, fell into the hands of the Dutch, but in spite of his extraordinary hardships, and difficulties wellnigh insurmountable, actually returned to Portugal; whence he went to plead at Rome the cause of Latin Christianity in Abyssinia. The missionaries left in the hands of the Turks at Suakin were eventually ransomed, and returned to India. The few Portuguese missionaries who for one cause or another were left in Abyssinia were all killed by the Abyssinians.

[Illustration: DAPPER’S MAP (AMSTERDAM, 1686).

Giving the falsified results of Portuguese explorations in East Africa.]

Portuguese contact with Abyssinia, the Portuguese conquest of Zanzibar and long occupation of Mombassa very naturally led to this people acquiring in their intercourse with Arabs and Abyssinians some idea of the geography of inner Africa,--ideas which were added to by the information collected on the West Coast. Nevertheless, strange to say, they were less correct in their surmises than Claudius Ptolemæus. The maps of the Nile and the geography of inner Africa which they formed on the reports of their explorers and missionaries were altogether misleading. Their delineation of the whole interior of the western half of Africa bears absolutely no correspondence to actuality in geographical features; moreover, they were so ignorant of the simplest principles of hydrography as to make one lake give rise to several great rivers.[25] The only element of truth in all their guesses at the inner waterways of Africa lay in their delineation of Abyssinia. They put down with some likeness to actuality the Blue Nile, and they named correctly the principal countries that lie to the south of Abyssinia proper. But this contribution was vitiated by the exaggerations regarding distances,--exaggerations perpetrated chiefly by map-makers,--so that the Blue Nile and its tributaries, and such provinces as Gojam, Kaffa, Shoa, etc., instead of lying a considerable distance north of the equator, were dragged far to the south of the line, and these features were even made to encroach on the basin of the Congo. A good idea of the extent of Portuguese knowledge and fable concerning the geography of inner Africa may be obtained from a glance 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).

Several Abyssinian converts of the Portuguese missionaries who had become devotedly attached to the Roman Catholic form of the Christian faith had proceeded to Italy for further instructions. Indeed, all through the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries Abyssinians constantly journeyed to Italy. They were able to traverse the Muhammadan countries of Nubia and Egypt very easily, either disguised as Copts or affecting to be Muhammadans. From the ports of Egypt they easily made their way to Venice or to Naples as traders. Four of these Christian Abyssinians, one of them known as Gregory, were established at Rome in the middle of the seventeenth century.

At Erfurt in Saxony was born, in 1624, the celebrated Ludolf, whose real name was Hiob Leutholf. Ludolf at an early age exhibited a remarkable talent for acquiring languages, and he had a special bent for the Semitic tongues. Having been entrusted with a secret mission to Rome by the Swedish Ambassador at Paris, Leutholf, or Ludolf, encountered in Rome these four Abyssinians. He spent three years in enthusiastically studying Amharic, and also the older liturgical tongue of Ethiopia, the Gez or Ge’ez. By the help of these Abyssinians he compiled a grammar of the Amharic, and dictionaries of that tongue and of the Ge’ez. He also wrote a history of Ethiopia; but, above all (as far as this book is concerned), he did important work in elucidating the geography of the northeastern portion of the Nile basin, and the information he received from Gregory and the other Abyssinians he carefully collated with the works of the Portuguese Jesuits. Although Ludolf never visited even Egypt, he did a great deal to assist the map-makers of his time to delineate the course of the Blue Nile and of the Atbara with its various affluents. Ludolf passed a good many years of his life in the diplomatic service of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha. Curiously enough, he not only visited England repeatedly, but became an Anglophil, and desired to establish trading connections between England and Abyssinia. The troubles consequent on James II.’s reign, and the jealous opposition of the Coptic Church in Egypt baulked his scheme, which was much taken up in high quarters in England, and which might, if it had been carried out, have strangely anticipated events in northeast Africa by establishing British influence in Egypt and Abyssinia at the end of the seventeenth century.

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.