Since
that time, however, there has been little intercourse and no cordiality
between them.
[5] Thus M. Isenberg (Preface to Ambaric Grammar, p. iv.) calls the city
Harrar or Ararge.
[6] "Harar," is not an uncommon name in this part of Eastern Africa:
according to some, the city is so called from a kind of tree, according to
others, from the valley below it.
[7] I say _about_: we were compelled to boil our thermometers at Wilensi,
not venturing upon such operation within the city.
[8] The other six were Efat, Arabini, Duaro, Sharka, Bali and Darah.
[9] A circumstantial account of the Jihad or Moslem crusades is, I am
told, given in the Fath el Habashah, unfortunately a rare work. The Amir
of Harar had but one volume, and the other is to be found at Mocha or
Hudaydah.
[10] This prince built "Debra Berhan," the "Hill of glory," a church
dedicated to the Virgin Mary at Gondar.
[11] A prince of many titles: he is generally called Wanag Suggad, "feared
amongst the lions," because he spent the latter years of his life in the
wild.
[12] Yemen submitted to Sulayman Pasha in A.D. 1538.
[13] "Gragne," or in the Somali dialect "Guray," means a left-handed man;
Father Lobo errs in translating it "the Lame."
[14] This exploit has been erroneously attributed to Nur, the successor of
Mohammed.
[15] This reverend Jesuit was commissioned in A.D. 1622, by the Count de
Vidigueira, Viceroy of the Indies, to discover where his relative Don
Christopher was buried, and to procure some of the relics. Assisted by the
son in law of the Abyssinian Emperor, Lobo marched with an army through
the Gallas, found the martyr's teeth and lower jaw, his arms and a picture
of the Holy Virgin which he always carried about him. The precious remains
were forwarded to Goa.
I love the style of this old father, so unjustly depreciated by our
writers, and called ignorant peasant and liar by Bruce, because he claimed
for his fellow countrymen the honor of having discovered the Coy
Fountains. The Nemesis who never sleeps punished Bruce by the justest of
retributions. His pompous and inflated style, his uncommon arrogance, and
over-weening vanity, his affectation of pedantry, his many errors and
misrepresentations, aroused against him a spirit which embittered the last
years of his life. It is now the fashion to laud Bruce, and to pity his
misfortunes. I cannot but think that he deserved them.
[16] Bruce, followed by most of our modern authors, relates a
circumstantial and romantic story of the betrayal of Don Christopher by
his mistress, a Turkish lady of uncommon beauty, who had been made
prisoner.
The more truth-like pages of Father Lobo record no such silly scandal
against the memory of the "brave and holy Portuguese." Those who are well
read in the works of the earlier eastern travellers will remember their
horror of "handling heathens after that fashion." And amongst those who
fought for the faith an _affaire de coeur_ with a pretty pagan was held to
be a sin as deadly as heresy or magic.
