To The Immense Labours And Fatigues Of The Portuguese Mankind Is
Indebted For The Knowledge Of The Real Cause Of These Inundations So
Great And So Regular.
Their observations inform us that Abyssinia,
where the Nile rises and waters vast tracts of land, is full of
Mountains, and in its natural situation much higher than Egypt; that
all the winter, from June to September, no day is without rain; that
the Nile receives in its course all the rivers, brooks, and torrents
which fall from those mountains; these necessarily swell it above
the banks, and fill the plains of Egypt with the inundation. This
comes regularly about the month of July, or three weeks after the
beginning of a rainy season in Aethiopia. The different degrees of
this flood are such certain indications of the fruitfulness or
sterility of the ensuing year, that it is publicly proclaimed in
Cairo how much the water hath gained each night. This is all I have
to inform the reader of concerning the Nile, which the Egyptians
adored as the deity, in whose choice it was to bless them with
abundance, or deprive them of the necessaries of life.
Chapter XI
The author discovers a passage over the Nile. Is sent into the
province of Ligonus, which he gives a description of. His success
in his mission. The stratagem of the monks to encourage the
soldiers. The author narrowly escapes being burned.
When I was to cross this river at Boad, I durst not venture myself
on the floats I have already spoken of, but went up higher in hopes
of finding a more commodious passage. I had with me three or four
men that were reduced to the same difficulty with myself. In one
part seeing people on the other side, and remarking that the water
was shallow, and that the rocks and trees which grew very thick
there contributed to facilitate the attempt, I leaped from one rock
to another, till I reached the opposite bank, to the great amazement
of the natives themselves, who never had tried that way; my four
companions followed me with the same success: and it hath been
called since the passage of Father Jerome.
That province of the kingdom of Damot, which I was assigned to by my
superior, is called Ligonus, and is perhaps one of the most
beautiful and agreeable places in the world; the air is healthful
and temperate, and all the mountains, which are not very high,
shaded with cedars. They sow and reap here in every season, the
ground is always producing, and the fruits ripen throughout the
year; so great, so charming is the variety, that the whole region
seems a garden laid out and cultivated only to please. I doubt
whether even the imagination of a painter has yet conceived a
landscape as beautiful as I have seen. The forests have nothing
uncouth or savage, and seem only planted for shade and coolness.
Among a prodigious number of trees which fill them, there is one
kind which I have seen in no other place, and to which we have none
that bears any resemblance. This tree, which the natives call
ensete, is wonderfully useful; its leaves, which are so large as to
cover a man, make hangings for rooms, and serve the inhabitants
instead of linen for their tables and carpets. They grind the
branches and the thick parts of the leaves, and when they are
mingled with milk, find them a delicious food. The trunk and the
roots are even more nourishing than the leaves or branches, and the
meaner people, when they go a journey, make no provision of any
other victuals. The word ensete signifies the tree against hunger,
or the poor's tree, though the most wealthy often eat of it. If it
be cut down within half a foot of the ground and several incisions
made in the stump, each will put out a new sprout, which, if
transplanted, will take root and grow to a tree. The Abyssins
report that this tree when it is cut down groans like a man, and, on
this account, call cutting down an ensete killing it. On the top
grows a bunch of five or six figs, of a taste not very agreeable,
which they set in the ground to produce more trees.
I stayed two months in the province of Ligonus, and during that time
procured a church to be built of hewn stone, roofed and wainscoted
with cedar, which is the most considerable in the whole country. My
continual employment was the duties of the mission, which I was
always practising in some part of the province, not indeed with any
extraordinary success at first, for I found the people inflexibly
obstinate in their opinions, even to so great a degree, that when I
first published the Emperor's edict requiring all his subjects to
renounce their errors, and unite themselves to the Roman Church,
there were some monks who, to the number of sixty, chose rather to
die by throwing themselves headlong from a precipice than obey their
sovereign's commands: and in a battle fought between these people
that adhered to the religion of their ancestors, and the troops of
Sultan Segued, six hundred religious, placing themselves at the head
of their men, marched towards the Catholic army with the stones of
the altars upon their heads, assuring their credulous followers that
the Emperor's troops would immediately at the sight of those stones
fall into disorder and turn their backs; but, as they were some of
the first that fell, their death had a great influence upon the
people to undeceive them, and make them return to the truth. Many
were converted after the battle, and when they had embraced the
Catholic faith, adhered to that with the same constancy and firmness
with which they had before persisted in their errors.
The Emperor had sent a viceroy into this province, whose firm
attachment to the Roman Church, as well as great abilities in
military affairs, made him a person very capable of executing the
orders of the Emperor, and of suppressing any insurrection that
might be raised, to prevent those alterations in religion which they
were designed to promote:
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