d the lightning often destroys great
numbers, a thing I can speak of from my own experience, for it once
flashed so near me, that I felt an uneasiness on that side for a long
time after; at the same time it killed three young children, and having
run round my room went out, and killed a man and woman three hundred
paces off. When the storm is over the sun shines out as before, and one
would not imagine it had rained, but that the ground appears deluged.
Thus passes the Abyssinian winter, a dreadful season, in which the whole
kingdom languishes with numberless diseases, an affliction which, however
grievous, is yet equalled by the clouds of grasshoppers, which fly in
such numbers from the desert, that the sun is hid and the sky darkened;
whenever this plague appears, nothing is seen through the whole region
but the most ghastly consternation, or heard but the most piercing
lamentations, for wherever they fall, that unhappy place is laid waste
and ruined; they leave not one blade of grass, nor any hopes of a
harvest.

God, who often makes calamities subservient to His will, permitted this
very affliction to be the cause of the conversion of many of the natives,
who might have otherwise died in their errors; for part of the country
being ruined by the grasshoppers that year in which we arrived at
Abyssinia, many, who were forced to leave their habitations, and seek the
necessaries of life in other places, came to that part of the land where
some of our missionaries were preaching, and laid hold on that mercy
which God seemed to have appointed for others.

As we could not go to court before November, we resolved, that we might
not be idle, to preach and instruct the people in the country; in
pursuance of this resolution I was sent to a mountain, two days' journey
distant from Maigoga. The lord or governor of the place was a Catholic,
and had desired missionaries, but his wife had conceived an implacable
aversion both from us and the Roman Church, and almost all the
inhabitants of that mountain were infected with the same prejudices as
she. They had been persuaded that the hosts which we consecrated and
gave to the communicants were mixed with juices strained from the flesh
of a camel, a dog, a hare, and a swine; all creatures which the Abyssins
look upon with abhorrence, believing them unclean, and forbidden to them,
as they were to the Jews. We had no way of undeceiving them, and they
fled from us whenever we approach