appy people, whom want had
compelled to abandon their habitations, and whose pale cheeks and meagre
bodies were undeniable proofs of their misery and distress. All the
relief I could possibly afford them could not prevent the death of such
numbers that their bodies filled the highways; and to increase our
affliction, the wolves having devoured the carcases, and finding no other
food, fell upon the living; their natural fierceness being so increased
by hunger, that they dragged the children out of the very houses. I saw
myself a troop of wolves tear a child of six years old in pieces before I
or any one else could come to its assistance.

While I was entirely taken up with the duties of my ministry, the viceroy
of Tigre received the commands of the Emperor to search for the bones of
Don Christopher de Gama. On this occasion it may not be thought
impertinent to give some account of the life and death of this brave and
holy Portuguese, who, after having been successful in many battles, fell
at last into the hands of the Moors, and completed that illustrious life
by a glorious martyrdom.

CHAPTER V

The adventures of the Portuguese, and the actions of Don Christopher de
Gama in AEthiopia.

About the beginning of the sixteenth century arose a Moor near the Cape
of Gardafui, who, by the assistance of the forces sent him from Moca by
the Arabs and Turks, conquered almost all Abyssinia, and founded the
kingdom of Adel. He was called Mahomet Gragne, or the Lame. When he had
ravaged AEthiopia fourteen years, and was master of the greatest part of
it, the Emperor David sent to implore succour of the King of Portugal,
with a promise that when those dominions were recovered which had been
taken from him, he would entirely submit himself to the Pope, and resign
the third part of his territories to the Portuguese. After many delays,
occasioned by the great distance between Portugal and Abyssinia, and some
unsuccessful attempts, King John the Third, having made Don Stephen de
Gama, son of the celebrated Don Vasco de Gama, viceroy of the Indies,
gave him orders to enter the Red Sea in pursuit of the Turkish galleys,
and to fall upon them wherever he found them, even in the Port of Suez.
The viceroy, in obedience to the king's commands, equipped a powerful
fleet, went on board himself, and cruised about the coast without being
able to discover the Turkish vessels. Enraged to find that with this
great preparation he shoul