the missionary and the ambassador, was still hesitating whether to allow them to proceed, when Manquer, who fled from Amelmal, arrived. Aliko, hearing from this incendiary, that the father's errand was to bring Portuguese that way from India to destroy the Mahometan faith, as in former times, burst into such violent rage as to threaten the father, and all with him, with death, which nothing but the reality of the king's letters, of which he had got assurance from Baharo, and some regard to the law of nations, on account of the ambassador Fecur Egzie, could have prevented. In the mean time, he put them all in close prison, where several of the Portuguese died. At last, after a council held, in which Manquer gave his voice for putting them to death, a man of superior character in that country advised the fending them back to Amelmal, the way that they came; and this measure was accordingly adopted.
They returned, therefore, from Cambat, and thence to Gorgora, without any fort of advantage to themselves or to us, only what arises from that opportunity of rectifying the geography of the country through which they palled; and even for this they have furnished but very scanty materials, in comparison of what we might reasonably have expected, without having occasioned any additional fatigue to themselves.
We have already said, that though Socinios had not openly declared his resolution of embracing the Catholic faith, yet he had gone so far as to declare, upon the dispute held between the Catholic and schismatic clergy, in his own presence and that of the Abuna, that the Abyssinian
