chose first to endeavour, by fair means, to induce the ignorant savages to return to reason and obedience. With this view, he fent to expostulate with them; and to beg that, in articles of faith, they would suffer themselves to be examined and instructed by men of learning and good life; not by those monks, ignorant like themselves, from whom they only could learn vice, blasphemy, and rebellion. To this the Damots answered, as one man, That, if his friendship for them and good intentions were real, he should give them, for proof, the immediate burning of all the Latin books which had been translated into the Ethiopian language, and that, then, he should hang those Jesuits who were with him upon a high tree.
We are not, however, to consider this was really from a conviction or persuasion of the Damots, who inhabit a province bordering upon the Agows and Gongas, and their christianity much upon a par with that of either of these nations. But the fact was, that the fanatics and zealots for the Alexandrian faith had retired in great numbers to Damot, as to a province the worst affected to the king, from the recent violence of Julius, who, in an expedition against the Shangalla, by order of the king had driven off the cattle of the peaceable Damots, who had been then guilty of no offence. And as these were ready to rebel for a quarrel merely their own, it was very easy for the schismatical monks to add this religious grievance to the sum of the preceding.
Sela Christos had with him about 7000 men, most of them Catholics and veteran soldiers; and among these 40 Portuguese, partly on foot, armed with musquets, the others
