arrived at Axum, they should seek a ship to carry them back again to Zeyla, 300 miles eastward, when they were then going to Gondar, not much above a hundred miles west of Axum. This seems to me absolutely impossible to explain.
Still, however, another difficulty remains; Tigré is said, by the Jesuits, and by M. Le Grande their historian, to be full of mountains, so high that the Alps and Appenines were very inconsiderable in comparison. And suppose it was otherwise, there is no navigable river, indeed no river at all, that runs through Tigré into the Red Sea, and there is the desert of Samhar to pass, where there is no water at all. How is it possible a ship from the coast of Malabar should get up 200 miles from any sea among the mountains of Tigré? I hope the publisher will compare this with any map he pleases, and correct it in his errata, otherwise his narrative is unintelligible, unless all this was intended to be placed to the account of miracles—Peter walked upon the water, and Lobo the Jesuit sailed upon dry land.
Dr Johnson, or his publisher, involves his reader in another strange perplexity. "Dancala is a city of Africa in Upper Ethiopia, upon the Nile, in the tract of Nubia, of which it is the capital;" and the emperor wrote, "that the missionaries might easily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala[1]." It is very difficult to understand how people, in a ship from India, could enter Abyssinia by the way of Dancala, if that city is upon the Nile; because no where, that Iknow,
- ↑ Page 28.
