he himself had often visited them, and was convinced the undertaking was very possible with such hands, and in the circumstances things then were. He told me likewise, that, in a written account which he had seen in Shoa, it was said that this prince was not interrupted by death in his undertaking, but persuaded by the monks, that if a greater quantity of water was let down into the dry kingdoms of Hadea, Mara, and Adel, increasing in population every day, and, even now, almost equal in power to Abyssinia itself, these
barren kingdoms would become the garden of the world;
and such a number of Saracens, dislodged from Egypt by
the first appearance of the Nile's failing, would fly thither: that they would not only withdraw those countries from their obedience, but be strong enough to over-run the whole kingdom of Abyssinia. Upon this, as Amha Yafous informed me, Lalibala gave over his first scheme, which was the famishing of Egypt; and that his next was employing the men in subterraneous churches; a useless expence, but more level to the understanding of common men than the former.
Don Roderigo de Lima, ambassador from the king of Portugal, in 1522 saw the remains of these vast works, and travelled in them several days, as we learn from Alvarez, the chaplain and historian of that embassy *[1], which we shall take notice of in its proper place.
Lalibala was distinguished both as a poet and an orator. The old fable, of a swarm of bees hanging to his lips
- See Alvarez, his relation of this Embassy.
- ↑ * See Alvarez, his relation of this Embassy.
