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A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Jerome Lobo
translated from the French by Samuel Johnson.





INTRODUCTION by Henry Morley, Editor of the 1887 edition



Jeronimo Lobo was born in Lisbon in the year 1593. He entered the
Order of the Jesuits at the age of sixteen. After passing through
the studies by which Jesuits were trained for missionary work, which
included special attention to the arts of speaking and writing,
Father Lobo was sent as a missionary to India at the age of twenty-
eight, in the year 1621. He reached Goa, as his book tells, in
1622, and was in 1624, at the age of thirty-one, told off as one of
the missionaries to be employed in the conversion of the
Abyssinians. They were to be converted, from a form of Christianity
peculiar to themselves, to orthodox Catholicism. The Abyssinian
Emperor Segued was protector of the enterprise, of which we have
here the story told.

Father Lobo was nine years in Abyssinia, from the age of thirty-one
to the age of forty, and this was the adventurous time of his life.
The death of the Emperor Segued put an end to the protection that
had given the devoted missionaries, in the midst of dangers, a
precarious hold upon their work. When he and his comrades fell into
the hands of the Turks at Massowah, his vigour of body and mind, his
readiness of resource, and his fidelity, marked him out as the one
to be sent to the headquarters in India to secure the payment of a
ransom for his companions. He obtained the ransom, and desired also
to obtain from the Portuguese Viceroy in India armed force to
maintain the missionaries in the position they had so far won. But
the Civil power was deaf to his pleading. He removed the appeal to
Lisbon, and after narrowly escaping on the way from a shipwreck, and
after having been captured by pirates, he reached Lisbon, and sought
still to obtain means of overawing the force hostile to the work of
the Jesuits in Abyssinia. The Princess Margaret gave friendly
hearing, but sent him on to persuade, if he could, the King of
Spain; and failing at Madrid, he went to Rome and tried the Pope.
He was chosen to go to the Pope, said the Patriarch Alfonso Mendez,
because, of all the brethren at Goa, the 'Pater Hieronymus Lupus'
(Lobo translated into Wolf) was the most ingenious and learned in
all sciences, with a mind most generous in its desire to conquer
difficulties, dexterous in management of business, and found most
able to make himself agreeable to those with whom there was business
to be done. The vigour with which he held by his purpose of
endeavouring in every possible way to bring the Christianity of
Abyssinia within the pale of the Catholic Church is in accordance
with the character that makes the centre of the story of this book.
Whimsical touches arise out of this strength of character and
readiness of resource, as when he tells of the taste of the
Abyssinians for raw cow's flesh, with a sauce high in royal
Abyssinian favour, made of the cow's gall and contents of its
entrails, of which, when he was pressed to partake, he could only
excuse himself and his brethren by suggesting that it was too good
for such humble missionaries. Out of distinguished respect for it,
they refrained from putting it into their mouths.

Good Father Lobo gave up the desire of his heart, when it was proved
unattainable, and returned to India six years after the breaking up
of his work in Abyssinia, at the age of forty-seven. He came to be
head of the Provincials of the Jesuit settlement at Goa, and after
about ten more years of active duty in the East returned in 1658 to
Lisbon, when he died in the religious house of St. Roque in 1678, at
the age of eighty-five. A comrade of Father Lobo's, Baltazar
Tellez, said that Lobo had travelled thirty-eight thousand leagues
with no other object before him but the winning of more souls to
God. His years in Abyssinia stood out prominently to his mind among
all the years of his long life, and he wrote an account of them in
Portuguese, of which the manuscript is at Lisbon in the monastery of
St. Roque, where he closed his life.

Of that manuscript, then and still unprinted (though use was made of
it by Baltazar Tellez in his History of 'Ethiopia-Coimbra,' 1660),
the Abbe Legrand, Prior of Neuville-les-Dames, and of Prevessin,
published a translation into French. The Abbe Legrand had been to
Lisbon as Secretary to the Abbe d'Estrees, Ambassador from France to
Portugal. The negotiations were so long continued that M. Legrand
was detained five years in Lisbon, and employed the time in
researches among documents illustrating the Portuguese possessions
in India and the East. He obtained many memoirs of great interest,
and published from one of them an account of Ceylon; but of all the
manuscripts he found none interested him so much as that of Father
Lobo. His translation was augmented with illustrative
dissertations, letters, and a memoir on the circumstances of the
death of M. du Roule. It filled two volumes, or 636 pages of forty
lines. This was published in 1728. It was on the 31st of October,
1728, that Samuel Johnson, aged nineteen, went to Pembroke College,
Oxford, and Legrand's 'Voyage Historique d'Abissinie du R. P. Jerome
Lobo, de la Compagnie de Jesus, Traduit du Portugais, continue et
augmente de plusieurs Dissertations, Lettres et Memoires,' was one
of the new books read by Johnson during his short period of college
life. In 1735, when Johnson's age was twenty-six, and the world
seemed to have shut against him every door of hope, Johnson stayed
for six months at Birmingham with his old schoolfellow Hector, who
was aiming at medical practice, and who lodged at the house of a
bookseller. Johnson spoke with interest of Father Lobo, whose book
he had read at Pembroke College. Mr. Warren, the bookseller,
thought it would be worth while to print a translation. Hector
joined in urging Johnson to undertake it, for a payment of five
guineas. Although nearly brought to a stop midway by hypochondriac
despondency, a little suggestion that the printers also were
stopped, and if they had not their work had not their pay, caused
Johnson to go on to the end. Legrand's book was reduced to a fifth
of its size by the omission of all that overlaid Father Lobo's
personal account of his adventures; and Johnson began work as a
writer with this translation, first published at Birmingham in 1735.
H.M.



THE PREFACE



The following relation is so curious and entertaining, and the
dissertations that accompany it so judicious and instructive, that
the translator is confident his attempt stands in need of no
apology, whatever censures may fall on the performance.

The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of his
countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantic absurdities or
incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, is at
least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the bounds of
probability has a right to demand that they should believe him who
cannot contradict him.

He appears by his modest and unaffected narration to have described
things as he saw them, to have copied nature from the life, and to
have consulted his senses, not his imagination; he meets with no
basilisks that destroy with their eyes, his crocodiles devour their
prey without tears, and his cataracts fall from the rock without
deafening the neighbouring inhabitants.

The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable
barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity, no perpetual
gloom or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described
either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private
and social virtues; here are no Hottentots without religion, polity,
or articulate language, no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely
skilled in all sciences: he will discover, what will always be
discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that wherever human
nature is to be found there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a
contest of passion and reason, and that the Creator doth not appear
partial in his distributions, but has balanced in most countries
their particular inconveniences by particular favours.

In his account of the mission, where his veracity is most to be
suspected, he neither exaggerates overmuch the merits of the
Jesuits, if we consider the partial regard paid by the Portuguese to
their countrymen, by the Jesuits to their society, and by the
Papists to their church, nor aggravates the vices of the Abyssins;
but if the reader will not be satisfied with a Popish account of a
Popish mission, he may have recourse to the history of the church of
Abyssinia, written by Dr. Geddes, in which he will find the actions
and sufferings of the missionaries placed in a different light,
though the same in which Mr. Le Grand, with all his zeal for the
Roman church, appears to have seen them.

This learned dissertator, however valuable for his industry and
erudition, is yet more to be esteemed for having dared so freely in
the midst of France to declare his disapprobation of the Patriarch
Oviedo's sanguinary zeal, who was continually importuning the
Portuguese to beat up their drums for missionaries, who might preach
the gospel with swords in their hands, and propagate by desolation
and slaughter the true worship of the God of Peace.

It is not easy to forbear reflecting with how little reason these
men profess themselves the followers of Jesus, who left this great
characteristic to His disciples, that they should be known by loving
one another, by universal and unbounded charity and benevolence.

Let us suppose an inhabitant of some remote and superior region, yet
unskilled in the ways of men, having read and considered the
precepts of the gospel, and the example of our Saviour, to come down
in search of the true church: if he would not inquire after it
among the cruel, the insolent, and the oppressive; among those who
are continually grasping at dominion over souls as well as bodies;
among those who are employed in procuring to themselves impunity for
the most enormous villainies, and studying methods of destroying
their fellow-creatures, not for their crimes but their errors; if he
would not expect to meet benevolence, engage in massacres, or to
find mercy in a court of inquisition, he would not look for the true
church in the Church of Rome.

Mr. Le Grand has given in one dissertation an example of great
moderation, in deviating from the temper of his religion, but in the
others has left proofs that learning and honesty are often too weak
to oppose prejudice. He has made no scruple of preferring the
testimony of Father du Bernat to the writings of all the Portuguese
Jesuits, to whom he allows great zeal, but little learning, without
giving any other reason than that his favourite was a Frenchman.
This is writing only to Frenchmen and to Papists: a Protestant
would be desirous to know why he must imagine that Father du Bernat
had a cooler head or more knowledge; and why one man whose account
is singular is not more likely to be mistaken than many agreeing in
the same account.

If the Portuguese were biassed by any particular views, another bias
equally powerful may have deflected the Frenchman from the truth,
for they evidently write with contrary designs: the Portuguese, to
make their mission seem more necessary, endeavoured to place in the
strongest light the differences between the Abyssinian and Roman
Church; but the great Ludolfus, laying hold on the advantage,
reduced these later writers to prove their conformity.

Upon the whole, the controversy seems of no great importance to
those who believe the Holy Scriptures sufficient to teach the way of
salvation, but of whatever moment it may be thought, there are not
proofs sufficient to decide it.

His discourses on indifferent subjects will divert as well as
instruct, and if either in these, or in the relation of Father Lobo,
any argument shall appear unconvincing, or description obscure, they
are defects incident to all mankind, which, however, are not too
rashly to be imputed to the authors, being sometimes, perhaps, more
justly chargeable on the translator.

In this translation, if it may be so called, great liberties have
been taken, which, whether justifiable or not, shall be fairly
confessed; and let the judicious part of mankind pardon or condemn
them.

In the first part the greatest freedom has been used in reducing the
narration into a narrow compass, so that it is by no means a
translation but an epitome, in which, whether everything either
useful or entertaining be comprised, the compiler is least qualified
to determine.

In the account of Abyssinia, and the continuation, the authors have
been followed with more exactness, and as few passages appeared
either insignificant or tedious, few have been either shortened or
omitted.

The dissertations are the only part in which an exact translation
has been attempted, and even in those abstracts are sometimes given
instead of literal quotations, particularly in the first; and
sometimes other parts have been contracted.

Several memorials and letters, which are printed at the end of the
dissertations to secure the credit of the foregoing narrative, are
entirely left out.

It is hoped that, after this confession, whoever shall compare this
attempt with the original, if he shall find no proofs of fraud or
partiality, will candidly overlook any failure of judgment.




PART I - THE VOYAGE TO ABYSSINIA




Chapter I



The author arrives after some difficulties at Goa. Is chosen for
the Mission of Aethiopia. The fate of those Jesuits who went by
Zeila. The author arrives at the coast of Melinda.


I embarked in March, 1622, in the same fleet with the Count
Vidigueira, on whom the king had conferred the viceroyship of the
Indies, then vacant by the resignation of Alfonso Noronha, whose
unsuccessful voyage in the foregoing year had been the occasion of
the loss of Ormus, which being by the miscarriage of that fleet
deprived of the succours necessary for its defence, was taken by the
Persians and English. The beginning of this voyage was very
prosperous: we were neither annoyed with the diseases of the
climate nor distressed with bad weather, till we doubled the Cape of
Good Hope, which was about the end of May. Here began our
misfortunes; these coasts are remarkable for the many shipwrecks the
Portuguese have suffered. The sea is for the most part rough, and
the winds tempestuous; we had here our rigging somewhat damaged by a
storm of lightning, which when we had repaired, we sailed forward to
Mosambique, where we were to stay some time. When we came near that
coast, and began to rejoice at the prospect of ease and refreshment,
we were on the sudden alarmed with the sight of a squadron of ships,
of what nation we could not at first distinguish, but soon
discovered that they were three English and three Dutch, and were
preparing to attack us. I shall not trouble the reader with the
particulars of this fight, in which, though the English commander
ran himself aground, we lost three of our ships, and with great
difficulty escaped with the rest into the port of Mosambique.

This place was able to afford us little consolation in our uneasy
circumstances; the arrival of our company almost caused a scarcity
of provisions. The heat in the day is intolerable, and the dews in
the night so unwholesome that it is almost certain death to go out
with one's head uncovered. Nothing can be a stronger proof of the
malignant quality of the air than that the rust will immediately
corrode both the iron and brass if they are not carefully covered
with straw. We stayed, however, in this place from the latter end
of July to the beginning of September, when having provided
ourselves with other vessels, we set out for Cochim, and landed
there after a very hazardous and difficult passage, made so partly
by the currents and storms which separated us from each other, and
partly by continual apprehensions of the English and Dutch, who were
cruising for us in the Indian seas. Here the viceroy and his
company were received with so much ceremony, as was rather
troublesome than pleasing to us who were fatigued with the labours
of the passage; and having stayed here some time, that the gentlemen
who attended the viceroy to Goa might fit out their vessels, we set
sail, and after having been detained some time at sea, by calms and
contrary winds, and somewhat harassed by the English and Dutch, who
were now increased to eleven ships of war, arrived at Goa, on
Saturday, the 16th of December, and the viceroy made his entry with
great magnificence.

I lived here about a year, and completed my studies in divinity; in
which time some letters were received from the fathers in Aethiopia,
with an account that Sultan Segued, Emperor of Abyssinia, was
converted to the Church of Rome, that many of his subjects had
followed his example, and that there was a great want of
missionaries to improve these prosperous beginnings. Everybody was
very desirous of seconding the zeal of our fathers, and of sending
them the assistance they requested; to which we were the more
encouraged, because the emperor's letters informed our provincial
that we might easily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala, but
unhappily, the secretary wrote Zeila for Dancala, which cost two of
our fathers their lives.

We were, however, notwithstanding the assurances given us by the
emperor, sufficiently apprised of the danger which we were exposed
to in this expedition, whether we went by sea or land. By sea, we
foresaw the hazard we run of falling into the hands of the Turks,
amongst whom we should lose, if not our lives, at least our liberty,
and be for ever prevented from reaching the court of Aethiopia.
Upon this consideration our superiors divided the eight Jesuits
chosen for this mission into two companies. Four they sent by sea
and four by land; I was of the latter number. The four first were
the more fortunate, who though they were detained some time by the
Turkish bassa, were dismissed at the request of the emperor, who
sent him a zebra, or wild ass, a creature of large size and
admirable beauty.

As for us, who were to go by Zeila, we had still greater
difficulties to struggle with: we were entirely strangers to the
ways we were to take, to the manners, and even to the names of the
nations through which we were to pass. Our chief desire was to
discover some new road by which we might avoid having anything to do
with the Turks. Among great numbers whom we consulted on this
occasion, we were informed by some that we might go through Melinda.
These men painted that hideous wilderness in charming colours, told
us that we should find a country watered with navigable rivers, and
inhabited by a people that would either inform us of the way, or
accompany us in it. These reports charmed us, because they
flattered our desires; but our superiors finding nothing in all this
talk that could be depended on, were in suspense what directions to
give us, till my companion and I upon this reflection, that since
all the ways were equally new to us, we had nothing to do but to
resign ourselves to the Providence of God, asked and obtained the
permission of our superiors to attempt the road through Melinda. So
of we who went by land, two took the way of Zeila, and my companion
and I that of Melinda.

Those who were appointed for Zeila embarked in a vessel that was
going to Caxume, where they were well received by the king, and
accommodated with a ship to carry them to Zeila; they were there
treated by the check with the same civility which they had met with
at Caxume. But the king being informed of their arrival, ordered
them to be conveyed to his court at Auxa, to which place they were
scarce come before they were thrown by the king's command into a
dark and dismal dungeon, where there is hardly any sort of cruelty
that was not exercised upon them. The Emperor of Abyssinia
endeavoured by large offers to obtain their liberty, but his kind
offices had no other effect than to heighten the rage of the king of
Zeila. This prince, besides his ill will to Sultan Segued, which
was kept up by some malcontents among the Abyssin nobility, who,
provoked at the conversion of their master, were plotting a revolt,
entertained an inveterate hatred against the Portuguese for the
death of his grandfather, who had been killed many years before,
which he swore the blood of the Jesuits should repay. So after they
had languished for some time in prison their heads were struck off.
A fate which had been likewise our own, had not God reserved us for
longer labours!

Having provided everything necessary for our journey, such as
Arabian habits, and red caps, calicoes, and other trifles to make
presents of to the inhabitants, and taking leave of our friends, as
men going to a speedy death, for we were not insensible of the
dangers we were likely to encounter, amongst horrid deserts,
impassable mountains, and barbarous nations, we left Goa on the 26th
day of January in the year 1624, in a Portuguese galliot that was
ordered to set us ashore at Pate, where we landed without any
disaster in eleven days, together with a young Abyssin, whom we made
use of as our interpreter. While we stayed here we were given to
understand that those who had been pleased at Goa to give us
directions in relation to our journey had done nothing but tell us
lies. That the people were savage, that they had indeed begun to
treat with the Portuguese, but it was only from fear, that otherwise
they were a barbarous nation, who finding themselves too much
crowded in their own country, had extended themselves to the sea-
shore; that they ravished the country and laid everything waste
where they came, that they were man-eaters, and were on that account
dreadful in all those parts. My companion and I being undeceived by
this terrible relation, thought it would be the highest imprudence
to expose ourselves both together to a death almost certain and
unprofitable, and agreed that I should go with our Abyssin and a
Portuguese to observe the country; that if I should prove so happy
as to escape being killed by the inhabitants, and to discover a way,
I should either return, or send back the Abyssin or Portuguese.
Having fixed upon this, I hired a little bark to Jubo, a place about
forty leagues distant from Pate, on board which I put some
provisions, together with my sacerdotal vestments, and all that was
necessary for saying mass: in this vessel we reached the coast,
which we found inhabited by several nations: each nation is subject
to its own king; these petty monarchies are so numerous, that I
counted at least ten in less than four leagues.



Chapter II



The author lands: The difficulty of his journey. An account of the
Galles, and of the author's reception at the king's tent; Their
manner of swearing, and of letting blood. The author returns to the
Indies, and finds the patriarch of Aethiopia.


On this coast we landed, with an intention of travelling on foot to
Jubo, a journey of much greater length and difficulty than we
imagined. We durst not go far from our bark, and therefore were
obliged to a toilsome march along the windings of the shore,
sometimes clambering up rocks, and sometimes wading through the
sands, so that we were every moment in the utmost danger of falling
from the one, or sinking in the other. Our lodging was either in
the rocks or on the sands, and even that incommoded by continual
apprehensions of being devoured by lions and tigers. Amidst all
these calamities our provisions failed us; we had little hopes of a
supply, for we found neither villages, houses, nor any trace of a
human creature; and had miserably perished by thirst and hunger had
we not met with some fishermen's boats, who exchanged their fish for
tobacco.

Through all these fatigues we at length came to Jubo, a kingdom of
considerable extent, situated almost under the line, and tributary
to the Portuguese, who carry on a trade here for ivory and other
commodities. This region so abounds with elephants, that though the
teeth of the male only are valuable, they load several ships with
ivory every year. All this coast is much infested with ravenous
beasts, monkeys, and serpents, of which last here are some seven
feet in length, and thicker than an ordinary man; in the head of
this serpent is found a stone about the bigness of an egg,
resembling bezoar, and of great efficacy, as it is said, against all
kinds of poison. I stayed here some time to inform myself whether I
might, by pursuing this road, reach Abyssinia; and could get no
other intelligence but that two thousand Galles (the same people who
inhabited Melinda) had encamped about three leagues from Jubo; that
they had been induced to fix in that place by the plenty of
provisions they found there. These Galles lay everything where they
come in ruin, putting all to the sword without distinction of age or
sex; which barbarities, though their numbers are not great, have
spread the terror of them over all the country. They choose a king,
whom they call Lubo: every eighth year they carry their wives with
them, and expose their children without any tenderness in the woods,
it being prohibited, on pain of death, to take any care of those
which are born in the camp. This is their way of living when they
are in arms, but afterwards when they settle at home they breed up
their children. They feed upon raw cow's flesh; when they kill a
cow, they keep the blood to rub their bodies with, and wear the guts
about their necks for ornaments, which they afterwards give to their
wives.

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