Cap. lvi.—How the ambassador separated from the friar, and how those of us who remained with the friar were stoned, and some captured, and how the ambassador returned, and we were invited by the Angote raz, and went with him to church, and of the questions he asked, and dinner he gave us.
On Thursday the 14th of the said month of September our baggage went and stopped at a dry river without any water at all, and it was about a league from where the Angote raz was staying: he is the lord of this Kingdom of Angote. And because it was a dry land, and because the ambassador had no inclination to speak to the Ras of Angote, because we had no need of him, he went on before the baggage a distance of a league and a half, and some of us went on with him, and others remained with the friar and the baggage. The friar told us that we should go with him to a village about a league on one side of the road, and the baggage remained on the road with the country people who carried it. As we were travelling, before we arrived at the village, people of the country shouted, and we thought that they were calling people to bring our baggage. But they collected together to shake us, and they took possession of three hills, and we remained in the hollows. On each hill there were quite a hundred men, most of them with slings, and others with their hands threw stones so thickly that they seemed to rain upon us (well did we think of our deaths). There might be in the company of the friar quite forty persons, that is, captains who accompanied him, and his men, and our slaves. There was not one without a blow of a stone, or a wound; I, and a young man who went with us, named Cafu, and who was sick with sores, God was pleased to protect us that we received no stones: but five or six men of the friar, and a captain of Angote, came out with broken heads, and Mestre Joam the same. Not satisfied with wounding, they took prisoners those who were most wounded, and we, those who escaped, returned to sleep at the baggage, without supper. Each one cried out for the bruises from the stones he had received, except myself and the young man of the sores. Friday, in the morning, I set out in search of the ambassador, who was gone on a league and a half. On reaching him they at once got ready; when I related to him the case which had happened to us, he hurried the saddling, mounting, and departure, saying that he would die for the Portuguese. When he and those that came with him arrived at the baggage, we found there the Ras of Angote, who had come to us, and had brought with him a good number of people. When we came up to where he was, the friar who conducted us was with him, the ambassador said to the interpreter: “Tell the Ras of Angote that I do not come to see him nor that friar who is with him, but I come to seek for the Portuguese whom I have lost in his country.” Whilst the battle was being related, Mestre Joam arrived, who had remained wounded and a prisoner, he was much covered with blood, and had large wounds on the head, and he said that he had escaped. When a long conversation was ended, which the ambassador, and the Ras of Angote, and the friar, held upon this affair, the Has of Angote entreated the ambassador that he and I, and our company, should come and stay Saturday and Sunday in his house. The ambassador having consulted with all of us, and it seeming to us good to accede to his entreaty, he granted him the going, and we all went with him, and it might be a league and a half from where we were to his house: and he ordered us to be lodged very well. Here we kept Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday he sent to call us; we came and found him on his dais, his wife and a few people with him: we had no detention on entering, only what takes place in the house of any man. The pomp, presentation, and welcome all consisted in drinking. He had near him four large jars of very good mead, and with each jar a cup of crystalline glass. We began to drink, and his wife and two other women who were with her assisted as well. They would not leave us until the jars were finished, and such is their custom; each jar held six or seven canadas, and yet he ordered more to be brought. We left him with good excuses, saying we were going away for our necessities.
The following Sunday we went to the church, and there we found the Ras of Angote, who came out to receive us with much good grace. Then he began to talk to me about matters of our holy faith; he asked to bring apart with me two friars and our interpreter, and the friar who conducted us as a third person; and they asked me common-place questions.[103] The first was: Where Jesus Christ was born; what road he took to Egypt, and how many years he passed there, and how old he was when his mother, our Lady, lost him, and found him in the temple; and where he made the water into wine, and who was there; on what beast he had ridden into Jerusalem; in what house he had supped in Jerusalem, and if he had a house of his own there, and who washed his feet; and what Peter meant, and what Paul meant. Our Lord was pleased to assist me, that I answered them truly. Our interpreter told me that the friar who conducted us, and was there as a third person, told the others that I was a man who knew much. May God forgive him, but there was little for me to forget. By reason of what this friar thus said, they perforce kissed my feet. From what these friars said of me to the Ras of Angote, he received me with much good will, and kissed my face. This gentleman, who is now Ras of Angote, is one of the good priests that there are in Ethiopia, and at the time of our departure was Barnagais and in gospel orders, who may say mass. At the end of mass he invited us to come and dine with him, which dinner we accepted, and the ambassador ordered our dinner to be taken in as it was; there were very fat roast fowls, and fat beef boiled with good cabbage: and the ambassador ordered this to be taken in because their meals are not like ours. The dinner was in this manner—it should be known how it is in a great house of one story, which is a Beteneguz: before the raised seat, on which he was seated, there were many mats spread out; he descended from the seat, and sat down on the mats, and over the mats they had put dark sheep skins, and upon them two trays for cleaning wheat, which they call ganetas; these were large and handsome, and very low, they have only a rim of two inches; the largest of these had sixteen spans circumference, and the other fourteen. These are the tables of the great lords. We all sat round with the Ras of Angote: the water came, and we washed, but no towel came to clean our hands, neither for putting bread upon, except it was put upon the ganetas (trays) themselves; there came bread of different kinds, namely, of wheat, barley, millet, pulse, and taffo. Before we began to eat, the Ras of Angote ordered to be placed before him rolls of that inferior bread, and upon each roll a piece of raw beef, and so he ordered it to be given to the poor who were outside the gate waiting for alms. Upon this we pronounced the blessing according to our usage, at which the Ras of Angote showed much satisfaction. Then came the dainties, and they were these, namely, three sauces or potages, which might well be called sauce of Palmela,[104] one of clove of garlic, and another I know not of what. In these potages there was an admixture of cow dung and of gall, which in this country they consider an esteemed food; and only great personages eat it. These sauces came in small sauce dishes, of a dark clay, and were well made. They put into this sauce the most inferior bread, broken very small, and butter with it. We would not eat of these potages, and the ambassador ordered our victuals to be brought, which he had very well cooked, because we could not eat their viands, neither did they eat ours. The wine was passed round freely.[105] The wife of the Ras of Angote ate close to us, with a curtain betwixt, at a table like ours. She ate her own viands; they also gave her some of ours, I do not know whether she ate them, because the curtain was between her and us. In drinking, she assisted us well. After all the dainties there came a raw breast of beef, and we did not taste it: the Ras of Angote ate some of it, like a person eating cake or other dainties for dessert. So we came to an end of the dinner, and thanks be to God, and we went away to our lodging.
Cap. lvii.—How the ambassador took leave of the Ras of Angote, and the friar, with most of us, returned to the place where we were stoned, and from there we went to a fertile country, and a church of many canons.
On Monday morning we took leave of the Has of Angote, and the friar who conducted and guided us must needs have us wait for a mule of the Prester John, and an ass with certain baggage, which they had taken from us in the rout of the stone throwing. The ambassador departed with those who had been with him before, and we remained with the friar who had been with him in the hail of stones. On this Monday, near nightfall, they came with the said mule and the ass which had remained there, and the friar at once said that we should start, and that we could still go and sleep where the ambassador was. As it seemed to us it might be so we made ready and departed whilst night was closing in, thinking that we should keep to the road; and he goes and takes us through some bushes, and takes us to where we were stoned, and said he was going to do justice; and there were eight men on mules and fifteen on foot going with us. We went to lodge for the night in the house of one of those chief men who had stoned us, and we found the house and the whole village without people in it. They were all in a mountain which was above the village. We found plenty to eat for ourselves and our mules. As soon as we were in the house those men who came with us left us: certainly we were not without fear, and complained of the friar because he was bringing us to be killed, and because he did not take us on our road. He told us that we came to do justice, and that in the morning we would depart. When morning came he said that we could not go till midday. When we saw this we waited till midday, and when it was midday we required him to start, then he said that we could not go till next day. Seeing these delays, we started and left him. This same day, however, we rejoined the baggage, because it was waiting for us. In the night the friar reached us, because he did not dare to sleep alone among those people who had stoned us, and he brought with him two mules, a cow, and eight pieces of stuff, which they gave him for the blood they had shed. This is their justice, and no other, namely, to take away the goods, which are only mules, cows, and stuffs, from those who can do little. These villages where they stoned us are named, one Angua, and another Mastanho: they said they belonged to the Abima Marcos.
Here we entered into a very pretty country between very high mountains, the feet of which were very thickly peopled with large towns and noble churches. This country is laid out in large tillage fields of all sorts. Here there is an infinite quantity of figs, those of India, many lemons, oranges, and citrons, and extensive pastures of cattle. And on another occasion when I returned here with this friar, who then called himself an ambassador, we came and stayed a Saturday and a Sunday in the house of an honourable debetera, that is, canon, and these two days we went with him to the church: because there were a great number of canons in that church, we asked him how many there might be in it. He told us that there were five thousand three hundred canons, and we asked what revenues they had. He said that they were very little for so many; and we said, since the revenues are so small, why were there so many canons. He told us that at the beginning of that church there were not many, but that afterwards they had increased, because all the sons of canons, and as many as descended from them, remained canons, and the fathers each taught their sons, and so they had been increased in number, and that this happened in the King’s churches, and that frequently Prester John diminished them, when he set up a church in a new country, and sent to fetch canons from these churches, as he had ordered two hundred canons to be taken away to the church of Machan Celace,[106] and that in this valley there were eight churches, and there would be in them fully four thousand canons, and that the Prester took canons from here for the new churches, and also for the churches at court, because otherwise they would eat one another up.
Cap. lviii.—Of the mountain in which they put the sons of the Prester John, and how they stoned us near it.
The above mentioned valley reaches to the mountain where they put the sons of the Prester John. These are like banished men; as it was revealed to King Abraham, before spoken of, to whom the angels for forty years administered bread and wine for the sacrament, that all his sons should be shut up in a mountain, and that none should remain except the first born, the heir, and that this should be done for ever to all the sons of the Prester of the country, and his successors: because if this was not so done there would be great difficulty in the country, on account of its greatness, and they would rise up and seize parts of it, and would not obey the heir, and would kill him. He being frightened at such a revelation, and reflecting where such a mountain could be found, it was again told him in revelation to order his country to be searched, and to look at the highest mountains, and that mountain on which they saw wild goats on the rocks, looking as if they were going to fall below, was the mountain on which the princes were to be shut up. He ordered it to be done as it had been revealed to him, and they found this mountain, which stands above this valley, to be the one which the revelation mentioned, round the foot of which a man has to go a journey of two days; and it is of this kind: a rock cut like a wall, straight from the top to the bottom; a man going at the foot of it and looking upwards, it seems that the sky rests upon it. They say that it has three entrances or gates, in three places, and no more; I saw one of these here in this country, and I saw it in this manner. We were going from the sea to the court, and a young man, a servant of the Prester, whom they call a calacem, was guiding us, and he did not know the country well; and we wished to lodge in a town, and they would not receive us; this belonged to a sister of Prester John. The night had not yet advanced much, and he began travelling, telling us to follow him, and that he would get us lodgings. And because he travelled fast on a mule, and on a small path, I told one Lopo da Gama to ride in sight of the calacem, and that I would keep him in sight, and the ambassador and the other people would ride in sight of me. And the night closed in when we were quite a league from the road towards the mountain of the princes, and there came forth from all the villages so many people throwing stones at us, that they were near killing us, and they made us disperse in three or four directions. The ambassador had remained in the rear, and he turned back, and others who were about in the middle of the party started off in another direction; and some one there was who dismounted from his mule and fled in panic.[107] Lopo da Gama and I could not turn back, so we went forward and reached another town, which was still better prepared, on account of the noise which they heard behind in the other towns. Here many stones rained upon us, and the darkness was like having no eyes. In order that they might not throw stones at me by hearing the mule’s steps, I dismounted and gave the mule to my slave. God was pleased that an honourable man came up to me, and asked me who I was. I told him that I was a gaxia neguz, that is to say, a king’s stranger. This man was very tall, and I say honourable, because he treated me well; and he took my head under his arm, for I did not reach any higher, and so he conducted me like the bellows of a bagpipe player, saying, Atefra, atefra, which means “Do not be afraid, do not be afraid.” He took me with the mule and the slave, until he brought me into a vegetable garden which surrounded his house. Inside this garden he had a quantity of poles stuck up one against another, and in the midst of these poles he had a clean resting place like a hut, into which he put me. As it seemed to me that I was in safety, I ordered a light to be lit; and when they saw the light they rained stones on the hut, and when I put out the light the stone throwing ceased. The host, as soon as he left me, returned at the noise, and then remained an hour without coming. Whilst he was away, Lopo da Gama heard me, and broke through the bushes,[108] and came to me. On this the host came and said, “Be quiet, do not be afraid,” and ordered a candle to be lit, and to kill two fowls; and he gave us bread and wine and a hospitable welcome, according to his power. Next day, in the morning, the host took me by the hand and led me to his house, as far as a game of ball, where there were many trees of an inferior kind, and very thick, by which it was concealed as by a wall; and between them was a door, which was locked; and before this door was an ascent to the cliff. This host said to me: “Look here; if any of you were to pass inside this door, there would be nothing for it but to cut off his feet and his hands, and put out his eyes, and leave him lying there; and you must not put the blame on those who would do this, neither would you be in fault, but those who brought you hither: we, if we did not do this, we should pay with our lives, because we are the guardians of this door.” Lopo da Gama, I, and the calacem then at once mounted and rode down to the road, which was below us, a good league off, and we found that none of our party had passed by; and vespers were over, and yet we had not come together.