We continued our journey through these plains, which appeared as I have described, and issuing from them, that is, from those we had seen, we entered into others still wider, and yet not so well provided with tillage: they appeared to be soaked with water like marshes;[123] there are great pastures in them, and also great lakes, and from them overflow the waters which make the marshes. There are very many herds, both cows and sheep (there are no goats here). There are very many villages distant from the road, and in all of them churches. We travelled through these plains quite ten or twelve leagues towards the East,[124] where they showed us a great church, which they said was of St. George, in which lies the grandfather of this Prester John (I will speak of it). When we were in it they said that the former kings coming from the kingdoms of the Barnagais and Tigrimahom, where their origin was, increasing their dominions in these countries of the gentiles, and coming through the kingdom of Angote to this kingdom of Amara, made a great stay and residence in it. And they made in it a great establishment of churches for their tombs, and endowed each one with large revenues. To that church which King Nahu built, the father of this Prester who now lives, he ended by giving as an endowment the whole of this kingdom, without one span remaining which does not belong to churches, and he ended by giving it to the church of Macham Selasem, and he began and his son ended. These churches of the kings do not prevent those of the cultivators, which are in infinite number. A man may travel fully fifteen days through the lands of Macham Selasem, and there is not in all this kingdom a single monastery that we saw or heard speak of, after all the number of them in the countries left behind, but all are churches of canons, and those of the cultivators of priests. This kingdom now has no lordship; it used to have its title, and it was Amara tafila, which means King of Amara, like as also Xoa tafila means King of Xoa. There was this lordship here until the remains of Nahu were removed to the church of Macham Selacem, at which the Portuguese were present; then the going and confirming the dotation to the church was concluded, and the Prester set aside the Amara tafila that there was till then, and gave the lordships to the churches, that is to say, to the ancient ones as they had held them. As his father had left them to this church of Macham Selasem, all the canons and priests of these churches and of all the others of the other kingdoms and lordships left behind, and further on, serve the Prester in all services except in wars. And the administration of justice is all one, both of canons and of priests and friars. So the friar who conducted us bore himself with one and all, as to carrying our baggage, and so they one and all obeyed him, (as has been said) and he ordered priests and friars to be flogged. Going through these great plains, when nothing else appeared in sight, it seemed to us that we were now at sea[125] and out of the mountains. We came to stay Saturday and Sunday, which was the last day of September, at a small village of Our Lady, very poor and ill kept, close to which church towards the east commence most wild mountains and deep fosses descending to the greatest abysses men ever saw; nor could their depth be believed, like as the mountains where the Israelites live are scarped from the top, so are these. Below they are of great width, in some places of four leagues, in others five, in others about three. (This in our opinion.) They say that these dykes run to the Nile, which is very far from here, and higher up we know well that they reach the country of the Moors; they say that in the parts of the Moors they are not so precipitous. At the bottom of these dykes there are many dwellings and an infinite number of apes, hairy like lions from the breast upwards.
Cap. lxv.—How we came to some gates and deep passes difficult to travel, and we went up to the gates, at which the kingdom begins which is named Xoa.
On Monday the 1st of October 1520, we travelled on our road through level country of lakes and large pastures for a distance of three or four leagues, all along these dykes, and we went to sleep near them where we had to cross these depths. Tuesday morning we began to travel for half a league, and we arrived at some gates on a rock which divided two valleys,[126] one to the right, the other to the left hand, and so narrow near the gates that they might hold one cart and no more; with small buttresses, between which the gates shut and close from slope to slope. Going through this gate one enters at once as into a deep valley, with shale[127] on either side raised more than the height of a lance, as if the edge of the sword had made this, these slopes, and this valley. The height of these walls has a length of two games of quoits[128] of such narrowness that a man cannot go on horseback, and the mules go scraping the stirrups on both sides, and so steep that a man descends with his hands and feet, and this seems to be made artificially. Coming out of this narrow pass one travels through a loophole[129] which is about four spans wide, and from one end to the other these clefts are all shale; it is not to be believed, and I would not have believed it, if I had not seen it: and if I had not seen our mules and people pass, I would affirm that goats could not pass there in security. So we set our mules going there as if one was sending them to destruction, and we after them with hands and feet down the rock, without there being any other road. This great roughness lasts for a crossbow shot, and they call these here aqui afagi, which means death of the asses. (Here they pay dues.) We passed these gates many times, and we never passed them without finding beasts and oxen dead, which had come from below upwards and had not been able to get up the ascent. Leaving this pass, there still remains quite two leagues of road sufficiently steep and rocky, and difficult to travel over. In the middle of this descent there is a rock hollowed out at the bottom, and water falls from the top of it (there are always many beggars in this cave). Thus we descended fully two leagues until reaching a great river which is named Anecheta, which contains many fish and very large ones. From here we travelled, ascending for quite a league, until reaching a passage which sights another river, at which are other gates which now are not used; and yet the gates are there still. Those who pass these dykes and clefts come to sleep here, because they cannot go in one day from one end to the other. At this halting place[130] the friar who conducted us committed a great cruelty, as though he were not a Christian, or had done it to Moors. Because a Xuum or captain of some villages which are on a hill above the place where we were resting, did not come up so quickly with the people who lived there, he sent some men of his, and those who carried our baggage, to go and destroy for them some great bean fields which they had by the side of their houses. These men who went there brought to where we were more than a moio[131] of beans, which were their provisions in this country, because in these valleys they have nothing except millet and beans. It was a pity to see such destruction; and because we opposed him, he said that such was the justice of the country, and also each day he ordered many of those who carried our baggage to be flogged, and he took from them mules, cows, and stuffs, saying that so should be treated whoever served ill.
On Tuesday the 2nd of October we took our road through many steep rocks (as before) between which we passed very narrow and bad paths, and dangerous passes; both on one side and on the other scarped rock, a thing not to be credited. We reached the other river, a good league from where we slept; this river is great, and is named Gemaa; it also contains much fish. They say that both these rivers join together and go to the river Nile. We began to travel and ascend as great cliffs as we had descended the day before. In this ascent there will be two leagues; at the end of it are other gates, and another pass such as from aqui afagi. These gates are always shut, and all who pass through them pay dues. Neither above nor below is there any other way or passage. Outside of these gates we went to sleep at a plain which is about half a league from the gates. Already when there, nothing showed of the dykes, clefts, and cliffs which we had traversed; on the contrary, all appeared to be a plain on this side and on the further side, without there being anything in the middle, and there were five long leagues from one set of gates to the other. The kingdoms of Amara and Shoa are divided by these gates and ravines. These gates are called Badabaxa, which means new land. In these ravines and cliffs there are numerous tribes of birds, and we could not determine where they breed, nor how they could bring up their young without their fulling down from the rocks: because whoever saw it would not judge otherwise than that it was an impossible thing, according to its greatness.
Cap. lxvi.—How the Prester John went to the burial of Janes Ichee of the monastery of Brilibanos, and of the election of another Ichee, who was a Moor.
On Wednesday, the 3rd of October, we travelled through plains not very far removed from the edge of the rocks and ravines, and we went to sleep on the rock itself opposite the monastery which is named Brilibanos.[132] I saw the Prester John go to this monastery three times. The first was to the burial of the head[133] of the monastery, who was named Janes, in our language Joannes, and the title of his prelacy was Ichee.[134] This Ichee of this monastery is the greatest prelate there is in these kingdoms, exclusive of the Abima Marcos, who is over all. And the Prester also went in the month in which they hold the funereal memorial which they call tescar.[135] He also went there at the end of forty days after the death of the said Ichee to choose and appoint another. They said that the deceased was a holy man, and that in life he had worked miracles, and therefore the Prester went to his burial and funereal memorial. There was among us a Portuguese, a native of Lisbon, by name Lazaro d’Andrade, who was a painter, and he lost his sight; the Prester sent to tell him to go to the tomb of this deceased man, and to wash with good faith, and that he would receive health: he went there and returned as he went. He whom they made Ichee was also held to be a man of holy life, and he had been a Moor. As he was much my friend, he related to me all his life, and told me that when he was in his sect he heard a revelation, which said to him: You are not following the path; go to the Abima Marcos, who is head of the priests of Ethiopia, and he will teach you another path. Then he came to the Abima Marcos, and related to him what he had heard, and the Abima Marcos had made him a Christian, and had taught him, and held him as a son: and therefore the Prester took this friar who had been a Moor for governor of this monastery, and he bears the name of Jacob. This Jacob also acquired the Portuguese language, and we both understood one another very well, and he wrote in his own handwriting the Gloria of the Mass, and the Creed, and Paternoster, and Ave Maria, and Apostles’ Creed, and the Salve Regina, and he knew it in Latin as well as I did. He also wrote out the Gospel of St. John, and all very well ornamented. This Jacob now remained Ichee in this monastery. Ichee means prior or abbot, and in the Tigray language, which is in the kingdoms of the Barnagais and of Tigrimahom, they say Abba for the principal father; and for the prior of the cloister who is below him, they say that there was (as I have before written) in this language a prior of the cloister who is called Gabez.[136] In the time when this happened, it was not when we were travelling, but another time when the court came here and stayed at a distance of a league and a half from the said monastery in a very large plain, because the monastery lies in the very deep ravine where we passed through the gates.
Returning to our journey; Thursday and Friday, we also travelled through plains, and not at any distance from those ravines; and we came to stop at some small houses almost under the ground. They make them in that way on account of the winds; because it is all a plain without any shelter, they also make the cattle folds underground, that the cows may be sheltered from the wind. Here there live dirty and ill clad people, they breed numerous cows, mares, mules, and fowls. Around these hamlets were the strongest and best crops of barley that we had yet seen, but there were few of them. In the tilled fields, in many places they sow three or four bushels[137] of seed in a tillage, and at the distance of a crossbow shot from there a similar quantity, and so the land is divided,[138] and all the villages had their sowed land scattered. There were not as much as six alqueires of sowing for any one cultivator or inhabitant, though the land is the best that could be mentioned, because there is no one to put it to profit. There are many birds in these plains, such as storks, wild ducks, water fowl, and birds of many kinds, because there are many lagoons, and no one knows how to catch them. This mountain is named Huaguida.