Zeyla is a small island, on the very coast of Adel, opposite to Arabia Felix without the Straits of Babelmandeb, upon the entrance of the Indian Ocean. The Turks of Arabia, though they were blind to the cause, were sensible of the great influx of trade into the opposite kingdom. They took possession, therefore, of Zeyla, where they established what they called a Customhouse, and by means of that post, and gallies cruising in the narrow Straits, they laid the Indian trade to Adel under heavy contributions, that might, in some measure, indemnify them for the great desertion their violence and injustice had occasioned in Arabia.
This step threatened the very existence both of Adel and Abyssinia; and considering the vigorous government of the one, and the weak politics and prejudices of the other, it is more than probable the Turks would have subdued both Adel and Abyssinia, had they not, in India their chief object, met the Portuguese, strongly established, and governed by a succession of kings who had not in any age their equals, and seconded by officers and soldiers who, for discipline, courage, love to their country, and affection to their sovereign were, perhaps, superior to any troops, or any set of individuals, that, as far as we can judge from history, have ever yet appeared in the world.
It was not now a time for a woman to reign, nor, which was the same thing, to place a child upon the throne. The empress Helena saw this distinctly; but her ambition made her prefer the love of reigning to the visible necessities and welfare of her country. She knew the progress and extent of the Portuguese power in India; and saw plainly there was no prospect, but in their assistance, at once to save both Abyssinia and Adel.
Peter Covillan, sent thither as ambassador by John king of Portugal, had, for two reigns, been detained in Abyssinia, with a constant refusal of leave to return. He was now become an object of curiosity rather than use. However, except his liberty, he had wanted nothing. The empress had married him nobly in the country; had given him large appointments, both as to profit and dignity. She now began to be sensible of the consequence of having with her a man of his abilities, who could open to her the method of corresponding effectually both with India and Portugal in their own language, to which, as well as to the persons to whom her letters were to be addressed, she was then an utter stranger.
She had about her court an Armenian merchant named Matthew, a person of great trust and discretion, who had been long accustomed to go to the several kingdoms of the East upon mercantile commissions for the king and for his nobles. He had been at Cairo, Jerusalem, Ormus, Ispahan, and in the East Indies on the coast of Malabar; both in places conquered by the Portuguese, and in those that yet held out under their native Pagan princes. He was one of those factors which, as I have already said, are employed by the king and great men in Abyssinia to sell or barter, in the places above mentioned, such part of their revenue as are paid them in kind.
These men are chiefly Greeks, or Armenians, but the preference is always given to the latter. Both nations pay caratch, or capitation, to the Grand Signior, (whose subjects they are) and both have, in consequence, passports, protections, and liberty to trade wherever they please throughout the empire, without being liable to those insults and extortions from the Turkish officers that other strangers are.
The Armenians, of all the people in the East, are those most remarkable for their patience and sobriety. They are generally masters of most of the eastern languages; are of strong, robust constitutions; of all people, the most attentive to the beasts and merchandise they have in charge; exceedingly faithful, and content with little. This Matthew, queen Helena chose for her ambassador to Portugal, and joined a young Abyssinian with him, who died in the voyage. He was charged with letters to the king, which, with the other dispatches, as they are long, and abound with fiction and bombast rather than truth and facts, I have not troubled myself to transcribe; they are, besides, in many printed collections[23].
It appears clearly from these letters, that they were the joint compositions of Covillan, who knew perfectly the manner of corresponding with his court upon dangerous subjects, and of the simple Abyssinian confidents of the empress Helena, who, unacquainted with embassies or correspondence with princes, or the ill consequence that these letters would be of to their ambassador and his errand, if they happened to be intercepted by an enemy, told plainly all they desired and wished to execute by the assistance of the Portuguese. Thus, in the first part of the letter, (which we shall suppose dictated by Covillan) the empress remits the description of her wants, and what is the subject of the embassy, to Matthew her ambassador, whom she qualifies as her confidential servant, instructed in her most secret intentions; desiring the king of Portugal to believe what he shall report from her to him in private, as if they were her own words uttered immediately from her to him in person. So far was prudent; such a conduct as we should expect from a man like Covillan, long accustomed to be trusted with the secret negociations of his sovereign.
But the latter end of his dispatches (the work, we suppose, of Abyssinian statesmen) divulges the whole secret. It explains the motives of this embassy in the clearest manner, desiring the king of Portugal to send a sufficient force to destroy Mecca and Medina; to assist them with a sufficient number of ships, and to annihilate the Turkish power by sea; while they, by land, should extirpate all the Mahometans on their borders; and it stigmatizes these Mahometans, both Turks and Moors, with the most opprobrious names it was possible to devise.
With the first part of these dispatches, it is plain, Matthew, as an envoy, might have passed unmolested; he had only to give to the secret wishes of the empress, with which he was charged, what kind of mercantile colour he pleased. But the last part of the letter brought home to him a charge of the deepest dye, both of sacrilege and high-treason, that he meditated against the Ottoman empire, whose Raya[24] he was; and, there can be no doubt, had these letters been intercepted and read, Matthew’s embassy and life would have ended together under some exquisite species of torture. This, indeed, he seems to have apprehended; as, after his arrival in India, he constantly refused to shew his dispatches, even to the Portuguese viceroy himself, from whom, in the instant, he had received very singular favour and protection.