On the 19th of January, by a meridian altitude of the sun, and a mean of several altitudes of stars by night, I found the latitude of Axum to be 14° 6´ 36´´ north.
The reader will have observed, that I have taken great pains in correcting the geography of this country, and illustrating the accounts given us by travellers, as well ancient as modern, and reconciling them to each other. There are, however, in a very late publication, what I must suppose to be errors, at least they are absolutely unintelligible to me, whether they are to be placed to the account of Jerome Lobo, the original, or to Dr Johnson the translator, or to the bookseller, is what I am not able to say. But as the book itself is ushered in by a very warm and particular recommendation of so celebrated an author as Dr Johnson, and as I have in the course of this work spoke very contemptibly of that Jesuit, I must, in my own vindication, make some observations upon the geography of this book, which, introduced into the world by such authority, might else bring the little we know of this part of Africa into confusion, from which its maps are as yet very far from being cleared.
Caxume[10] is said to mean Axum, to be a city in Africa, capital of the kingdom of Tigrè Mahon in Abyssinia. Now, long ago, Mr Ludolf had shewn, from the testimony of Gregory the Abyssinian, that there was no such place in Abyssinia as Tigrè Mahon. That there was, indeed, a large province called Tigrè, of which Axum was the capital; and Le Grande, the first publisher of Jerome Lobo, has repeatedly said the same. And Ludolf has given a very probable conjecture, that the first Portuguese, ignorant of the Abyssinian language, heard the officer commanding that province called Tigrè Mocuonen, which is governor of Tigré, and had mistaken the name of his office for that of his province. Be that as it will, the reader may rest assured there is no such kingdom, province, or town in all Abyssinia.
There still remains, however, a difficulty much greater than this, and an error much more difficult to be corrected. Lobo is said to have sailed from the peninsula of India, and, being bound for Zeyla, to have embarked in a vessel going to Caxume, or Axum, capital of Tigrè, and to have arrived there safely,and been well accommodated. Now Zeyla, he says, is a city in the kingdom of Adel, at the mouth of the Red Sea[11]; and Axum, being two hundred miles inland, in the middle of the kingdom of Tigrè, a ship going to Axum must have passed Zeyla 300 miles, or been 300 miles to the westward of it. Zeyla is not a city, as is said, but an island. It is not in the kingdom of Adel, but in the bay of Tajoura, opposite to a kingdom of that name; but the island itself belongs to the Imam of Sana, sovereign of Arabia Felix; so that it is inexplicable, how a ship going to Zeyla should choose to land 300 miles beyond it; and still more so, how, being once arrived at Axum, they should seek a ship to carry them back again to Zeyla, 300 miles eastward, when they were then going to Gondar, not much above a hundred miles west of Axum. This seems to me absolutely impossible to explain.
Still, however, another difficulty remains; Tigré is said, by the Jesuits, and by M. Le Grande their historian, to be full of mountains, so high that the Alps and Apennines were very inconsiderable in comparison. And suppose it was otherwise, there is no navigable river, indeed no river at all, that runs through Tigré into the Red Sea, and there is the desert of Samhar to pass, where there is no water at all. How is it possible a ship from the coast of Malabar should get up 200 miles from any sea among the mountains of Tigré? I hope the publisher will compare this with any map he pleases, and correct it in his errata, otherwise his narrative is unintelligible, unless all this was intended to be placed to the account of miracles—Peter walked upon the water, and Lobo the Jesuit sailed upon dry land.
Dr Johnson, or his publisher, involves his reader in another strange perplexity. “Dancala is a city of Africa in Upper Ethiopia, upon the Nile, in the tract of Nubia, of which it is the capital;” and the emperor wrote, “that the missionaries might easily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala[12].” It is very difficult to understand how people, in a ship from India, could enter Abyssinia by the way of Dancala, if that city is upon the Nile; because no where, that I know, is that river in Abyssinia within 300 miles of any sea; and, still more so, how it could be in Nubia, and yet in Upper Ethiopia. Dongola is, indeed, the capital of Nubia; it is upon the Nile in 20° north latitude; but then it cannot be in Upper Ethiopia, but certainly in the Lower, and is not within a hundred miles of the Red Sea, and certainly not the way for a ship from India to get to Abyssinia, which, sailing down the Red Sea, it must have passed several hundred miles, and gone to the northward: Dongola, besides, is in the heart of the great desert of Beja, and cannot, with any degree of propriety, be said to be easily accessible to any, no, not even upon camels, but impossible to shipping, as it is not within 200 miles of any sea. On the other hand, Dancali, for which it may have been mistaken, is a small kingdom on the coast of the Red Sea, reaching to the frontiers of Abyssinia; and through it the patriarch Mendes entered Abyssinia, as has been said in my history; but then Dancali is in lat. 12°, it is not in Nubia, nor upon the Nile, nor within several hundred miles of it.
Again, Lobo has said, (p. 30. 31.) “that a Portuguese galliot was ordered to set him ashore at Paté, whose inhabitants were man-eaters.” This is a very whimsical choice of a place to land strangers in, among man-eaters. I cannot conceive what advantage could be proposed by landing men going to Abyssinia so far to the southward, among a people such as this, who certainly, by their very manners, must be at war, and unconnected with all their neighbours. And many ages have passed without this reproach having fallen upon the inhabitants of the east coast of the peninsula of Africa from any authentic testimony; and I am confident, after the few specimens just given of the topographical knowledge of this author, his present testimony will not weigh much, from whatever hand this performance may have come.
M. de Montesquieu, among all his other talents a most excellent and accurate geographer, observes, that man-eaters were first mentioned when the southern parts of the east coast of the peninsula of Africa came to be unknown. Travellers of Jerome Lobo’s cast, delighting in the marvellous, did place these unsociable people beyond the promontory of Prassum, because nobody, at that time, did pass the promontory of Prassum.
Above 1200 years, these people were unknown, till Vasques de Gama discovered their coast, and called them the civil or kind nation. By some lucky revolution in that long period, when they were left to themselves, they seem most unaccountably to have changed both their diet and their manners. The Portuguese conquered them, built towns among them, and, if they met with conspiracies and treachery, these all originated in a mixture of Moors from Spain and Portugal, Europeans that had settled among them, and not among the natives themselves. No man-eaters appeared till after the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, when that of the new world, which followed it, made the Portuguese abandon their settlements in the old; and this coast came as unknown to them as it had been to the Romans, when they traded only to Raptum and Prassum, and made Anthropophagi of all the rest. One would be almost tempted to believe that Jerome Lobo was a man-eater himself, and had taught this custom to these savages. They had it not before his coming; they have never had it since; and it must have been with some sinister intention like this, that a stranger would voluntarily seek a nation of man-eaters. It is nonsense to say, that a traveller could propose, as Lobo did, going into a far distant country, such as Abyssinia, under so very questionable a protection as a man-eater.
I will not take up my own, or the reader’s time, in going through the multitude of errors in geography to be found in this book of Lobo’s; I have given the reader my opinion of the author from the original, before I saw the translation. I said it was a heap of fables, and full of ignorance and presumption; and I confess myself disappointed that it has come from so celebrated a hand as the translator, so very little amended, if indeed it can be said to be amended at all.