Every Moor Who Passed By Threw A Stone Upon The Grave, And Raised In Time Such A Heap That Father Lobo Found Difficulty In Removing It To Exhume The Relics.

He concludes with a pardonable superstition:

"There is a tradition in the country, that in the place where Don Christopher's head fell, a fountain sprang up of wonderful virtue, which cured many diseases, otherwise past remedy."

Mohammed Gragne improved his victory by chasing the young Claudius over Abyssinia, where nothing opposed the progress of his arms. At last the few Portuguese survivors repaired to the Christian emperor, who was persuaded to march an army against the King of Adel. Resolved to revenge their general, the musqueteers demanded the post opposite Mohammed, and directed all their efforts against the part where the Moslem Attila stood. His fellow religionists still relate that when Gragne fell in action, his wife Talwambara [19], the heroic daughter of Mahfuz, to prevent the destruction and dispersion of the host of Islam, buried the corpse privately, and caused a slave to personate the prince until a retreat to safe lands enabled her to discover the stratagem to the nobles. [20]

Father Lobo tells a different tale. According to him, Peter Leon, a marksman of low stature, but passing valiant, who had been servant to Don Christopher, singled the Adel king out of the crowd, and shot him in the head as he was encouraging his men. Mohammed was followed by his enemy till he fell down dead: the Portuguese then alighting from his horse, cut off one of his ears and rejoined his fellow-countrymen. The Moslems were defeated with great slaughter, and an Abyssinian chief finding Gragne's corpse upon the ground, presented the head to the Negush or Emperor, claiming the honor of having slain his country's deadliest foe. Having witnessed in silence this impudence, Peter asked whether the king had but one ear, and produced the other from his pocket to the confusion of the Abyssinian.

Thus perished, after fourteen years' uninterrupted fighting, the African hero, who dashed to pieces the structure of 2500 years. Like the "Kardillan" of the Holy Land, Mohammed Gragne is still the subject of many a wild and grisly legend. And to the present day the people of Shoa retain an inherited dread of the lowland Moslems.

Mohammed was succeeded on the throne of Adel by the Amir Nur, son of Majid, and, according to some, brother to the "Left-handed." He proposed marriage to Talwambara, who accepted him on condition that he should lay the head of the Emperor Claudius at her feet. In A.D. 1559, he sent a message of defiance to the Negush, who, having saved Abyssinia almost by a miracle, was rebuilding on Debra Work, the "Golden Mount," a celebrated shrine which had been burned by the Moslems. Claudius, despising the eclipses, evil prophecies, and portents which accompanied his enemy's progress, accepted the challenge. On the 22nd March 1559, the armies were upon the point of engaging, when the high priest of Debra Libanos, hastening into the presence of the Negush, declared that in a vision, Gabriel had ordered him to dissuade the Emperor of AEthiopia from needlessly risking life.

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