It Is Not In My Power To Represent The
Different Passions They Were Affected With At Seeing Us Pale,
Meagre, Without Clothes - In A Word, Almost Naked And Almost Dead
With Fatigue And Ill-Usage.
They could not behold us in that
miserable condition without reflecting on the hardships we had
undergone, and our brethren then underwent, in Suaquem and
Abyssinia.
Amidst their thanks to God for our deliverance, they
could not help lamenting the condition of the patriarch and the
other missionaries who were in chains, or, at least, in the hands of
professed enemies to our holy religion. All this did not hinder
them from testifying in the most obliging manner their joy for our
deliverance, and paying such honours as surprised the Moors, and
made them repent in a moment of the ill-treatment they had shown us
on board. One who had discovered somewhat more humanity than the
rest thought himself sufficiently honoured when I took him by the
hand and presented him to the chief officer of the custom house, who
promised to do all the favours that were in his power.
When we passed by in sight of the fort, they gave us three salutes
with their cannon, an honour only paid to generals. The chief men
of the city, who waited for us on the shore, accompanied us through
a crowd of people, whom curiosity had drawn from all parts of our
college. Though our place of residence at Diou is one of the most
beautiful in all the Indies, we stayed there only a few days, and as
soon as we had recovered our fatigues went on board the ships that
were appointed to convoy the northern fleet. I was in the
admiral's. We arrived at Goa in some vessels bound for Camberia:
here we lost a good old Abyssin convert, a man much valued in his
order, and who was actually prior of his convent when he left
Abyssinia, choosing rather to forsake all for religion than to leave
the way of salvation, which God had so mercifully favoured him with
the knowledge of.
We continued our voyage, and almost without stopping sailed by
Surate and Damam, where the rector of the college came to see us,
but so sea-sick that the interview was without any satisfaction on
either side. Then landing at Bazaim we were received by our fathers
with their accustomed charity, and nothing was thought of but how to
put the unpleasing remembrance of our past labours out of our minds.
Finding here an order of the Father Provineta to forbid those who
returned from the missions to go any farther, it was thought
necessary to send an agent to Goa with an account of the revolutions
that had happened in Abyssinia and of the imprisonment of the
patriarch. For this commission I was made choice of; and, I know
not by what hidden degree of Providence, almost all affairs,
whatever the success of them was, were transacted by me.
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