I Saw Myself A Troop Of Wolves Tear A Child Of Six Years
Old In Pieces Before I Or Any One Else Could Come To Its Assistance.
While I was entirely taken up with the duties of my ministry, the
viceroy of Tigre received the commands of the Emperor to search for
the bones of Don Christopher de Gama.
On this occasion it may not
be thought impertinent to give some account of the life and death of
this brave and holy Portuguese, who, after having been successful in
many battles, fell at last into the hands of the Moors, and
completed that illustrious life by a glorious martyrdom.
Chapter V
The adventures of the Portuguese, and the actions of Don Christopher
de Gama in Aethiopia.
About the beginning of the sixteenth century arose a Moor near the
Cape of Gardafui, who, by the assistance of the forces sent him from
Moca by the Arabs and Turks, conquered almost all Abyssinia, and
founded the kingdom of Adel. He was called Mahomet Gragne, or the
Lame. When he had ravaged Aethiopia fourteen years, and was master
of the greatest part of it, the Emperor David sent to implore
succour of the King of Portugal, with a promise that when those
dominions were recovered which had been taken from him, he would
entirely submit himself to the Pope, and resign the third part of
his territories to the Portuguese. After many delays, occasioned by
the great distance between Portugal and Abyssinia, and some
unsuccessful attempts, King John the Third, having made Don Stephen
de Gama, son of the celebrated Don Vasco de Gama, viceroy of the
Indies, gave him orders to enter the Red Sea in pursuit of the
Turkish galleys, and to fall upon them wherever he found them, even
in the Port of Suez.
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