S. Yet
some persons have strangely supposed that this king _Organe_ or _Ogane_
was a corruption of _Jan_ or _Janhoi_, the title given by the Christians
of the east to the king of Abyssinia. "But it is very difficult to
account for this knowledge of Abyssinia in the kingdom of Benin, not only
on account of the distance, but likewise because several of the most
savage nations in the world, the _Galla_ and _Shangalla_, occupy the
intervening space. The court of Abyssinia did indeed then reside in
_Shoa_, the south-east extremity of the kingdom; and, by its power and
influence, might have pushed its dominion through these barbarians to the
neighbourhood of Benin on the western ocean. But all this I must confess
to be a mere conjecture of mine, of which, in the country itself, I never
found the smallest confirmation[2]." To these observations of the
celebrated Abyssinian traveller, it may be added, that the distance from
Benin to Shoa exceeds six hundred Portuguese leagues.
While the king of Portugal continued to encourage his navigators to
proceed to the southwards in discovering the African coast, he became
anxious lest some unexpected rival might interpose to deprive him of the
expected fruits of these discoveries, which had occupied the unremitting
attentions of his predecessors and himself for so many years. Learning
that John Tintam and William Fabian, Englishmen, were preparing, at the
instigation of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, in 1481, to proceed on a
voyage to Guinea, he sent Ruy de Sousa as his ambassador, to Edward IV.
of England, to explain the title which he held from the pope as lord of
that country, and to induce him to forbid his subjects from navigating to
the coast of Africa, in which negotiation he was completely successful.
He likewise used every exertion to conceal the progress of his own
navigators on the western coast of Africa, and to magnify the dangers of
the voyage; representing that the coast was quite inhospitable,
surrounded by most tremendous rocks, and inhabited by savage cannibals,
and that no vessels could possibly live in those tempestuous seas, in
which every quarter of the moon produced a furious storm, except those of
a peculiar construction, which had been invented by the Portuguese ship-
builders.
A Portuguese pilot, who had often made the voyage to Guinea, had the
temerity to assert, that any kind of ship could make this redoubted
voyage, as safely as the royal caravels, and was sent for to court by the
king, who gave him a public reprimand for his ignorance and presumption.
Some months afterwards, the same pilot appeared again at court, and told
the king, "That being of an obstinate disposition, he had attempted the
voyage to Guinea in a different kind of vessel from those usually
employed, and found it to be impossible." The king could not repress a
smile at this solemn nonsense; yet honoured the politic pilot with a
private audience, and gave him money to encourage him to propagate the
deception.
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