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This comes regularly about the month of July, or three weeks after the beginning of a rainy season in AEthiopia. The different degrees of this flood are such certain indications of the fruitfulness or sterility of the ensuing year, that it is publicly proclaimed in Cairo how much the water hath gained each night.
Here we at length found the patriarch, with three more priests, like us, designed for the mission of AEthiopia. We went back to Daman, and from thence to Diou, where we arrived in a short time. The author embarks with the patriarch, narrowly escapes shipwreck near the isle of Socotora; enters the Arabian Gulf, and the Red Sea. Some account of the coast of the Red Sea.
Many have imagined themselves blessed with the discovery when they have told us that this mighty flood proceeds from the melting of snow on the mountains of AEthiopia, without reflecting that this opinion is contrary to the received notion of all the ancients, who believed that the heat was so excessive between the tropics that no inhabitant could live there.
When it was determined that one should be sent to the Indies, I was at first singled out for the journey, and it was intended that I should represent at Goa, at Rome, and at Madrid the distresses and necessities of the mission of AEthiopia; but the fathers reflecting afterwards that I best understood the Abyssinian language, and was most acquainted with the customs of the country, altered their opinions, and, continuing me in AEthiopia either to perish with them or preserve them, deputed four other Jesuits, who in a short time set out on their way to the Indies.
The elephants of AEthiopia are of so stupendous a size, that when I was mounted on a large mule I could not reach with my hand within two spans of the top of their backs. In Abyssinia is likewise found the rhinoceros, a mortal enemy to the elephant.
The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom. Never had any words been so vivid and so beautiful Arabia Felix Aethiopia. But those were not more noble than the others, hardy barbarians, forests, and morasses.
The Eastern are Hyrcania, Parthia, Aria, Chorasmia, Sogdiana, Bactria, Scythia, Gandaria, Sattagydia, India, Paricania, the Eastern AEthiopia, and Mycia. Of these countries a considerable number have been already described in these volumes.
He dashed forward he knew not whither. Then, it is believed, the people of Aethiopia became black by the blood being forced so suddenly to the surface, and the Libyan desert was dried up to the condition in which it remains to this day.
We carried with us our tent, our chalices, and ornaments, and all that was necessary for saying mass. The lord of the village, who, like other persons of quality throughout AEthiopia, lived on the top of a mountain, received us with very great civility.
The number of proselytes in the seventh year of his mission may be estimated by the absence of eighty-three men and eighteen women, who retired to Aethiopia."
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