United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
About eighty years after Prince Henry began his discoveries, John I. sent out Diaz with three ships: this was in 1486, and in the following year Covilham was sent by the same monarch in search of India, by the route of Egypt and the Red Sea. The king displayed great judgment in the selection of both these persons.
Meanwhile Covilham returned to the Red Sea, and made his way into Abyssinia, where he married and settled down, transmitting from time to time information to Portugal which gave Europeans their first notions of Abyssinia.
Covilham and Rabbi Abraham went from Cairo, probably by sea, to Ormuz and the coast of Persia, whence they returned in company to Aden.
Covilham accompanied the king to Shoa, where the seat of the Abyssinian government was then established; and from a cruel policy, which subsists still in Abyssinia, by which strangers are hardly ever permitted to quit the country, Covilham never returned into Europe. Though thus doomed to perpetual exile in a strange and barbarous land, Covilham was well used.
John II. had sent to Cairo two learned Jews to await the arrival of Covilham, and to one of these, the Rabbi Abraham Beja, the traveller gave his notes, the itinerary of his journey, and a map of Africa given to him by a Mussulman, charging Beja to carry them all to Lisbon with the least possible delay.
This would protract the residence of Covilham in Abyssinia, at least to the year 1521, or 1522; but how long he may have lived there afterwards does not appear. Clarke, i. 384. Purchas, II. 1091. El Tor is on the Arabian coast of the Red Sea, near the mouth of the Bahr Assuez, or Gulf of Suez, in lat. 28° 10' N. long. 33° 36' E. E.
Although he had married there and had some children, Covilham still longed for his native country, and when, in 1525, a Portuguese embassy, of which Alvarès was a member, came into Abyssinia, he witnessed the departure of his countrymen with the deepest regret, and the chaplain of the expedition has naïvely re-echoed his complaints and his grief.
At Cairo he was met by messengers from King John, informing him that Payva had been murdered, and directing him to go to Ormuz and the coast of Persia, in order to increase his stock of commercial knowledge. The two messengers from the king of Portugal whom Covilham met with at Cairo, were both Jewish rabbis, named Abraham of Beja and Joseph of Lamego.
Of the circumstances of the voyage home we have no account; but it is not to be doubted that Diaz and his companions would be honourably received by their sovereign, after a voyage of such unprecedented length and unusual success. Clarke, I. 342. Journey overland to India and Abyssinia, by Covilham and de Payva .
Alexander received Covilham with kindness, but more from motives of curiosity than for any expectations of advantage that might result from any connection or communication with the kingdom of Portugal.
Word Of The Day