These latitudes and longitudes are so exceedingly erroneous as to defy all useful criticism, and are therefore left as in the collection of Astley without any commentary; indeed the whole of this extract from Abulfeda is of no manner of use, except as a curiosity.—­E.]

POSTSCRIPT.-Transactions of the Portuguese in Abyssinia, under Don Christopher de Gama[347].

While the Portuguese fleet was at Massua, between the 22d of May and 9th of July 1541, a considerable detachment of soldiers was landed at Arkiko on the coast of Abyssinia under the command of Don Christopher de Gama, brother to the governor-general, for the assistance of the Christian sovereign of the Abyssinians against Grada Hamed king of Adel or Zeyla, an Arab sovereignty at the north-eastern point of Africa, without the Red Sea, and to the south of Abyssinia.  In the journal of Don Juan de Castro; this force is stated at 500 men, while in the following notices from De Faria, 400 men are said to have formed the whole number of auxiliaries furnished by the Portuguese[348].  This account of the first interference of the Portuguese in the affairs of Abyssinia by De Faria, is rather meagre and unsatisfactory, and the names of places are often so disguised by faulty orthography as to be scarcely intelligible.  In a future division of our work more ample accounts will be given both of this Portuguese expedition, and of other matters respecting Abyssinia.—­E.

[Footnote 347:  From the Portuguese Asia of De Faria, II. 24.]

[Footnote 348:  In an account of this expedition of the Portuguese into Abyssinia, by the Catholic Patriarch, Juan Bermudez, who accompanied them, this difference of the number of men is partly accounted for.  According to Bermudez, the force was 400 men, among whom were many gentlemen and persons of note, who carried servants along with them, which increased the number considerably.—­E.]

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Some time before the expedition of De Gama into the Red Sea, Grada Hamed the Mahometan king of Adel or Zeyla, the country called Trogloditis by some geographers, submitted himself to the supremacy of the Turkish empire in order to obtain some assistance of men, and throwing off his allegiance to the Christian emperor of Abyssinia or Ethiopia, immediately invaded that country with a numerous and powerful army.  On this occasion he took advantage offered by the sovereign of Abyssinia, to whom he owed allegiance, being in extreme youth, and made such progress in the country that the emperor Atanad Sagad, otherwise named Claudius, was obliged to retire into the kingdom or province of Gojam, while his mother, Saban or Elizabeth, who administered the government in his minority, took refuge with the Baharnagash in the rugged mountains of Dama, a place naturally impregnable, which rising to a prodigious height from a large plain, has a plain on its summit about a league in diameter, on which is an indifferent town with sufficient cattle and other provisions for its scanty population.  On one side of this mountain there is a road of difficult ascent to near the top; but at the last part of the ascent people have to be drawn up and let down on planks by means of ropes.