ection
or communication with the kingdom of Portugal. 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. He married,
and obtained ample possessions, enjoying the favour of several successive
kings of Abyssinia, and was preferred to some considerable offices in the
government. Frequent epistolary intercourse took place between him and
the king of Portugal, who spared no expence to keep open the interesting
correspondence. In his dispatches, Covilham described the several ports
which he had visited in India; explained the policy and disposition of
the several princes; and pointed out the situation and riches of the gold
mines of Sofala; exhorting the king to persist, unremittingly and
vigorously, in prosecuting the discovery of the passage to India around
the southern extremity of Africa, which he asserted to be attended with
little danger, and affirmed that the cape was well known in India. He is
said to have accompanied his letters and descriptions with a chart, in
which the cape and all the cities on the coast of Africa were exactly
represented, which he had received in India from a Moor. Covilham was
afterwards seen by, and intimately acquainted with Francesco Alvarez, his
historian, who was sent on an embassy into Abyssinia by Emmanuel king of
Portugal. Alvarez, who appears to have been a priest, calls Covilham his
spiritual son, and says that he had been thirty-three years in great
credit with _Prette Janni_, so he calls the king of Abyssinia, and all
the court, during all which time he had never confessed his sins, except
to GOD in secret, because the priests of that country were not in use to
keep secret what had been committed to them in confession. 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.

[1] Clarke, i. 384. Purchas, II. 1091.

[2] 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 deg. 10' N. long. 33 deg. 36' E.--E.

CHAPTER VI.

HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF INDIA BY THE PORTUGUESE, BETWEEN
THE YEARS 1