THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 119 



in 1475, and this is confirmed by Ludolf ; and, on all hands, 

 it is allowed he reigned 17 years, which would have brought 

 the laft year of his reign to 1492. It feems alfo to be agreed 

 by the generality of them, that Covillan faw and converfed 

 with this prince, Ifcander, fome time before his death : this 

 he very well might have done, if that prince lived to the 

 1492, and Peter Covillan came into Abyffinia in 1490, as 

 Galvan fays in his father's memoirs. But then Tellez in- 

 forms us exprefsly, that Ifcander was dead 6 months before 

 the arrival of Peter Covillan in that country : If Peter Co- 

 villan arrived 6 months after the death of Ifcander, it mail 

 have been in the end of his fon's reign, Amda Sion, who* 

 was an infant, and reigned only 7 months- 



Alvarez omits this king, Amda Sion, altogether, and fo 

 does Tellez ; and there is a heap of miflakes here that mew 

 thefe Portuguefe hiftorians paid very little attention to the 

 chronology of thefe reigns. They call Alexander the father 

 of Naod, when he was really but his brother ; and Helena, 

 they fay, was David"s mother,, when, in fact, me was his 

 grandmother, or rather his grandfather's wife ; for Helena,, 

 who was Iteghe in the time of David the III. had never either 

 fon or daughter. So that if I differ, as in fact I do, 4 years, 

 or thereabout, in this account^ I do not think in thofe re- 

 mote times, when the language and manner of accounting 

 was fo little known to thefe ftrangers, that I, therefore, 

 fhould reject my own account and fervilely adopt theirs, and 

 the more fo, becaufe, as we mall fee in its proper place, by 

 the examination and companion made by help of an eclipfe 

 of the fun in the 1 3th year of Claudius' reign in the 1553, and 

 counting from that downwards to my arrival in Abyffinia,. 

 and backwards to Ifcander, that that prince muit have be- 

 gun* 



