THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 



35* 



eians. It was very probably their intention to have Tent to 

 them people who would very foon have put a fatal period 

 to the million, had not Emanuel Baradas, with a number 

 of Abyifinians, and officers,. and plenty of all things necef* 

 fkry, joined the patriarch on the 16th of June 1625; while 

 their late conductors, confcious of.mifbehaviour, fled .with* 

 out feeking their, hire. 



In five days they came to Fremona, where they ftaid till 

 November ; and, in December, _ arrived at Gorgora, where 

 they were introduced to the king in his palace. Socinios 

 ordered the patriarch to be placed on a feat equal in height to 

 his own, on his right hand ; and at that very audience, which 

 was on the 1 ith of February 1626, it was fettled that the king 

 fhould take an oath of fubmiffion to the fee. of Rome. 



This ufelefs, vain, ridiculous ceremony, was accordingly 

 celebrated on the nth of February, with all the pageantry 

 of a heathen feftival or triumph. The palace was adorned 

 with all the pomp and vanity that the church of Rome; 

 and efpecially that part of it; the Order of the Jefuits, had 

 folemnly abjured. The patriarch, as a mark of his fuperi- 

 ority over the Abunas, preached a.fermon in the Portu- 

 guefe language upon the primacy of the chair of St Peter, 

 full of Latin quotations, which is faid to have had a won- 

 derful effect upon the king and Sela Chriftos, neither of 

 whom underflood one word either of Latin or, Portuguefe. . 



That part of the patriarch's difcourfe, which was appli- 

 cable to Socinios's converfion, was anfwered by Melca Chri- 

 ftos, governor of Samen, (himfelf a fchifmatic) in the lan- 

 guage of Amhara, which neither the patriarch nor his re- 



2.„ timie 



