59 8 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



exercife of arms, patience,perfeverance, and every military vir- 

 tue that could be acquired ; and had paiTed the firft of his life 

 as a private perfon, in the midfl of hardfhips and dangers. 



He is celebrated to this day in Abyflinia for a talent, 

 which feems to be the gift of nature, that of choofmg upon 

 the firfl view the proper ground for the camp or battle, and 

 embracing, in his own mind in a moment,all the advantages 

 and difadvantages that could refult from any particular part 

 of it. This talent is particularly recorded in feveral fhort 

 proverbs, or military adages, fuch as the following: " Blind 

 him firft, or you fhall never beat him." This moft material 

 qualification feemed to have been in part tranfmitted to Ras 

 Michael, the great general in my time, defcended from Soci- 

 nios by his mother ; and, by this fuperiority alone over the 

 other commanders oppofed to him, he is faid to have been 

 victorious in forty-three pitched battles. 



Socinios embraced the Catholic religion from conviction, 

 and ftudied it with great application, as far as his narrow 

 means of inftruction would allow him; and there can be no 

 doubt that, under the moderate conduct of Peter Paez, who 

 converted him, he would have died a martyr for that reli- 

 gion ; and there feems as little reafon to doubt, confcienti- 

 ous as he was, if he had been a young man he would 

 have quitted it for the good of his country, and from his 

 inability to fuffer the tyranny of the patriarch Alphonfo 

 Mendes, and his continual encroachment upon civil go- 

 vernment. Being, in the laft years of his life, left without 

 one foldier to draw his fword for the Catholic caufc, he kept 

 his religion, and abandoned his crown ; and having been, it 

 fhould fcem, for fome time convinced that the government 



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