MOCHA. 
475 
country, and mention of a successful campaign which the reigning 
sovereign undertook against the Moors, in consequence of an 
affront offered to one of his priests, whom he had commissioned 
to carry his offerings to Jerusalem. This campaign is attributed 
to the year 1288 by Ramusio^* which in all probability applies 
to the conquests of Amda Sion, related in Mr. Bruce' s Travels, 
Vol. III. p. 41 et seq. as extracted from the Chronicles ; and there- 
fore the reign of that sovereign should, I conceive, be carried 
back about twenty years, or rather more ; a difference that will 
not appear extraordinary, when it be considered that the period 
assigned for that king's reign was ascertained merely by comput- 
ing back from the time of Yoas.-j* 
In this narrative of Amda Sion's wars, which is an important 
point in the history of Abyssinia, much confusion has been intro- 
duced into Mr. Bruce's account, owing to the slight knowledge 
then existing of the geography of the country, for, from his en- 
tertaining a supposition of Zeyla being an island, he was under 
the necessity of imagining that there were two towns of the same 
name, and has placed the one taken by Amda Sion about seven 
degrees to the south of the other, and carried the advance of the 
armies to an inconceivable distance beyond its actual progress, 
which, at that time, evidently extended no further than the an- 
cient and present town of Zeyla, situated on a peninsula; the 
* Ramusio, Viaggi di Marco Polo, p. 59, Lib. III. (In the Voyages de Bergeron," 
which Geddes in his Eccles. Hist, has copied, this event is erroneously attributed to 1258,) 
t The necessity of this correction is confirmed, in some degree, by a list which I brought 
to England, a translation of which I have made use of, which makes a difference of about 
J 3 years from that given by Mr. Bruce. 
3 p 
