476 MOCHA. 
principal object of the war having been to open a free commu- 
nication with the coast. 
About this same time an account is given by Ibn 'el Wardi, an 
Arabian author^ respecting the country, which, as it has not, I 
believe, before appeared in English, I have inserted with a trans- 
lation of Marco Polo's in the Appendix. Throughout this period 
a regular communication appears to have been kept up between 
Abyssinia and Europe, and in 1445, Zara Jacob, then reigning, 
sent an ambassador to the council of Florence, and wrote some 
interesting letters to his priests at Jerusalem, which are still ex- 
tant in the Church History of Abyssinia by Geddes, (vide p. 27.) 
It affords an interesting subject for reflexion, to trace occasion- 
ally the fortuitous course of events by which the most important 
changes in the affairs of the world have been brought about ; it 
may not therefore be foreign to the object I have in view, to ob- 
serve that, owing to the slight connection kept up by the Abys- 
sinian Church with Europe, we may perhaps be indebted for our 
knowledge of India and the discovery of a passage round the 
Cape of Good Hope, as it was in consequence of the flattering 
accounts which the Abyssinian priests delivered at Jerusalem 
respecting the Eastern Empires and their commerce with the 
south, that the attention of learned men was first excited to the 
subject, and that the princes of Portugal were induced, subse- 
quently, to send their emissaries into the East. To one of these 
agents, named Peter Covilham, we are indebted for the re- 
newal of a more extended intercourse with Abyssinia, as in 1490 
he succeeded in reaching the court of the Negush, at that time 
held in Shoa, and shortly afterwards, owing to his representation^ 
