Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/60

 ( 52 ) CHAPTER II.

BEFORE I quit this Settlement, I shall give a short abstract of its history, to which a few remarks on its present situation may with propriety be subjoined, and this, I hope, will not be trespassing too far on the attention of the reader. Previously to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and the arrival of the Portuguese in the Eastern seas, the knowledge possessed in Europe, respecting this coast, was extremely unsatisfactory, being almost entirely drawn from the vague accounts of Ptolemy, and the obscure notice of it in the Periplus of the Erythrean sea, a fact that appears evident from a curious map, now before me, which is entirely built on those authorities, and retains all their errors. The Arabs, it is certain, had for centuries before been intimately conversant with both its ports and their value, having established settlements on several points of the continent, and some of the islands adjacent, that gave them the