Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/106

90 is not known, which occasioned his death. Having, a few moments before he died, recollected that his face was turned on a different side from the kingdom of Adel, he ordered himself to be shifted in his bed, and placed so as to look directly towards it, (a token how much his heart was set upon its destruction) and in that posture he expired.

was a prince of great bravery and conduct; very moderate in all his pleasures; of great devotion; zealous for the established church, but steady in resisting the monks and other clergy in all their attempts towards persecution, innovation, and independency. Many stories have been propagated of his inclination to the Catholic religion, and of his aversion to having an Abuna from Egypt; and it is said, that, during his whole reign, he obstinately persisted in refusing to suffer any Abuna in his kingdom. But these are fables invented by the Portuguese priests, who came into Abyssinia some time afterwards, and forged anecdotes to serve their own purposes; for, unless we except the story of the Venetian, Branca Leon, there is not a word said of any connection Bæda Mariam ever had with the few Catholics that then were in his country, and even that was a connection of his father's. And as to the other story, we find in history, that the Abuna had been in the country ever since his father Zara Jacob's time; and that, at his desire, the Abuna, Imaranha Christos, came and received, in the field of battle, large donations in gold, almost as often as the king gained a victory. Bæda Mariam died at the age of forty, after reigning ten years, which were spent in continual war; during the whole course of which he was successful, and might (if he had lived) have very much weakened the Moorish states, and prevented the terrible