Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/145

 the command of a Turkish basha, and garrisoned by Turkish troops sent thither from Constantinople by the emperors Sehm and Soliman, his successors.

peaceable Arabian merchants, full of that good faith which successful commerce inspires, fled everywhere from the violence and injustice of these Turkish tyrants, and landed in safety their riches and persons on the opposite shore of the kingdom of Adel. The trade from India, flying from the same enemy, took refuge in Adel among its own correspondents, the Moorish merchants, during the violent and impolitic tyranny that everywhere took place under this Turkish oppression.

is a small island, on the very coast of Adel, opposite to Arabia Felix without the Straits of Babelmandeb, upon the entrance of the Indian Ocean. The Turks of Arabia, though they were blind to the cause, were sensible of the great influx of trade into the opposite kingdom. They took possession, therefore, of Zeyla, where they established what they called a Customhouse, and by means of that post, and gallies cruising in the narrow Straits, they laid the Indian trade to Adel under heavy contributions, that might, in some measure, indemnify them for the great desertion their violence and injustice had occasioned in Arabia.

step threatened the very existence both of Adel and Abyssinia; and considering the vigorous government of the one, and the weak politics and prejudices of the other, it is more than probable the Turks would have subdued both Adel and Abyssinia, had they not, in India their chief object, met the Portuguese, strongly established, and governed