Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/186

 measure of David's misfortunes seems to have been now full, and he died accordingly this very year 1540.

will be necessary here to remind the reader, that Alvarez, the chaplain and historian of the first Portuguese embassy, was (as he said) on his return appointed by king David to make his submission to the pope. Leaving Zaga Zaab, therefore, in Portugal, he proceeded to Bologna, where the emperor Charles V. was then in person, before whom and the pope himself he delivered his credentials framed by Peter Covillan, and afterwards, in a long speech, the reasons of his embassy.

pope received this submission of David with infinite pleasure, at a time when so many kingdoms in the west were revolting from his supremacy. He considered it as a thing of the greatest moment to be courted before the emperor by so powerful a prince in Africa. But as for the emperor himself, though he was then preparing for an expedition against the Mahometans, and though it was his favourite war, he seems to have been perfectly indifferent either to the embassy itself, or to the person that sent it; a great proof that he believed there was nothing real in it.

other people have doubted whether this embassy, or that of John Bermudes, actually came from the Abyssinian court, as the king would scarcely have abandoned the form of the Alexandrian church in which he had been brought up by Abuna Mark, then alive. Abuna Mark, moreover, could scarcely be believed to have promoted embassies which were intended to strike at the root of his own