Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/380

356 The second happened on the 13th year of the reign of Claudius, as the Abyssinian account states it. Claudius succeeded to the crown in the 1540, and the 13th year of his reign will fall to be on the 1553. Now we find his eclipse did happen in the same clear season of the year, that is, on the 24th of January 1553, so in this second instance our chronology is perfectly correct.

third eclipse of the sun happened in the 7th year of the reign of Yasous II. in Magabit, the seventh month of the Abyssinians. Now Yasous came to the crown in 1729, so that the 7th year of his reign will be in 1736, and on the 4th day of October, answering to the 8th day of the month Tekemt, N.S. in that year, we see this eclipse observed in Europe.

a further confirmation of this, we have stated the particulars of a comet which, the Abyssinian annals say, appeared at Gondar in the month of November, in the 9th year of the reign of Yasous I. and as this comet was observed in Europe to have come to its perihelion in December 1689, and as that year, according to our account, was really the 9th of that king's reign, no further proof of the exactness of our chronology can possibly be required. By means of these observations, counting backward to the time of Icon Amlac, and again forward to the death of Joas, which happened in 1768, and assigning to each prince the number of years that his own historians say he reigned, I have, in the most unexceptionable manner that I can devise, settled the chronology of this country; and the exact agreement it hath with all the remarkable events, regularly and sufficiently vouched, plainly shews the accuracy of this me-