Past Perfect: A Voyage to Abyssinia

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Jeronimo Lobo (1593–1678) was a Jesuit missionary from Lisbon who entered the Society of Jesus as a teenager. While on mission to India in the 1620s, he decided to travel to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) with hopes of converting and protecting the people there, whose emperor had already become Catholic. He recorded his journeys, and his writings are worthy of an adventure novel. By the time his travels were over, Lobo had been marooned, captured by pirates, imprisoned by Turks, ransomed and had even seen a unicorn. Below is an excerpt from his account of his time on the Red Sea, where he ruminates on the Exodus.

It is properly at this cape (the most eastern part of Africa) that the Gulf of Arabia begins, which at Babelmandel [Bab-el-Mandeb] loses its name, and is called the Red Sea. Here, though the weather was calm, we found the sea so rough, that we were tossed as in a high wind for two nights; whether this violent agitation of the water proceeded from the narrowness of the strait, or from the fury of the late storm, I know not; whatever was the cause, we suffered all the hardships of a tempest. We continued our course towards the Red Sea, meeting with nothing in our passage but a gelve, or kind of boat, made of thin boards, sewed together, with no other sail than a mat.

In our description of this famous sea, an account of which may justly be expected in this place, it is most convenient to begin with the coast of Arabia, on which part at twelve leagues from the mouth stands the city of Moca [Mocha, Yemen], a place of considerable trade. Forty leagues farther is the Isle of Camaram [Kamaran, Yemen], whose inhabitants are annoyed with little serpents, which they call basilisks, which, though very poisonous and deadly, do not, as the ancients have told us, kill with their eyes, or if they have so fatal a power, it is not at least in this place.

Sailing ninety leagues farther, you see the noted port of Jodda [Jiddah, Saudi Arabia], where the pilgrims that go to Mecca and Medina unlade those rich presents which the zeal of different princes is every day accumulating at the tomb of Mahomet. The commerce of this place, and the number of merchants that resort thither from all parts of the world, are above description, and so richly laden are the ships that come hither, that when the Indians would express a thing of inestimable price, they say, “It is of greater value than a ship of Jodda.”

An hundred and eighteen leagues from thence lies Toro [El-Tur, Sinai, Egypt], and near it the ruins of an ancient monastery. This is the place, if the report of the inhabitants deserves any credit, where the Israelites miraculously passed through the Red Sea on dry land (Exodus 14:15); and there is some reason for imagining the tradition not ill grounded, for the sea is here only three leagues in breadth. All the ground about Toro is barren for want of water, which is only to be found at a considerable distance, in one fountain, which flows out of the neighbouring mountains, at the foot of which there are still twelve palm-trees.

Near Toro are several wells, which, as the Arabs tell us, were dug by the order of Moses to quiet the clamours of the thirsty Israelites. Suez lies in the bottom of the Gulf, three leagues from Toro, once a place of note, now reduced, under the Turks, to an inconsiderable village, where the miserable inhabitants are forced to fetch water at three leagues’ distance. The ancient Kings of Egypt conveyed the waters of the Nile to this place by an artificial canal, now so choked with sand, that there are scarce any marks remaining of so noble and beneficial a work.

Jeronimo Lobo (1593–1678) was a Jesuit missionary from Lisbon who entered the Society of Jesus as a teenager. While on mission to India in the 1620s, he decided to travel to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) with hopes of converting and protecting the people there, whose emperor had already become Catholic. He recorded his journeys, and his writings are worthy of an adventure novel. By the time his travels were over, Lobo had been marooned, captured by pirates, imprisoned by Turks, ransomed and had even seen a unicorn. Below is an excerpt from his account of his time on the Red Sea, […]