LAND OF PRESTER JOHN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 50, 27 August 1938, Page 26

LAND OF PRESTER JOHN

"The Discovery of Abyssinia by the Portuguese in 1520" is a little book which the British Museum acquired recently. It has proved to be a Portuguese description, earlier by some 20 years than any similar work hitherto known, of the long-sought land of Prester John. It describes how a Portuguese fleet, sailing from India in 1520, succeeded in capturing Massawa (then held by the Arabs) and in landing at the neighbouring Abyssinian town of Harkiko. During their brief stay the Portuguese' formed an alliance with the provincial governor, based on their common Christianity and their common hostility to the Arabs' and Turks, visited the great mountain monastery of Vizen, and left ambassadors—among them Francisco Alvares, whose later description of Abyssinia has been hitherto the earliest known—to mak^ treaties, with. the Negus.