ABSTRACT
Although God apparently inflicted this incessant plague on the Abyssinians as a punishment for their wilful perfidy, He reaped some benefits from this misfortune, as is His wont; for, since many provinces were destroyed and the people were perishing without any recourse, the majority of the people abandoned them and went to seek sustenance in regions where this plague either did not extend or was not inflicting so much damage or where they found among the inhabitants some relief from their sufferings. Bands of these people were thus to be found on the roads, which were peopled also with dead bodies; and those who were alive were in such poor condition that they resembled the dead. And as we in the village of Fremona, I along with the many Ethiopians who were all Catholics there and the many Portuguese whom I had there with me, tried to help them, the news of the help we were giving brought many of these poor people to us in search of sustenance for their bodies and at the same time they received sustenance for their souls, for many were converted. Many children were baptized and, shortly consumed by hunger, went to Heaven, God, by his preordination, inflicting this punishment and suffering. Parents left many of them in our village and went elsewhere for shelter, abandoning them there in the knowledge that we would have to take them in. Many of these children died because they had arrived in too advanced a state of starvation; others were reared with the milk of the Catholic faith. One time among others, as I was going out on a matter of business, I met several bands of these wretched people, men, women, and children. I dismounted as I did on other occasions, and, making them stop and sit down, I indoctrinated and instructed them all in the mysteries of the faith, baptizing them afterwards; and since the village where I was was the usual route through which everyone passed, I ordered that they be given alms sufficient for a few days. One of the
groups I met on these roads consisted of about thirty persons, large and small. I performed the same services with them, and when I was to baptize them, all of them submitted and received the baptismal water except for one who moved away from the rest, not wishing to be baptized. I called him, and when I asked him why, he said that it was because he was a Muslim; and no matter how hard I tried to persuade him to be converted, it was all to no avail. I left him to his obstinacy; but one of his companions, wishing to save that soul, with great Christian piety and charity, came to me and told me in secret that he was not a Muslim but that they were all from the same village and Muslims and Christians cannot live together. I again urged the stubborn heretic and no matter how strongly I insisted, despite his admission that he was not of the Muslim people, he affirmed that he was a Muslim because he had eaten some of the locusts that had come in this plague. Locusts are a common food for the Muslims; they make large drying-places for them, and when the locusts have been dried in the sun, they grind them and, from such a flour they make an extremely revolting, foul-smelling meal or pap, which they eat with much relish as a great treat, partly through custom and partly through devotion for Saint john, from whom they say they learned to eat them. 1 During this discussion, I still had in my hands a container of water left over from that with which I had baptized the rest of them, and as the heretic was stubbornly resolved not to be baptized, I said to him, 'You'll be wet at least'. I soaked him all over with it, to the great amusement of his companions, who saw him resisting the salutary holy water, but unable to escape the water, remaining very wet and mortified as part of the punishment which his obstinacy and perfidy deserved. I had better success in the instances I shall now relate.
