Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia During the Years 1520–1527

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This volume contains an English translation of a description of Ethiopia written by Francisco Alvarez (c.1465–c.1540) during the six years he spent as a missionary with the Portuguese embassy to the Emperor of Ethiopia. Alverez describes Orthodox Christian monasteries and churches, compares the Orthodox and Catholic rites, and provides the first known descriptions of the ancient city of Axum in this, the earliest surviving Western description of Ethiopia, first published in English in 1881.