diversity of religions which are tolerated there, either by
negligence or from motives of policy; and the same cause hath
produced such various revolutions, revolts, and civil wars within
these later ages. For those different sects do not easily admit of
an union with each other, or a quiet subjection to the same monarch.
The Abyssins cannot properly be said to have either cities or
houses; they live either in tents, or in cottages made of straw and
clay; for they very rarely build with stone. Their villages or
towns consist of these huts; yet even of such villages they have but
few, because the grandees, the viceroys, and the Emperor himself are
always in the camp, that they may be prepared, upon the most sudden
summons, to go where the exigence of affairs demands their presence.
And this precaution is no more than necessary for a prince every
year engaged either in foreign wars or intestine commotions. These
towns have each a governor, whom they call gadare, over whom is the
educ, or lieutenant, and both accountable to an officer called the
afamacon, or mouth of the King; because he receives the revenues,
which he pays into the hands of the relatinafala, or grand master of
the household: sometimes the Emperor creates a ratz, or viceroy,
general over all the empire, who is superior to all his other
officers.

Aethiopia produces very near the same kinds of provisions as
Portugal; though, by the extreme laziness of the inhabitants, in a
much less quantity: however, there are some roots, herbs, and
fruits which grow there much better than in other places. What the
ancients imagined of the torrid zone being uninhabitable is so far
from being true, that this climate is very temperate: the heats,
indeed, are excessive in Congo and Monomotapa, but in Abyssinia they
enjoy a perpetual spring, more delicious and charming than that in