Now, with the return of the Solomonic line and the recording of historical events, we have documentary evidence from Ethiopian sources of the existence of a section of the population practising the Jewish religion. The isolation of the country, however, prevented anything approaching an accurate description of the country's history and people from reaching the outside world for another two hundred years. The breakthrough came as a result of the remarkable voyages of the Portuguese. Prince Henry the Navigator, in a crusading spirit, had dreamed in the first half of the fifteenth century of a military link between Christian Europe and the semi-fabulous Christian realm of Prester John. In 1487 King John II had dispatched a mission overland under Pedro de Covilham and Alfonse de Payva with the dual aim of making contact with the only Christian state in Africa and the more mercenary object of diverting the spice trade away from Venice to Portugal. 1 The following year Bartholomeu Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope, thus proving that the Indian Ocean was accessible from Europe by sea, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama sailed as far as India by the same route.

While these great voyages were taking place Portugal and Spain were engaged in their final struggle against the Moors in the Iberian peninsula. The climate of opinion was fanatically 'antiinfidel' and Jews were no less the object of hatred than Muslims. No doubt the emissaries to Abyssinia were not more tolerant than their fellow countrymen at home and they did not conceal their distaste for some of the Jewish practices which they found among Prester John's Christians. The effect of these journeys on the history of Ethiopia was profound for contact between Europe and Ethiopia was once again established, and the country had, at least temporarily, ended its isolation from the rest of the Christian world.

The historian of these early missions was Francisco Alvarez, the Catholic chaplain who accompanied the first Portuguese embassy, led by Rodrigo de Lima, which remained in the country for six years until 1526. His account of his journey into the interior excited a great deal ofinterest in Europe and was widely translated and republished. Perhaps it was wishful thinking which prompted him to declare that 'In no part of the kingdoms or lordships of the

(1) The Ethiopians, p. 3.