clusions on the accounts of David Reubeni and Eldad Ha Dani. It is probable that some of the reports of the Falashas led to this identification. According to Yagel, messengers were sent to these colonists in the time of Pope Clement VII., some of whom died, while the rest brought back tidings of the greatness of the tribes and their very wide territories. Yagel quotes a Christian traveller, Vincent of Milan, who was a prisoner in the hands of the Turks for twenty-five years, and who went as far as Fez, and thence to India, where he found the River Sambation, and a number of Jews dressed in silk and purple. They were ruled by seven kings, and upon being asked to pay tribute to the Sultan Salim, they declared that they had never paid tribute to any sultan or king. It is just possible that this may have some reference to the 'Sâsanam' or the Jews of Cochin.
"It is further stated that in 1630 a Jew of Salonica travelled to Ethiopia, to the land of Sambation; and that in 1646 one Baruch, travelling in Persia, claimed to have met a man named Malkiel, of the tribe of Naphtali, and brought back a letter from the king of the children of Moses: this letter was seen by Azulai. It was afterwards reprinted in Jacob Saphir's book of travels (Eben Sappir, 1. 98).
"So much interest was taken in this account that in 1831 a certain Baruch ben Samuel, of Pinsk, was sent to search for the children of Moses in Yemen. He travelled fifteen days in the wilderness, and declared he met Danites feeding flocks of sheep. So, too, in 1854, a certain Amram Ma'arabi set out from Safed in search of the Ten Tribes; and he was followed in 1857 by David Ashkenazi, who crossed over through Suakin to make enquiries about the Jews of Abyssinia."[1]But all these are legends and fancies. "We in this twentieth century," to quote the words of a Christian writer, "to whom there is no longer any part of the earth unknown, know that in no country whatever,
- ↑ Jewish Encyclopædia.
