Massawa. He sent them to his superior at Suakin, where the Pasha forced the party to pay a ransom before they could proceed to India. Despite settling for a ransom of 4300 patacas (which he borrowed from local Banyan merchants), at the last moment the Pasha insisted on keeping Patriarch Mendes and three other senior priests for further money. Once Lobo reached Diu, he left for Goa by canoe, arriving at the provincial capital on 8 December 1634. There he attempted to convince viceroy Miguel de Noronha, conde de Linhares to send an armament to the Red Sea to capture Suakin and Massawa, free the patriarch by force, and restore Catholicism to Ethiopia. Although the Viceroy was willing to make a punitive expedition against Suakin to free the Patriarch, he did not want to overextend Portuguese forces and garrison either port. Unwilling to settle for just freeing the patriarch, Lobo embarked for Portugal, and after he had been shipwrecked on the coast of Natal, then captured by pirates, he arrived at Lisbon. Neither at this city, however, nor at Madrid and Rome, was any approval given to Lobo's plan. He accordingly returned to India in 1640, and was elected rector, and afterwards provincial, of the Jesuits at Goa. After some years he returned to his native city, where he died. Writings A number of Lobo's writings have survived. He entered into a correspondence with Henry Oldenburg of the Royal Society concerning the source of the Nile, which likely led to the publication in London of a little book entitled A Short Relation of the River Nile, of its source and current; of its overflowing the campagnia of Ægypt, till it runs into the Mediterranean and of other curiosities: written by an eye-witnesse, who lived many years in the chief kingdoms of the Abyssine Empire. Translated by Sir Peter Wyche. Gabriel Pereira reported in 1903 that he had found three short works in manuscript by Lobo in the library of the Duke of Palmela, and in 1966 Fr. Manuel Gonçalves da Costa discovered in the Ajuda library at Lisbon another short work of Lobo, Breve Notícia e Relação de Algumas Cousas Certas não vulgares, e dignas de se saberem, escritas e [sic] instância de Curiosos, which repeated the topics of A Short Relation. His best known work is his memoirs of the years 1622-1640, which cover his voyage to India, his