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No food being forthcoming, we killed a sheep and broiled it over the fire, Abyssinian fashion; hungry and tired, we thought it the most exquisite meal we had ever made. At sunrise, the following morning, our guards told us to get ready, and soon after we were in the saddle.
Nonnosus landed at Adule on the Abyssinian coast, and then travelled inward for fifteen days to Auxum, the capital. This country was then called Ethiopia; it had gained the name which before belonged to the valley of the Nile between Egypt and Meroë. On his way to Auxum, he saw troops of wild elephants, to the number, as he supposed, of five thousand.
It is true it would have been difficult; but Abyssinian soldiers are not particular: they sleep anywhere, on their prisoner's bed, if there is no other place, making use of him as a pillow. Of course Mr. Rassam had none; but he was the great man, the dispenser of favours. Samuel soon made friends with some of the chiefs.
He added another history of a famous Abyssinian monk, who killed a devil two hundred feet high, and only four feet thick, that ravaged all the country; the peasants had a great desire to throw the dead carcase from the top of a rock, but could not with all their force remove it from the place, but the monk drew it after him with all imaginable ease and pushed it down.
General Gordon proceeded direct from Cairo to Massowah, which route he selected because he hoped to settle the Abyssinian dispute before he commenced operations in the Soudan.
The Abyssinian navy does not weigh heavily on the estimates, nor does it take years to construct a fleet; two days after our arrival fifty new vessels had been launched, and several hundreds had joined from Zage and the Isle of Dek. The few days we spent on the shore of the Tana Sea were among the small number of happy ones we have seen in this country.
"Armed with the results of my Abyssinian inquiry, I next proceeded to Syria; for among certain desert tribes I hoped to find further evidence to support my theory. "Since my life-work is destroyed, I am egotist enough to desire that credit for it should not accrue to another.
If Bell and Plowden had been both living, it may be asked, would Theodore have dealt with them so as ultimately to call for the intervention of Government on Abyssinian affairs? I believe so.
The people of Shendi have a bad character, being both ferocious and fraudulent. Great numbers of slaves of both sexes, from Abyssinia and Darfour, are to be found here, at a moderate price, a handsome Abyssinian girl selling for about forty or fifty dollars.
Scattered all over the island are deserted ruined villages, differing but little from those of to-day, except that the inhabitants call them all Frankish work, and admit that once Franks dwelt in them of the cursed sect of the Nazarenes. We felt little hesitation in saying that a branch of the Abyssinian Church once existed in Sokotra, and that its destruction is of comparatively recent date.
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