XII.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 489 



forthwith decamp to spend them, returning next day or next 

 month as the humour takes him. Yet somehow things hold 

 together, and a few Semitic immigrants from South Arabia have 

 for over 2000 years contrived to maintain some kind of control 

 over the Hamitic aborigines who have always formed the bulk of 

 the population in Abyssinia. 



