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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Unknown Ethiopia attracted his attention, and he engaged with 

 his brother Arnould in archaeological researches. Archaeology proved 

 unfruitful, and the two brothers took up geodesy. For eleven years 

 Antoine d'Abbadie traveled though Ethiopia, living the life of the 

 natives, and making himself master of the five Abyssinian dialects. 

 The exploration was difficult and sown with dangers. Antoine 

 d'Abbadie covered the country from Massouah, on the shore of the 

 Red Sea, to the interior of the land of KafTa, which he was the first 

 to visit, with a triangulation that involved the fixing of five thousand 

 positions at five hundred and twenty-five successive stations. The 

 distance between Massouah and Mount Wocho in southern Kaffa is 



Fig. 1. — Chateau d'Abbadie. General view. (A gift to the French Academy of Sciences.)' 



about one thousand kilometres, a little more than the crossing of 

 France along the meridian of Paris, and the trigonometric network 

 reached two hundred and fifty kilometres in breadth. Antoine 

 d'Abbadie remained in Gallaland from 1837 to 1848. The labors 

 of the two brothers, too numerous to cite here, concerned also eth- 

 nography and linguistics. Both were nominated Chevaliers of the 

 Legion of Honor on the same day, September 27, 1850. The doors 

 of the Academy of Sciences were opened to Antoine d'Abbadie 

 August 27, 1867, and he was named a member of the Bureau des 

 Longitudes in 1878. He was in charge of the observation of the 

 transit of Venus in Santo Domingo in 1882. 



Instead of devoting himself to a specialty, as is done now to ex- 

 cess, d'Abbadie pursued the scientific movement in its various forms, 

 and was at once an astronomer, geodesian, archaeologist, ethnogra- 

 pher, numismatist, and interested in other fields. "With his noble 

 character he made himself esteemed and loved during his whole 



