ABYSSINIA 



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ABYSSINIA 



JL J^BYSSINIA, abisin'ia, a country 

 in Northeast Africa, notable as being one of 

 only two African countries not directly owned 

 or controlled by European powers. The other 

 is Liberia, on the other side of the continent. 

 The latter was settled by its present govern- 

 ing population within a century, but Abys- 

 sinia has the great distinction that it has al- 

 ways been ruled by its native people. And 

 nobody knows how old it is, or who its earliest 

 rulers were; records do not reach back far 

 enough into the mysterious past. Tradition 

 says that the Queen of'Sheba, of whom the 

 Bible speaks, once ruled the country, although 

 some scnolars believe she belonged to a coun- 

 try to the east, across the Red Sea. Certainly 

 it was once a part of ancient Ethiopia, hun- 

 dreds of years before the birth of Christ. 



The country once had an ample seacoast, 

 but today, due to the demand of European 

 powers, not a mile of shoreline is owned by 

 Abyssinia. Britain, France and Italy have es- 

 tablished themselves on the coast in territories 

 called protectorates (see PROTECTORATE), which 

 probably only the ill fortunes of war or the 

 arts of diplomacy will ever be able to take 

 away from them and, even in such event, to no 

 advantage to Abyssinia. 



The Country. Abyssinia is the home of about 

 8,000,000 people, on 350,000 square miles of 

 territory; it is almost twice the size of the 

 combined states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 

 Wisconsin and Michigan, and it is of greater 

 area than Germany and France, together. As 

 its southern extremity is only 250 miles north 

 of the equator, one would expect it to be an 

 exceedingly hot country. This would be true 

 if it were low, but nearly the whole of Abys- 



sinia is a series of high plateaus from 4,500 to 

 10,000 feet above sea level, so only the valleys 

 are hot, and they are, indeed, very warm. The 

 rainfall is more than plentiful from May to 

 September, which is tin* \\vt season; the other 

 half of the year is called the dry season, al- 

 though even then there is considerable rain. 



One usually thinks that the Nile River, to 

 the west in Egypt, receives the immense quan- 

 tities of water which annually overflow its 

 banks from much farther south in Africa, but 

 a great proportion of this great flood pours 

 westward in many rivers from Abyssiania's high- 

 lands. Both countries therefore profit exceed- 

 ingly from the heavy rainfall. The great dif- 

 ferences in altitude make the climate variable 

 and give a great range of vegetable growth. 



The People and Their Occupations . The aver- 

 age Abyssinian is dark-brown in color, as would 

 be expected in a race which for thousands of 

 years has lived under equatorial suns. The na- 

 tives of all classes practise polygamy. The race 

 is descended from the Hamites, the .descend- 

 ants of Ham, who after the Deluge peopled 

 Northern Africa, and also from Arabians, who 

 crossed the narrow strait of Babel-Mandeb. 

 Besides these are modern Arabs, Greeks, Ar- 

 menians, and a few Europeans. Everything 

 connected with their life is primitive. The 

 average Abyssinian owns nothing of much 

 value ; he cannot own land, for theoretically the 

 ruler, called the negus, owns every foot of the 

 soil, and the people pay for whatever privi- 

 leges they enjoy on it. Naturally agriculture 

 is backward among a people who know next 

 to nothing about landed property. Their living 

 is made from coffee growing, which is on the 

 increase, and next in importance, from cotton, 

 sugar, oranges, lemons and dates. On the higher 

 lands wheat and barley are grown, also a large 

 quantity of tobacco. 



In its mineral resources Abyssinia is com- 

 paratively rich in iron, but it is mined as yet 

 only for local manufacture into knives, spears, 

 axes and the crude implements of the house- 

 hold. General commerce is quite impossible, 

 owing to lack of transportation to the sea. 

 Rubber trees flourish and a good deal of rub- 

 ber sap is gathered ; the methods of its prepara- 

 tion in the locality where it is found are 

 related in the article INDIA RUBBER. 



Cities and Communication. The capital city, 

 so called, although it is little more than a group 

 of rude villages built around the palace of the 

 negus, is Addis Abeba. It is 300 miles inland 

 from the sea, and almost inaccessible. The only 



