lO 



NA TURE 



[November 4, 1909 



and a number of birds, trees, and plants, which in 

 their affinities belong more truly to the Palaearctic and 

 subtropical regions of Europe and Asia than to true 

 Africa. There are also indigenous non-Negro races, 

 like the Gala, which, by skull formation, by their use 

 of the plough (absolutely unknown elsewhere in Negro 

 Africa), by their languages, and many other points, 

 are Asiatic rather than African. 



Yet there are indications that Abyssinia, like 

 Somaliland, Egypt, Mauretania, has been inhabited 

 by man from a most remote period. Abyssinia may 

 have been the first great focus of Homo sapiens on 

 the African continent, to the south of the Sahara 

 Desert ; the region from which radiated Pygmies, 

 Bushmen, Nilotic Negroes, Forest Negroes, and 

 Bantu; Hamite, Egyptian, and the widespread 

 negroid types typified by the modern Fula, Hima, 

 Nyam-nyam, and Tibbu. Here took refuge an 

 ancient offshoot of the Jewish people ; here first of all 

 with the armies of Ptolemy, was carried Greek civili- 

 sation into tropical ."Xfrica ; hither came Persians after 

 they had conquered southern Arabia ; even more 

 anciently than Jew or Persian a branch of the Semitic 

 peoples was implanted in .Abyssinia, which has left 

 behind to this day at least two distinct language- 

 groups of the Semitic family — .\mharic and Harrari — 

 in addition to the much later Arabic. 



Here we are in one of the few portions of tropical 

 Africa known to the Romans and to the civilised 

 kingdoms of India before the time of Christ. 

 {Habshi — derived from Habesh, an old Semitic name 

 for .Abyssinia — is even at the present day the common 

 word for negro throughout Hindustan, and is also 

 equivalent to "magician," because in the ancient lore 

 of India, Abyssinians were identified with all the 

 unholiest forms of magic. They are the "black 

 magicians" of the "Arabian Nights'" stories. When 

 the present writer first imported Sikh soldiers into 

 Central Africa to fight the .Arab slave traders, brave 

 as they were in the presence of .Arabs, they were at 

 first frightened of the friendly negroes. " He is a 

 Habshi, and will turn me into a rabbit," said one 

 stalwart .Sikh soldier to me when I asked him to 

 travel alone through the bush with a negro guide.) 



The Portuguese soldiers and missionaries first re- 

 vealed some marvels of .Abyssinia and Ethiopia to the 

 modern European world of the later Renaissance. 

 The Portuguese also, by splendid feats of arms, saved 

 Christian .Abyssinia from being conquered and effaced 

 by a great army of .Arabised Somalis under 

 Muhammad Granye. Then came an interval of 

 Abyssinian distrust of the greedy white man, and the 

 attempts of Louis XIV. to supplant the Portuguese 

 and frenchify Abyssinia in the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries led finally to great disasters, 

 though it increased the acquaintance of the European 

 world with these profoundly interesting countries. 

 After that came the awakening of British interest 

 through the travels of Bruce and Salt. The last 

 named (Henry Salt) added considerably to our know- 

 ledge of the peculiar fauna of these countries. 



During the first half of the nineteenth century, 

 French interest in Abyssinia had a notable revival, and 

 to the brothers D'.Abbadie (of French-Irish origin) we 

 owe much of our meagre knowledge of the Hamitic 

 and negroid dialects of western Abyssinia and south- 

 west Ethiopia. After this came British big-game 

 hunters, consuls, and, finally, an army of British 

 and Indian soldiers. Mr. W. T. Blandford, amongst 

 other notabilities in zoology and geography, accom- 

 panied this expedition, and again revealed further 

 remarkable features in the mammalian fauna of this 

 peculiar part of .Africa. 



NO. 208S, VOL. 82] 



We have learnt a little more since from British and 

 Italian missionaries and explorers (notably, as to 

 fauna, from Major Powell Cotton), but more stiil from 

 French expeditions, important among which have been 

 those of the late Baron Carlos d'Erlanger and Baron 

 Maurice de Rothschild. 



One of the most remarkable French expeditions (not 

 forgetting the work of Borelli some sixteen years ago) 

 lately undertaken for the examination of Abyssinia 

 and Ethiopia, is that which is the motive and the 

 source of the present notice. 



In a rather too intimate and emotional preface to 

 this work, addressed to the father of Jean Duchesne- 

 Fournet, we are told that this young and brilliant 

 French explorer died in 1904, after his return from 

 Abyssinia. In the course of his journeys he had 

 reached the Wallaga country during the rainy season, 

 and had suffered to a terrible extent from fevers, the 

 sequeleB of which caused his death after his return to 

 France. He was, in fact, a martyr to science, for 

 the Wallaga country is a very little known part of 

 East-Centfal .\frica, lying to the south of the 

 Blue Nile and of the Didessa River, and at no 

 great distance from the frontier of the Egyptian 

 Sudan. 



The special object of Duchesne- Fournet's explora- 

 tion of Wallaga was its reputation, not only as a 

 possible source of future wealth in gold, but as a 

 region from which gold was obtained in the distant 

 past for the ancient Egyptians. Apparently a con- 

 cession had been granted in that region to a French 

 syndicate, and an active exploration was being carried 

 on by a French engineer. Monsieur Comboul (who 

 afterwards died). The Wallaga country has a mean 

 elevation (averaging the French and Italian calcula- 

 tions) of about 6000 feet. It seems to have been 

 visited by Jean Duchesne-Fournet alone (with an 

 Algerian escort), or, at least, without any one of the 

 French men of science on his staff, consequently, from 

 the point of view of science, his incursion into this 

 sC'Uth-westernmost portion of the Emperor Menelik's 

 dominions had little results of importance. He de- 

 scribes this country as "ravissant surtout avec sa 

 belle verdure." It has a certain amount of woodland, 

 rare elsewhere in the .Abyssinian Empire. The rain- 

 fall is extremely heavy, and the country to a great 

 extent lies within the basin of the River Didessa, an 

 important southern affluent of the Blue Nile. It is 

 covered with a luxuriant vegetation, and, where there 

 is any agriculture (the land is inhabited sparsely by 

 Galas and Walamo negroids), wheat, barley, maize, 

 sorghum, beans, peas, potatoes, coffee, limes, 

 bananas, and cotton are cultivated. The engineer 

 Comboul seems to have found deposits of lignite, the 

 importance of which was appreciated by the Emperor 

 Menelik. But although in beauty this region was a 

 paradise, and in products one of the richest parts in 

 Africa, the climate seems to have been singularly 

 unhealthy — constant fevers, not to be explained easily 

 under the mosquito theory of infection, and terrible 

 rheumatisms made its exploration during the rainy 

 season almost a torture. Some of the great moun- 

 tains (the summits of which would seem to reach here 

 and there to 10,000 feet) contained immense caves, the 

 exploration of which might yield important results in 

 paleontology and palaeanthropology. 



The premature death of the leader of this expedition 

 (the other members of which were Lieutenant Collat, 

 Sergeant-Major Fontenaud, Louis Lahure — who after- 

 wards greatlv distinguished himself in explorations 

 between the Benue and Lake Chad — H. Arsandaux, 

 Dr. Goffin, and Dr. Moreau) to some extent spoilt the 

 realisation of the full scientific results; as it is, the 



