562 BEPORT— 1893. 



tenacity with whicli the customs and ritual of early Christianity have 

 been maintained, and the absolute failure of the Portuguese Jesuits to 

 bring Abyssinia under the dominion of the Pope is aptly parallelled by the 

 absolute failure of the Roman Catholics to obtain a foothold in Greece, 

 and bring about a union of the Eastern and Western Churches. 



Nearly everything one comes across in Abyssinia has an interesting 

 pedigree from the old world. The shamma, or cloak, they wear is neither 

 more nor less than the old Roman toga : it is worn in precisely the ancient 

 manner, with the right hand buried in the folds and the end thrown 

 over the shoulder. The musical instruments they play are similar. The 

 long trumpet played at games and festivals was well known in the ancient 

 world as the tuba. The sistrum, or rattle, I have already alluded to. 

 The Abyssinian harp is exactly like its old classical prototype, the lyra. 

 We still find the rounded sounding-board, made in the form of a tortoise- 

 shell, the ancient testudo of the lyre : out of this come the two cornua, 

 and the strings are not touched with the fingers, but with plectra. The 

 fly-flap used by the priests is exactly like the fly-flaps depicted on the 

 Egyptian tombs. Children up to the age of puberty wear bullce, just as 

 Roman children did. Every Abyssinian has his thorn-extractor, made of 

 pliable metal, like the volsellce of Roman times. The popular Abyssinian 

 game, played on a sort of board with holes, something akin to draughts, 

 is commonly found wherever Arabian influence has been felt all over the 

 coast line of the East, in Asia and Africa alike. The umbrella, and the 

 dignity attached thereto, is distinctly old world. The sacred arcana are 

 always carried under gorgeously decorated umbrellas ; only a prince may 

 wear a red one, grandees wear white ones, and peasants go to market 

 with umbrellas made of straw. There is hardly anything in Abyssinia 

 which is not a well-authenticated relic of a bygone civilisation, as the few 

 instances which I have given here will show. 



We took the measurement of some fifty Abyssinians, according to the 

 rules and regulations set down by the Anthropological Institute. These 

 measurements have been placed in the hands of Dr. Garson, who has 

 undertaken to work them out. 



T hope in the ensuing winter to visit Southern Arabia, with a view 

 to following up the same line of study, both archaeological and anthropo- 

 logical. I feel confident that if Southern Arabia be submitted to a careful 

 examination we shall there find traces of an exceedingly primitive civili- 

 sation ; traces of an empire which existed many centuries before our era, 

 which spread down the east coast of Africa south of the Zambesi, and 

 constructed the ruined buildings visited by us last year in Mashonaland, 

 and which, as Professor Miiller shows, are built on exactly the same 

 principle as those of Mareb and Sirwah in Southern Arabia, and were 

 probably used for the same form of religion. 



This year we have found traces of an Arabian occupation of Arabia as 

 far back as the eighth century before our era in the mountains of 

 Abyssinia. As discovery follows discovery I am sure we shall be able to 

 reconstruct the history of a once mighty commercial race, which was 

 contemporaneous with the best days of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and 

 which provided the ancient world with most of its most valued luxuries. 



