Nov. 20, 1879] 



NATURE 



61 



it will be to ask them to remember that he proved, what 

 the greatest men have always proved, that it is possible 

 to conciliate the most magnificent knowledge of mathe- 

 matics or of any abstract science with all the culture of 

 the time. Galileo was an admirable writer ; he was a 

 great musician ; he studied Ariosto and Dante with in- 

 tense love ; he amused himself with comedy ; he 

 distinguished himself in painting. It is the commonplace 

 of the history of great men — a commonplace better 

 illustrated perhaps by the great names of Italy than by 

 those of any other country— that greatness is scarcely 

 compatible with a narrow concentration of intellect, even 

 to one great family of subjects. Many of her great 

 mathematicians were sculptors, painters, poets, masters 

 of expression. But if the story of Galileo's life should 

 guard you from falling into the Scylla of the eager 

 student who thinks that he must dwarf his nature if he 

 hopes to attain to eminence in a special subject — an 

 error to which the pressure of our times renders him more 

 and more liable — it is equally certain to save him from 

 the Charybdis of the dilettante who forgets to choose 

 that one of the objects attainable within the little com- 

 pass of a man's life which is most suited to his faculties, 

 and in attaining which he is most likely to succeed. 

 Galileo repressed none of his great powers, and denied 

 himself none of the intellectual delights which few men 

 of his day were so able to enjoy. But the obstinacy with 

 which he followed after mathematical and physical truth, 

 from the day when he first listened, as a truant medical 

 student, at the key-hole of a lecture-room to the professor 

 of mathematics teaching the Grand Duke's pages, to that, 

 nearly sixty years after, when the worn-out shell which 

 had suffered so much was laid in that last darkness of 

 the grave, warns us that greatness is never, and, I may 

 add, success is seldom, won without an unfaltering per- 

 severance in the pursuit of the main object of life. The 

 last wish of the venerable old man, whose heart suffered 

 as much from the cruelty which had cut him off, in a 

 sense, from the outward communion of the faithful, as his 

 intellect did when he was compelled, on his knees, to 

 deny what he had proved to be the true system of the 

 universe, was refused him. The Church below refused 

 him burial in the Santa Croce at Florence, but it could 

 not prevent the eyes that old age and suffering had 

 blinded to the delights of his Italian earth from opening 

 on the splendours of an immortality which no man has 

 better earned. 



WHO WAS PRINCE ALUMAYO? 



SOME of our contemporaries, referring to the recent 

 death of King Theodore's son, Prince Alumayu, 

 speak of him as if he were an African of the ordinary 

 Negro type. This is perhaps on the whole a fair gauge 

 of the popular ideas still prevalent regarding the natives 

 of the Dark Continent. Yet, though the standard is not 

 of a high order, it must be confessed that in the present 

 case some little confusion might well be pardoned, con- 

 sidering the many difficulties attaching to the subject of 

 Abyssinian ethnology. Indeed it would be no easy 

 matter even for a sound ethnologist to answer the question 

 off-hand, who was Prince Alumayu ? To do so accurately 

 implies a clear knowledge of a very complicated problem, 

 to the elucidation of which a few lines may be welcomed 

 by the readers of Nature, in connection with an event 

 of some political importance and presenting a very 

 striking parallel in more than one respect to the death of 

 the late Prince Louis Napoleon in Zululand. 



It may at once be stated that, whatever else he may 

 have been, the >oung " Ethiopian," as he has been called, 

 was in no sense an African Negro, and that matters will 

 be much simplified if the " Negro question " be dismissed 

 altogether from the present discussion. There no doubt 

 is some true Negro blood in the lowlands, especially 



towards the south-west frontier bordering on Senaar ; but 

 in the Abyssinian highlands proper the Negro element 

 seems never at any time to have been present, and at any 

 rate King Theodore of Amhara was no more of Negro 

 stock than are the Rajputs of Northern India. The types 

 have nothing in common except the outward element of 

 colour, though even here great differences prevail, and 

 many of the Abyssinians, especially the women, are yery 

 fair. In all other respects — physique, language, mental 

 qualities— the divergence is fundamental. 



This statement applies not only to the ruling peoples 

 of Tigre", Amhara, and Shoa — the "Habesh" proper — 

 who are intruders, but also to the true aborigines whether 

 settled or nomad, and who may, for convenience, be here 

 collectively grouped as Agaii, the 'Ayau of Cosmas (about 

 520 a.d.). The Habesh belong to the Himyaritic branch 

 of the great Semitic family, and must have found their 

 way into the country from the south-western parts of 

 Arabia many hundred years before the Christian era. 

 The Agaii are a section of the Hamitic family inter- 

 mediate between the Gallas and Somali of the south, and 

 the Bisharas or Bejas and Egyptians further north. But 

 Semite and Hamite, both originally no doubt one, are 

 themselves mere varieties of the great " Caucasian " type, 

 of which the Aryans are a collateral branch. It follows 

 therefore that Abyssinia is peopled exclusively by races 

 fundamentally distinct from the African Negro, and re- 

 motely allied to the fair European stock. Hence Prince 

 Alumayu's affinities are, not with the black inhabitants of 

 the Dark Continent, but with the light, swarthy, and dark 

 peoples of Europe, South-Western Asia, and Northern 

 India. 



It will now be more easy to determine his position in 

 the Abyssinian family itself. Although in this area the 

 fundamental elements, as shown, are two only, Hamite 

 and Semite, the intermingling of these elements, con- 

 tinued during a period of probably not less than four 

 thousand years, and taking place under ever-varying con- 

 ditions, has resulted in no little confusion, and the per- 

 plexity has in this case been further intensified by the 

 elements of speech and religion. Thus, the Amharic 

 people, for instance, are usually classed as "Habesh" 

 proper, because of their language ; for Amharna, notwith- 

 standing many serious differences, is no doubt funda- 

 mentally related to the Tigrai, the purest representative 

 of the old Ghez (Himyaritic), extinct since the fourteenth 

 century. But it might not be difficult to show that the 

 bulk of the Amharic 1 nation {are ethnically of Agaii 

 stock, though now speaking a modified Ghez dialect 

 imposed upon them by the conquering Semites from the 

 north. At the same time the dominant race in Amhara 

 is no doubt still more akin to the Semites than to the 

 subject race. Hence the late Prince Alumayu, belonging 

 to the royal blood of Amhara, must, on the whole, be 

 regarded as of Habesh (Himyaritic) stock as well as 

 speech. . 



Religion has been mentioned as a source of confusion, 

 and an obvious case in point are the mysterious Falashas, 

 who, because professing the Jewish faith, are popularly sup- 

 posed to be of Hebrew nationality. Fortunately, Mr. Edward 

 Hine has not yet got hold of them, and they have conse- 

 quently not yet been identified with any of the lost tribes. 

 Nevertheless, their position is sufficiently curious and 

 interesting, though it may now be stated with some con- 

 fidence that they are neither Jews, Israelites, nor Semites. 

 In speech and physique they are a distinct branch of the 

 Agaii (Hamitic) family, and can no more be converted 

 into descendants of Abraham by the practice of maimed 

 Abrahamitic rites than the adoption of IsMm can trans- 

 form the Chinese Panthays into Koreish Bedouins. 



The subjoined scheme of the various races now in 

 possession of the Habesh highlands may help to clear up 



■ The very word Amhara. has been identified vvith the Uamra, the chief 

 Asaii nation in the Takazze valley and province of Lasta, XigriS. 



