NEW EMPIRE OF ABYSSINIA. 75 



of the nations recorded in the Old Testament, and, as their Bible has 

 been translated from the Septuagint, they have taken without cere- 

 mony the name of Ethiopian, which they have applied to their ances- 

 tors. In place of the title " Kings of Axum," which appears to have 

 been the first known to their sovereigns, was substituted, nobody 

 knows when, that of Kings oj Ethiopia. It is hardly necessary for 

 m6 to recall the fact that the Ethiopia of the Greeks and Romans 

 comprehended, in its most vague extension, the whole of Eastern 

 Africa, except Egypt, and in its more precise and restricted sense, all 

 Nubia from Syene. It is known now where reigned the two queens 

 Candace, and where Meroe was. Theodore the Second, little versed 

 in these erudite subtleties, only knew that he was emperor of Ethiopia, 

 and that, in the time of David and Solomon — ^in his eyes, the heau- 

 ideal of historic times — Ethiopia extended to the tropics : thus, since 

 his accession, he has announced his intention of retaking from the 

 Egyptians all Nubia as far as the other side of Dongola, leaving the 

 execution of it to a more favourable period. 



I have not yet spoken of two men, who have had, over the Negus 

 Theodore, a great influence, that some writers have even exaggerated. 

 They were two Englishmen, Messrs. James Bell and Walter Metcalfe 

 Plowden. The latter was appointed English Consul at Gondar ; and, 

 in 1848, concluded a commercial treaty with ras Ali, He had early 

 foreseen the high destiny of Kassa, and had attached himself to him, 

 following him everywhere, living to a great extent upon his bounty, 

 but never asking for recognition as consul, for the suspicious distrust 

 of the Abyssinians would not have accorded it. "We do not wish," 

 said an Abyssinian chief, in 1856, to the French consul of Massaoua, 

 "We do not wish to allow foreign consuls to set themselves up like 

 separate states in our empire. We have welcomed Mr. Plowden as a 

 traveller. It is said that he is a consul ; but had he demanded the 

 privileges of his title (added this chief with the braggadocio charac- 

 teristic of his nation), he had not lived for twenty-four hours.* 



Mr. Bell was an old volunteer of the English navy, attracted to 

 Abyssinia by the love of the unknown, and retained near the person of 

 the future emperor by a sympathy which had ripened into a kind of 



• The jurisdiction and exceptional immunities which consulates enjoy, make 

 them, in the eyes of the Abyssinians, little sovereignties ; and, according to 

 them, the establishment of these agencies in Abyssinia would be equivalent to 

 a dismemberment of the empire. 



