NEW EMPIRE OF ABYSSINIA. 139' 



Africa. To this objection, they replied that these first eleven stations 

 had no proselytizing end in view, and were only intended as commer- 

 cial stations for the supply of the Abyssinian mission. Let it be so ; 

 feut waB it the intention of the subscribers to the undertaking, that 

 their contributions should be employed to maintain private specula- 

 tions, foreign to their religious interests, since these supplies could be 

 much more cheaply obtained by means of a confidential agent, sent 

 four times a year to Khartown or Massaoua ? 



In 1856 these attempts at religious propagandism began to be put 

 into practice. M. Martin Flad arrived in Abys?inia from Basle : he 

 was followed by ten of his countrymen, who have remained with him 

 to this d^y, and who were located, some at Djenda, others at Darna, 

 in the province of Dembea, and most of them in the hill of Gafat, 

 about an hour's walk from Devia Tabor. They were very well re- 

 ceived by the Negus, who tried to pass over the recent expulsion of 

 tlie Lazarists ; but when they asked permission to preach their doc- 

 trines, Theodore the Second quickly gave them to understand that he 

 would tolerate no discussion of religious tenets, and only allowed them 

 to make vague discourses on general morality. By special favour, 

 M. Flad and a few others were authorized by the Negus to attempt the 

 conversion of the Falachas (Abyssinian Jews), whom he disliked, 

 and of the Galla prisoners, whom the Ouollo war had dispersed over 

 the country. Before this decision, there remained but one alternative : 

 to follow the precept of St. Paul and carry the Gospel to some people 

 more disposed to receive it ; but this was not the calculation of the 

 reverend missionary Gobat, and, under the convenient pretext that it 

 would be better to wait for some gracious interposition, they remained. 

 They were soon required to satisfy the strange whims of the Negus. 



Having read in the Bible that David went to war in a chariot, The- 

 odore commanded his Europeans to make him one, leaving the form 

 of it at their discretion. Accordingly, they did not make him an 

 antique car, after the model of the Etruscan paintings, but a kind of 

 green wagon that the Abyssinians took for a mysterious engine of war. 

 This machine was carried to the camp, for they had forgotten to make 

 roads to "wheel it on. It was unfit for service at the end of a few days, 

 and the wreck of the imperial chariot now adorns the arsenal of Mag- 

 dala. The Negus, not troubling himself much with the result of this 

 first attempt, ordered the missionaries to make him a mortar and 

 bombshells. They at first declared that they had never learned to 

 snake them. There was then a repetition, but less tragical, of the 



