NEW EMPIRE OF ABYSSTNIA. 215 



ves him from every political transaction. His ferocity would render even a 

 king of Guinea jealous ; at the end of some triflirg dif'turbance with the suppres- 

 sion of which he was charged, he sent to his father a basket full of torn out eyei. 

 Sometimes he introduced into the ears of the sufferers cartouches to which 

 others set fire -to blow out their brains. Given to drink and fond of talk, he used 

 to drink hydromel with some of the superior officers and to speak ill of the Negus 

 to them. The latter being informed, put him under arrest for some time in an 

 ass-stable, saying to him that he would be with his kind. Quite different is the 

 second son, Dedjaz Meehecha, a young prince twenty-two years old, who has 

 rendered himself so popular in the government of Dembea, with which he was 

 invested about 1861, that Theodore has thought prudent to recall him. " What 

 means this seeking for popularity ? " said he harshly to him. " Do you think of 

 acting like Absalom, of gaining the favour of the people to supplant your father ? " 

 The influential m^n, whom Theodore's unbi'idled acts of violence terrify, hope 

 , much in Meehecha, and undoubtedly, in case of the death of the Negus, the 

 wisest would rally around this brave and sympathetic young man, but will be 

 have his fathei-'s iron hand to govern this people ? It is, at least, doubtful. 



Coni-idering the almost total ineapacity of the Ahyssiuians to govern them- 

 selves, good minds, desiring, above all, peace and order, have spoken of foreign 

 intervention. This is too great a step ; there are extreme remedies to which we 

 should have recourse only when social order is deeply injured. It was thought 

 also that the English government, out (if patience, was preparing to act vigor- 

 ously against the sovereign of Abyssinia. Information, which. there is every 

 reason to believe, permits the assurance on the contrary, that the foreign office 

 MUSI'S every means to obtain amicably the liberty of its subjects, and cftrefully 

 avoids everything which might urge the Negus to commit one of those b oody 

 acts of foolishness which unhnppily would surprise no one. Tiiis prudence is 

 praiseworthy and has the advantage in preparing a desirable solution without' 

 involving the future; but, whatever may happen, this question of the future will 

 always engage the attention of the great powers whom the course of events has 

 created aibiters of the destinies of the Chrit^tian East. It is an extreme contract- 

 ^dniiss of ideas which sees the question of the East only upon the Bosphorus or 

 in the Holy Land; it is a question with a thousand faces, positive for some, phil- 

 osophic for others, imminent for all. It slumbers and threatens to break forth 

 •wherever there is involved a great European interest, commercial, human, reli- 

 gious, for eveiy Christian question which enters into the arena of politics becomes 

 of necessity a European one. The Levant has kept for us surprises which have 

 <iften taken us unawares; this is not the fault of the government, occupied with 

 a thousand different cares; it is that of informers, of diplomatic agents, of miss- 

 ioriaries, and of fic-holars, who have neglected to seek the truth or have more or 

 less innocently concealed it. It is mine also, if I have not succeeded by this 

 €tudy iti fully showing an indisputable fact and a conviction which every one may 

 dif-cuss. This fact is, that the Abyssinian people, in whom the majority of man- 

 kind sees a sort of negro race scarcely less ferocious and less brutal than the 

 rest, is a strong, lively and intelligent nation, allied with Europe by physical 

 traiis ajid ttill more by its strange civilization, which carries us back to the most 



