GOVERNMENT. 159 



marriage rites, whicli are also celebrated by communion and regarded as indissoluble, 

 are of rare occurrence, not one in a hundred unions being solemnised by a priest. 

 Legally the husband or wife can only be divorced three times, but in reality they 

 dissolve the marriage as often as they please, and in this case the father takes the 

 sons, the daughters remaining with the mother. In the case of a single child, if 

 under seven he goes to the mother, but if older to the father. Of all their religious 

 practices the most important are the funeral rites. The most upright man would 

 be thought unworthy to enter heaven did his relations not pay for masses to be said 

 for his soul and for a splendid funeral banquet. The poor people pinch themselves 

 during lifetime to save enough to acquit this sacred duty of the " teskar." As in 

 Christian Europe, the enclosures surrounding the churches are used as cemeteries ; 

 and the conifer trees, such as the cedar, yew, and juniper, planted on the graves of 

 the Abyssinians, are said to be also considered in the East as sepulchral trees. 



Government. 



The royal power is by right absolute, although in practice restrained by force 

 of custom, and especially by the powers of a thousand restless vassals and feudal 

 commuîiities of landed proprietors armed with shields and javelins, whom the 

 least change in the political equilibrium might league against the king. Until 

 the plateaux are connected one with the other by easy routes over the mountains 

 and through the gorges, the country will not obtain the cohesion that it lacks, and 

 Abyssinia will be condemned to the feudal system. Each isolated mass covered 

 with villages or hamlets, but cut off by deep ravines, constitutes a natural fief, held 

 in awe by an amba, or " mountain fort," denoting the dwelling of the master. 

 From this eyrie he overlooks the surrounding lands, calculating what return the 

 crops of the fields below will yield him, and watching for travellers, on whom he 

 levies black-mail. However, the sovereign endeavours to grant these great military 

 or ecclesiastical fiefs only to members of his family or to devoted servants. Besides, 

 he surrounds himself with a permanent army of wottoader or mercenaries, now 

 armed with modern rifles, and " accustomed to stand fire," like the Egj^ptian 

 soldiers, which enables him to dispense with the support of the restless feudatories 

 or the free landholders. He also endeavours to keep at his court the vassals he 

 most mistrusts. However, the modern history of Abyssinia shows with what 

 rapidity the power shifts from suzerain to vassal. Although these negus- negest, that 

 is, " kings of kings," these sovereigns of Israel, all endeavour to prove their descent 

 from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, mother of Menelik, first king of Ethiopia, 

 and bear on their standards " the Lion of the tribe of Judah," they have not 

 sufficient time to impress their subjects with awe. In reality, the king of 

 Abyssinia is master only of the ground on which his army is encamped, and of the 

 more exposed towns, where his mounted troops can show themselves at the slightest 

 alarm. Such is the reason why the present sovereign, like his predecessor 

 Theodore, has no other capital than his camp, where the first stroke of the war- 

 drum suffices to put the whole army on the march. 



