158 Of the Checks to Population in Bk. i. 



tion fully up to the level of the means of subsist- 

 ence under the checks of war, pestilential diseases 

 and promiscuous intercourse, all operating in an 

 excessive degree. 



The nations which border on Abyssinia are 

 universally short-lived. A Shangalla woman at 

 twenty-two is, according to Bruce, more wrinkled 

 and deformed by age than an European woman 

 at sixty.* It would appear, therefore, that in all 

 these countries, as among the northern shepherds 

 in the times of their constant emigrations, there 

 is a very rapid succession of human beings ; and 

 the difference in the two instances is, that our 

 northern ancestors died out of their own country, 

 whereas these die at home. If accurate registers 

 of mortality were kept among these nations, I 

 have little doubt that it would appear, that, in- 

 cluding the mortality from wars, 1 in 17 or 18 at 

 the least dies annually, instead of 1 in 34, 36, 

 or 40, as in the generality of European states. 



The description, which Bruce gives of some 

 parts of the country which he passed through on 

 his return home, presents a picture more dreadful 

 even than the state of Abyssinia, and shews how 

 little population depends on the birth of children, 

 in comparison of the production of food and 

 those circumstances of natural and political situa- 

 tion which influence this produce. 



" At half past six," Bruce says, " we arrived 

 " at Garigana, a village whose inhabitants had all 



* Bruce, vol. ii. p. 559. 



