288 THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA CHAP. 
wars having created a demand for better armament; to the 
merchants of another nation being allowed to supply that 
armament with great despatch; and also to the military 
successes (made possible thereby) arousing restless ambition 
for territorial expansion. 
An important stimulus was given when, in January 1887, 
Egypt left Harar in such an absurdly weak state that it fell 
readily into the hands of Menelik, King of Shoa. In the same 
month there was a successful fight with Italy at Dogali, and 
two years later a great battle with the Dervishes, when King 
John was killed. Menelik, having then seized the Empire, 
required more arms to overawe Ras Mangasha, while the latter 
subsequently became involved in the military operations against 
Italy, which led up to the terrible battle of Adua in 1896. 
During these stirring years there was given a stimulus to the 
demand for arms. No doubt it had existed during similar 
times before, but it had hitherto been fed through devious and 
difficult channels. France stepped in at this juncture and 
began to allow arms to flow in through her new Somali coast ports, 
and vast stores of breech-loading rifles and ammunition thus 
streamed into Harar and Abyssinia through the agency of 
French merchants at Jibuti. In 1892 we saw arms stacked 
high in the custom-house enclosure at Gildessa, and passed 
caravan after caravan of ammunition on the Jibuti-Gildessa 
road. Again in 1897, when visiting the same Gildessa custom- 
house, I still found cases of arms nearly filling up the yard. 
The result of this continuous stream is that Abyssinia, to 
her natural strength—the possession of a mountainous frontier 
nearly as impracticable as that of Afghanistan, and of a horde 
of tireless mountaineers living under a strong feudal system— 
has added the power due to the acquisition of about two hundred 
thousand modern rifles. Of these, Jibuti alone supplied one 
hundred thousand of the best, and still keeps them so well 
supplied with ammunition that it has become the substitute for 
small coin as a medium of exchange in the bazaars. 
When these facts are considered, the disaster at Adua is 
more easily understood. The four Italian brigades, winding 
among little-known mountains, with bad inter-communication, 
were cut up in detail, in difficult ground, by a terribly effective 
rifle-fire; the odds being ninety thousand Abyssinians to the 
sixteen thousand of the Italian force. The result—namely, the 
defeat of the latter with a loss of four thousand killed and two 
