80 ludolph's church history. 



the members of this portion of the royal house- 

 hold.* The large and fine cloth, valued in Shoa at 

 thirty dollars, sent by Sahale Selasse, as a present 

 to our Queen, is woven of thread spun in the 

 palace of Debra Berhan ; and the monarch, sole 

 visitor to the apartments occupied by these royal 

 cotton-spinners, has no doubt frequently stimulated 

 his favourite slaves to more careful efforts, as they 

 produced the finely long-drawn thread, by dwelling 

 upon the munificence and wealth of his Egyptian 

 sister, our own well-beloved Sovereign. 



Besides learning some little of the condition of 

 the slaves belonging to the Negoos of Shoa, whilst 

 in Ankobar, I also read a considerable portion of 

 " Ludolph's Ethiopic History," a work left in 

 charge of Dr. Eoth, the naturalist of the British 

 Embassy, by Mr. Krapf, when he returned to 

 Egypt. I had the opportunity of making use of 

 the whole book upon the doctrine of the Church, 

 contained in Ludolph; and, also, the interesting 

 almanac which is appended to it ; but the former 

 is such an evident compilation of what ought to be 

 the faith of the Abyssinian Church, rather than 

 what it ever was, or is at the present day, that I 

 considered any abstract, or account of the Chris- 



* The Abyssinian word for thread, "fatalah," has something in 

 its sound that recals the idea of the three spinners, typical of 

 man's destiny. If, as is probable, the mythological representation 

 of the Greeks be of Egyptian origin, then the word "fatalah," 

 may have some connexion with our word fate. 



