116 PROOF OF ELEVATION. 



country of less than three thousand feet high, a 

 scarp of perhaps thirty miles only intervening 

 between the two very differently situated countries. 



I take it for granted the reader is aware that the 

 light yellow-coloured people of Enarea and Zingero 

 attest, by their skin, the elevation I have assumed 

 for these southern Abyssinian kingdoms. It is, 

 I think, undeniable that the table-land increases 

 in elevation to the south, for all travellers agree 

 that the complexion of the inhabitants becomes 

 fairer as they increase in distance from Shoa in 

 that direction; and I need not observe the con- 

 trary would naturally be expected as we approach 

 nearer to the equator. Several people I have seen, 

 however, who came from within five degrees of the 

 line, and were much lighter coloured than the 

 generality of Spaniards. This would not be the 

 case with a people living only upon a mountain 

 ridge, even if the delicate frames of the yellow 

 Zingero people attested, by a different character, 

 the hardy life of a mountaineer. There must be, 

 therefore, I should suppose, a considerable con- 

 tinuity of surface to seclude a large family of 

 man from the otherwise unavoidable intercourse 

 with the darker skinned inhabitants of the low 

 land, and to have enabled a very ancient people 

 to continue unchanged their fair complexion nearly 

 in the centre of a continent of blacks. 



These are the principal reasons which have led me 

 to contend for the tabular character of Abyssinia to 



