1843.] and the Abyssinian Church. 677 



altogether the inhabitants are decidedly open to all the ills to which 

 flesh is certain heir in the most favored part of the globe, and they 

 do not possess the more civilized means of alleviation. 



166. Medicine is yet in its infancy, and charms and amulets, and 

 sacrifices are resorted to, in the hour of sickness. The potent purgative, 

 cosso, is applied to on almost every occasion, and its debilitating effects 

 no doubt lead to shorten life. Paddling about in the mud with naked 

 feet, and exposing the bare head to the sun, the blast and the tempest 

 without any reference even to comfort, cannot prove conducive to 

 health, and residing in frail fragile tenements amidst dirt and vermin, 

 and surrounded by filth and putrefaction, must have the most injurious 

 effect upon the constitution. The low regard with which all females are 

 entertained, debars the enjoyment of conjugal affection. The want of 

 education denies the profitable and pleasant employment of leisure 

 time. Coarse fare is the general lot ; little amusement or holiday vary 

 the dull monotony of life, and bullied by the Church, the king, and the 

 nobles, a short existence is passed in this world in no very great happi- 

 ness or comfort, and the spirit passes away without any very distinct 

 idea of what is to happen in the next. 



167. Compared with the other nations in Africa, Abyssinia certainly 

 holds a high station, superior in arts and agriculture, in law, religion 

 and social condition to all the other benighted swarthy children of the sun, 

 and the portion of good which does exist, may be justly ascribed to 

 the remains of the wreck of Christianity, which although stranded 

 upon a rocky shore, and buffeted by the storms of ages, still continues 

 to contain a few precious gems amidst the overwhelming mass of 

 sand and sea spume. 



168. But the misery, the filth, and the moral degradation in which she 

 vegetates, sinks her far below the level of any European nation, and the 

 parent land remains obscured in the fogs of her original barbarity, 

 whilst the morning sun of intelligence has in the mean time lightened 

 upon the social existence of her remote colony:* nay she has even 



* Customs rarely alter in a country so entirely isolated as Abyssinia, and where the 

 influence of new ideas cannot lead to the perfection of the arts and sciences, and many 

 ol the present usages in the land would, in some measure prove what the Ethiopians 

 affirmed in the time of Diodorus, that Egypt was originally one of her colonies; the 

 very soil and earth being brought down from their plateaus by the flood of the Nile, 



