704 Report on Shoa [No. 140. 



ther bands of discontented enthusiasts, well served the interests of the 

 Catholic faith ; and there were always to be found servants obedient to 

 bear instructions to the farthest corners of the earth ; men who relin- 

 quished few comforts or enjoyments on quitting their austere cells, who 

 were prepared at all hazards and in all manners to carry into execution 

 the will of their superiors, and who gloried in the prospect either of 

 erecting an eternal fabric in honor of their faith and their own peculiar 

 order, or of obtaining the equally bright crown of martyrdom. 



But the custom of ages had struck too deep into the heart of the 

 Abyssinian. 



The power of the officiating clergy was paramount in the land. All 

 the passions and the prejudices of the multitude were too firmly enlisted 

 in the cause of ancient belief; and degraded as was the Christianity of 

 the country, its forms and tenets were not more absurd and not less 

 pertinaciously supported, than those innovatious of the Roman faith, 

 which were so fiercely, though so ineffectually attempted. 



The soft wily speech and the thunder of excommunication were alike 

 disregarded. Treachery and force were both tried, and found equally 

 unavailing. Blood flowed for a season like the swollen torrent, and the 

 sound of wailing was heard from the palace to the peasant's hut; but 

 the storm expended itself and finally passed away, and after the struggle 

 of a century, the discomfited monks relinquished their attempts upon 

 the church of the monophyzite, without leaving behind one solitary con- 

 vert to their faith, and bearing along with them the loud maledictions 

 of the much-injured nation upon the head of the intruding and officious 

 European. 



• Abyssinia has not, however, always displayed that firmness of purpose, 

 and that stoutness of heart to do battle for her existing creed. Bowing 

 her neck in olden time to the yoke of Judaism, she now in many locali- 

 ties basely truckles, as convenient opportunity offers, to the tenets of 

 the Islam faith. 



The date of her embracing a portion of the Jewish creed is lost in 

 the obscurity of ages. Some of her sons, who love even the notoriety of 

 doubtful fame, glorying in an origin from Menelek, the son of Solomon 

 and the Queen of Sheba, relate the most ridiculous exploits of these 

 their venerated ancestors, who crowned a long course of iniquity by 

 plundering the temple of Jerusalem, and carrying off the spoil and the 



