[66]Stecker did not visit the Island of Mitraha. He wrote: “On account of a quarrel that arose between my servants and the tatterdemalion clergy of Mitraha I did not land on this parsons’ island. The priests wanted to extort money from me by this method: that they would sell me no provisions before I had visited their church, which meant, before I had given them baksheesh in profusion” (“Mittheilungen der Afrikanischen Gesellschaft in Deutschland,” p. 26).
[67]Wylde, “Modern Abyssinia,” p. 417.
[68]Vivian, “Abyssinia,” p. 186.
[69]Stern gave the following interesting account of the monarch de jure:—“Whilst at Gondar we visited various personages of rank and dignity; amongst others Atzee Johannes, the Shadow King, and according to Abyssinian annals, the legitimate successor to the throne and lineal descendant of Solomon by the Queen of Sheba’s son. He was seated on an alga in a dirty little room, with a monk’s skull-cap on his head, reading the Psalms. He asked me many questions on geography, and unlike the majority of Abyssinian savants did not believe that beyond Jerusalem the sun never shone, and that only serpents and other venomous reptiles occupied the untenanted land. I was told that whenever Atzee Johannes visits King Theodore, the latter stands before him, as an acknowledgment of his title to a crown which he could not defend. He receives an annual pension from the Royal Treasury” (“Wanderings among the Falashes in Abyssinia,” pp. 212, 213).
[70]Quoted in “Abyssinia Described,” J. C. Hotten, pp. 122, 123.
[71]“Mittheilungen der Afrikanischen Gesellschaft in Deutschland,” 1881, vol. iii. pp. 26-31.
[72]Stecker wrote: “Es gehen nach Wansage Kranke aller Art, und da es wenige Abyssinier giebt, die nicht syphilitisch wären, so sieht man meistens nur Patienten, die gegen Lustseuch und ihre Folgen hier Heilung zu finden glauben” (“Mittheilungen,” p. 23). As far as my experience goes, this overstates the case a little, but the complete disregard of morality by both sexes—a matter about which the clergy do not trouble themselves—has rendered disease of this kind extremely common. The pest of internal parasites, which is the bane of all classes of Abyssinians, and is almost universal among them, is undoubtedly due to their disgusting habit of eating raw meat. They devour flesh warm and quivering from the newly slaughtered carcase, and Bruce asserted that in his time they habitually cut the meat from the living animal, and continued to do so until it bled to death. This would be an unusual barbarity, and Parkyns saw no instance of it, though he believed Bruce’s statement to have been true when he made it (“Life in Abyssinia,” p. 204). Mr. Wylde has given another explanation of what Bruce observed (“Modern Abyssinia,” p. 153). But, whatever may be the fact as to this particular, the habit of eating uncooked flesh prevails everywhere in the country. I noticed that the ceremonial practices of the Mussulmans appeared to save them both from tænia and scabies. But, in spite of their ablutions, they are infested, like the rest of the inhabitants, with body lice. Mohammedans are regarded with disdain by the Christian Abyssinians, and the prejudice against them, as I have said, accounts for some of the uncleanliness of the Christians. To wash much or regularly is to behave like a Mussulman.
[73]“Life in Abyssinia,” pp. 282, 283.
[74]“Pastillos Rufillus olet, Gargonius hircum.” Horace, Sat. I. 2.