[116] The MS. was presented to the Royal Library in Berlin by the worthy missionary Flad, along with a German abridgment. A portion of the abridgment appears in his instructive work, entitled Twelve Years in Abyssinia (Zwölf Jahre in Abessinien).
[117] The good-natured Menilek of Shoa (now king of all Abyssinia) has undertaken many similar expeditions against neighbouring peoples on a larger scale than the nefarious slave hunts of the Arabs, and not less inhuman.
[118] I repeat the story exactly as given in the Amharic biography. D’Abbadie at the time heard a somewhat different version in Gondar (L’Abyssinie et le roi Théodore, Paris 1868). D’Abbadie partly differs also in his order of events from the Abyssinian writer whom I follow; perhaps he may in some instances be right, but in others he has indubitably been misled by inaccurate recollection or by false information.
[119] De Jacobis is highly spoken of by all unprejudiced witnesses. With regard to all persons and things involving ecclesiastical interests, the judgments of Protestant and Catholic missionaries alike, and their partisans (D’Abbadie, for example), must be received with caution. It is undeniable that Abyssinia offers a much less favourable field to Protestant than to Catholic missions. Even the narrowest type of Protestantism is something much too high for the Abyssinians, not to speak of negroes. The desires that occasionally find expression on the part of Russia for a union of the Abyssinian with the “Orthodox” Church have small prospect of ever being fulfilled.
[120] When the English, immediately after the death of Theodore, showed his picture to the Wollo princess Mastiat, his bitter enemy, and asked her whether it was like him, she replied, “How can I tell? Who has ever seen him and lived?”
[121] Not Magdala, as it is usually written in England and Germany.
[122] See above, p. [265].
[123] Of works upon the campaign that are not purely military, by far the best, so far as I know, is that of Markham (A History of the Abyssinian Expedition, London 1869). The writer is a keen observer, and an impartial judge.

INDEX.

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