A Country of Queer Contrasts

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 62, 4 June 1927, Page 21 (Supplement)

A Country of Queer Contrasts

Abyssinia is a country that is only partially explored. Yet Abyssinia is a member of the League of Nations. Shut off from the rest of the world by great mountains and barren deserts, the Abyssinians have until recent times been as inaccessible as the Thibetans. But Ababa, the capital, is now connected by rail -with French Somaliland. Ababa was founded by King Menelik after he had beaten the Italians in 1906. It has thousands of huts, a few stone buildings, and a population of 60,000 people. Civilisation’s hand has touched the city, but the people still wear the cotton shirt, trousers and great scarf which has been their dress ever since they were peeped at by the outside world.

They hold their courts of justice at any time at any corner, calling on any passer-by to act as judge. A traveller writing to the “Wide World” declares that he has seen six men swinging in the market place from improvised gallows, and, more recently, the authorities have reverted to the old practice of handing over murderers to the families of the victims to be dealt with in cold blood. The great rawmeat banquets, at which 18,000 men are fed at once, are still held. Away from the capital there are no roads, merely tracks; there are mountains to climb, and rivers must be forded or swum. The Abyssinian, or Ethiopian, is a fine-looking man, more intelligent than the ordinary African; he is deeply suspicious of the foreigner and liis ways, however, and is intensely proud of his religion, his independence and his military prowess, which

is undoubted. The reigning Empress, whose portrait appears with this article, claims Divine associations—for the founder of the House was Menelik, I, son of the Queen of Sheba and the great Solomon himself. What the future may hold for Abyssinia—the last of the independent empires of Africa—is difficult to forecast. It is improbable that this po-

tentially -wealthy and quite undeveloped territory, with its millions of people of various races, including large numbers of slaves and serfs, can be allowed to remain in its present state. Much of the country is imperfectly controlled, and large areas are still unexplored.