Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/362

 Axomites (as they were called by the Romans) are descended from a race of the aboriginal inhabitants of Africa, composed of native Ethiopians who became in the course of time mixed with settlers from Egypt; and that they do not exhibit any claims to an Arabian descent, as was supposed by the late Mr. Murray; though I confess that I feel considerable regret in entertaining a different opinion from that gentleman, on a subject, upon which, from his extraordinary acquirements in Oriental literature, he was, in some respects, so eminently qualified to decide. The chief, and indeed sole argument on which Mr. Murray founded his opinion, was drawn from the similarity between the Geez and the Arabian languages; but surely this circumstance may be sufficiently accounted for, from the supposition, that both might have been derived from the same common stock, namely the Hebrew, which Mr. Murray himself appears to have satisfactorily explained to be the most ancient language in existence; whereas, on the other side of the question, the general tenor of the history of the Abyssinians, their buildings, written character, dress, and the description of them given in the earliest Arabian and Byzantine writers, all tend to prove them a distinct race from the Arabs.

As the last argument has not before, to my knowledge, been used, though it appears to bear very strongly on the question, I may be excused for entering into it a little more at large. In the history of Arabia Felix, collected from various Arabian authors, by Schultens, we find several accounts of the conquest of this country by the Abyssinians, and the epithets continually applied to them, are "blacks", which Schultens translates Æthiopes, and "people with crisped hair" (crispâ tortilique comâ: ) one of their princes also, suing to the Emperor of Persia, entreats him to drive out "these crows," who are hateful to his countrymen;