Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/191

 One of the most characteristic wild plants of Abyssinian §cenory is the kolkwal, or branching euphorbia, similar to the giant euphorbias of the Canaries and Azores. The fleshy branches of these trees interlock so tenaciously that they are trained round villages to protect them from sudden attacks. Many attain a height of over 40 feet. Their milky sap is a rank poison, much employed in the Abyssinian pharmacopoeia, while the wood serves for the manufacture of gun-powder. Another plant, the jibara (rhynchopetalum montanum), an annual similar in appearance to the palm, clothes the mountain sides to a height of some 11,000 feet. It is remarkable for a gorgeous display of lilac blossom clustering round a floral stem shooting from 10 to 16 feet above a topmost tuft of sword-like leaves. Another characteristic plant of the uplands is a giant thistle (echinops giganteus), with a stem like that of a forest-tree, and flowers the size of a man's head. Still larger are the furze-bushes, which attain a height of some 26 feet. On the upland terraces also flourishes the majestic kusso (Brayera anthelmintica), whose dense foliage, interspersed with innumerable bunches of pink flowers, is employed in Abyssinia, and even in Europe, as an infusion, as recommended by Brayer, against the tape-worm; the ficus dara, a species of fig, resembles the Indian banian, with its aerial roots forming fresh stems and developing forests capable of sheltering some hundreds of people. The wanzeh (cordia Abyssinica), is a tufted tree usually planted round houses. The conifer family is represented on the upland plateaux by the yew, and especially by the juniper, whose huge trunk rises from 100 to 130 feet, and in Shoa even to 160 feet.

Some regions of Abyssinia, especially the hilly Zebul district east of the border range, are covered with vast juniper forests, which present an unique appearance, for in no other part of the globe are conifers resembling those of the northern zone to be found matted together with a network of tangled creepers resembling those of the tropical forests. But, on the whole, Abyssinia is a disafforested country, the destruction of nearly all its upland woodlands being due to the common African practice of firing the prairie tracts. The landscape seen from the uplands, is in many places relieved only by the green oases surrounding the villages or the sacred groves of the churches. Besides, but few varieties of trees are included in the Abyssinian flora, merely some 235 known species, of which thirty belong to the voïna-degas, and ten to the degas. But thanks to the variety of climates and vegetation on the slopes and uplands, Abyssinia may possibly one day become a vast botanic garden for the cultivation of all European trees, alimentary and useful plants. A poor mineral country, containing little else but iron, salt, and sulphur in the volcanic regions, and some gold dust in Gojam and Damot, it is amply compensated by the abundant resources yielded by its diversified flora, European on the uplands and Indian on the lowlands. But these resources will be of little use till easy routes of communication are opened between the Abyssinian plateaux and the outer world. Even in the favourable season, when the rains have not swollen the torrents and converted the paths into quagmires, the traveller crossing Abyssinia from the Rod Sea to the plains sloping to the Nile has a journey of some months before him. The stages and provisions are regulated by the king, and many a traveller has had to wait some weeks for the permission to continue his route.