Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/205

 as sorcerers. A few families of Hindu extraction, and naturalised Armenians, ornament the shields, swords, and saddles with filigree work, make trinkets, and prepare the jewels, necklaces, and bracelets of the women; whilst a few European workmen, residing at the court, also contribute somewhat to the industrial products of Abyssinia. The fine cotton tissues used for the shaman and other articles of clothing are manufactured in the country, but the red and blue cotton^fringes with which the borders are ornamented are usually imported. Like the Mohammedan peoples of the surrounding districts, the Abyssinians are very skilful in the preparation of all kinds of leatherware, such as shields, saddles, and amulets. Most of the people are their own tailors, and bleach their own cloth by means of endot seeds, which answer the purpose of soap. It is a poin.t of honour amongst them on feast-days to wear clothes of spotless whiteness.

Art, in the strict sense of the term, is wrongly supposed to be imknown to the Abyssinians. Most European explorers speak in very contemptuous terms of the work of the native painters, and certain barbarous frescoes are doubtless of a character to justify their sneers. Nevertheless, the Abyssinian school, sprung from the Byzantine ecclesiastical art, has produced several works which show at least imagination and vigour. In the ruins of the palace of Koskoam, near Goudar, remains of Portuguese frescoes and native paintings are still to be seen side by side, and here the foreign artists, with their insipid saints, scarcely compare favourably with the natives. Nor are there lacking in Abyssinia innovating artists who protest by their bold conceptions against the stagnation of the traditional rules. They even treat historic subjects, and produce battle-scenes, painting the Abyssinians in full face, and their enemies, such as Mohammedans, Jews, and devils, in profile. They also display much skill and taste in bookbinding, copying and illuminating manuscripts. As to the azmari, or strolling minstrels, they live on the bounty of the nobles, whose mighty deeds it is their duty to sing. Hence their poetry is a mere mixture of flattery and mendacity, except when they are inspired by the love of war. Abyssinian bards recite before the warriors, inspiring their friends and insulting their adversaries, whilst female poets mingle with the soldiers, encouraging them by word and deed, In spite of the encroachments of Mohammedanism, which besieges the Abyssinian plateaux like the waves of the sea beating against the foot of the rocks, the old religion of "Prester John" is still professed. Introduced in the fourth century, at the period when the political preponderance belonged to Constantinople, and communications were easily established between Aksum and "Eastern Home" by way of the Red Sea, the Arabian peninsula, and Syria, the doctrine of the Abyssinian Christians is one of those which at one time contended for the supremacy among the Churches of Asia Minor. The Abyssinian Christians, like the Copts of Egypt, jointly forming the so-called "Alexandrian Church," are connected with these primitive communities through the sects condemned by the council of Chalcedon in the middle of the fifth century. The Abyssinian "Monophy sites," following the doctrines of