Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/209

 marriage rites, which are also celebrated by communion and regarded an indissoluble, are of rare occurrence, not one in a hundred unions being solemnised by a priest. Legally the husband or wife can only be divorced three times, but in reality they dissolve the marriage as often as they please, and in this case the father takes the sons, the daughters remaining with the mother. In the case of a single child, if under seven he goes to the mother, but if older to the father. Of all their religious practices the most important are the funeral rites. The most upright man would be thought unworthy to enter heaven did his relations not pay for masses to be said for his soul and for a splendid funeral banquet. The poor people pinch themselves during lifetime to save enough to acquit this sacred duty of the "teskar." As in Christian P]urope, the enclosures surrounding the churches are used as cemeteries; and the conifer trees, such as the cedar, yew, and juniper, planted on the graves of the Abyssinians, are said to be also considered in the East as sepulchral trees.

The royal power is by right absolute, although in practice restrained by force of custom, and especially by the powers of a thousand restless vassals and feudal communities of landed proprietors armed with shields and javelins, whom the least change in the political equilibrium might league against the king. Until the plateaux are connected one with the other by easy routes over the mountains and through the gorges, the country will not obtain the cohesion that it lacks, and Abyssinia will be condemned to the feudal system. Each isolated mass covered with villages or hamlets, but cut off by deep ravines, constitutes a natural fief, held in awe by an amba, or "mountain fort," denoting the dwelling of the master. From this eyrie he overlooks the surrounding lands, calculating what return the crops of the fields below will yield him, and watching for travellers, on whom he levies black-mail. However, the sovereign endeavours to grant these great military or ecclesiastical fiefs only to members of his family or to devoted servants. Besides, he surrounds himself with a permanent army of wottoader or mercenaries, now armed with modern rifles, and "accustomed to stand fire," like the Egyptian soldiers, which enables him to dispense with the support of the restless feudatories or the free landholders. He also endeavours to keep at his court the vassals he most mistrusts. However, the modern history of Abyssinia shows with what rapidity the power shifts from suzerain to vassal. Although these negus-negest, that is, "kings of kings," these sovereigns of Israel, all endeavour to prove their descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, mother of Menelik, first king of Ethiopia, and bear on their standards "the Lion of the tribe of Judah," they have not sufficient time to impress their subjects with awe. In reality, the king of Abyssinia is master only of the ground on which his army is encamped, and of the more exposed towns, where his mounted troops can show themselves at the slightest alarm. Such is the reason why the present sovereign, like his predecessor Theodore, has no other capital than his camp, where the first stroke of the war-drum suffices to put the whole army on the march.