King Theodore, it is stated, advised his captains to attack
the British by night, but they declined, and descended to their deaths by daylight. had they obeyed, they would have had a new proof of the power which science can bring to bear in aid of slaughter. Sir Robert Napier had with him an apparatus for employing the magnesium light on a grand scale. At a distance of 600 yards a bewildering blaze of light would have been thrown into the eyes of the Abyssinians, and the British, themselves in impenetrable shadow, would have shot down their lustrous enemies at leisure and at ease. The poor Abyssinians would have been helpless as herrings with the electric ray streaming on the shoal ! It is hardly war, such a contest ; but it is better that civilization shonld be armed, than that barbarism should be.
