Through Abyssinia. By F. Harrison Smith, R.N. (T. Fisher 1:1 - nwin
)—This book is disappointing. It reverses the usual methods of books of travel by being entertaining at the beginning, and while the traveller is going over the old ground from Charing Cross to Suakim ; but becomes the driest of dry chronicles when the new ground of native Abyssinia is entered upon. It is an account of the journey of the author when sent on a special mission to the King of Abyssinia by Lord Salisbury in 1885, to carry a sword of honour to the King from Queen Victoria, and to restore good relations, which had been somewhat broken by handing over Massowah to Italy. When a man leaving the boat at Calais, and finding a fat man in front of him, can say in reply to a remark that the man was as big as Mont Cenis, " Yes, but, unfortunately, without the tunnel through him," one expects something amusing in Abyssinia. But one expects in vain. The bulk of the book is a mere route-journal. Only one amusing or interesting incident is narrated. The Queen had written a letter to the King an- nouncing that the sword of honour would be sent when it was ready; Lord Salisbury wrote another letter to go with the sword. The King's interpreter and adviser had misunderstood this to mean that there were two swords, and had told the King so, and when undeceived, he was afraid to tell the King. Mr. Smith, when he discovered this, insisted on telling the King himself. The courtiers used every device to prevent him seeing the King, and it was only when he climbed to the top of the gate of the King's enclosure, and declared he was going to stay there day and night till he had seen him, that he was admitted and that things were satisfactorily explained. The Abyssinian Christianity appears to be like that of mediaaval Europe. The Churchmen are the lawyers and diplomatists, and without them nothing is done; religions ceremonies are highly important, and the King had just returned from a ferocious massacre of some of his own subjects for eating meat during Lent. As in medireval England, too, the ecclesiastical establishments are numerous and enormous. Priests, monks, beggars, dirt, disease, and piety, eat up the laity.
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