monks live in little stone cells clustered round a rock, on which stands a cross, miserable little tenements, with a few patches of gardens around them, where they grow the herbs and vegetables which form the chief part of their meagre diet. There is also a big commenda, or dining-room, where they all feed, and kitchens and barns well stocked with grain. They told me that there are about two hundred monks in all on Debra Bizen, and none of them, save the memer, ever leave this mountain eyrie, but live forgetful of the world and by the world forgotten.

Certainly the Abyssinian Church is, as Dean Stanley says, surrounded with the utmost amount of superstition with which a Christian Church can be overlaid without perishing altogether.' Here we have preserved to us a specimen of what Christianity was in its most primitive days; here exist the monks of the Thebaid as they existed in the days of St. Athanasius. Still the controversies on the nature of Christ, whether He was of one, two, or three natures, divide the faithful as they did centuries ago; and the attempt of the Jesuits to convert them, concerning which we shall have more to say presently, though at one time nearly triumphant, has left not a trace of its influence. Probably the active contest with Mohammedanism, which has raged in Abyssinia for a thousand years, has been instrumental in making them adhere with a dogged determination to their tenets, and made them impervious to outer influence. One cannot help admiring the tenacity of the Abyssinian to his peculiar form of Christianity. The same

influence has been at work in Greece, where the contest with the Turks has had the same effect as the contest with the Arabians in the Ethiopian Church, and in both cases a perfect museum of old Christian rites and ceremonies has been preserved to us which have long ago disappeared from Western Christendom.

Before we had finished our rest and repast at the spot to which my wife had been inhospitably driven, the mist was upon us, and during our tedious descent to our camp we saw little else but rolling clouds and gaunt rocks peering out of them.

Shortly after our return to Asmara was the day of Epiphany; for the Abyssinians, like the Greeks, follow the old calendar, and their festivities consequently fall twelve days later than they do with us. We looked forward to this ceremony with intense interest, for it is the second biggest festival in the Ethiopian Church, second only to the great day of mascal, or the blessing of the cross, which takes. place in September. It is a sort of vast lustration or baptism of the whole Ethiopian race, a day of great festivity, both social and religious; the cross is publicly baptised in a neighbouring stream, and to celebrate this event all the magnificent ritual of the Abyssinian Church is brought into play.

Very early in the morning the ceremony began. As soon as the sun was up we started for the scene of action, across the plain to the stream where the cross was to be baptised. Hoar frost covered the ground, and the air was keen but intensely invigo

rating. Already the people were beginning to assemble, pouring in from all sides, dressed in their smartest and gayest; at the old church in the village the priests and acolytes had already assembled, and were preparing for the procession. I do not think any religious procession I have ever seen impressed me so much as this line of dusky Ethiopians, rich in the display of their quaint ritual and costumes, which have here survived from the earliest days of Christianity. At the head of the procession marched a man carrying a heavy umbrella, made of purple velvet and covered with silver ornaments; on the top was a cross and massive object in silver, and the edges were fringed with the long tongueless bells, which is so favourite a form of decoration in Abyssinia. There were many similar umbrellas in the procession—some, however, only plain scarlet, and some only white. However, as seen from a distance, the most striking feature of this Epiphany procession is its wealth of umbrellas, reminding one of the Assyrian tablets in the British Museum, and other representations of ancient Eastern display, which seems invariably to have revelled in a wealth of umbrellas. There were many acolytes too, wearing massive mitres or imperial crowns of brass, which would have enveloped their whole heads had they not stuffed them with Turkey red to keep them in their place. The priests walked in their white robes and white turbans-in one hand a sistrum, which they rattled vigorously, and in the other a brass-headed crutch. About the middle of the procession walked

priest entirely enveloped in purple cloaks, so that not even his face was visible; and on the top of his head he carried the sacred picture of Asmara covered with a cloth, so that vulgar eyes might not rest upon it. Over twenty of these oddly-decorated individuals, gorgeous in colour, some carrying um

brellas, some silver crosses, some sacred books, wound their way towards the stream.

About ten yards from the water was pitched a large tent of red cloth, erected for the benefit of the priests who wished to change their robes unobserved. When all were assembled on the bank, the cross and a large brass basin were placed in the midst, and the