they set on the fire, with butter, salt, pepper, and onion. Raw
beef, thus relished, is their nicest dish, and is eaten by them with
the same appetite and pleasure as we eat the best partridges. They
have often done me the favour of helping me to some of this sauce,
and I had no way to decline eating it besides telling them it was
too good for a missionary.

The common drink of the Abyssins is beer and mead, which they drink
to excess when they visit one another; nor can there be a greater
offence against good manners than to let the guests go away sober:
their liquor is always presented by a servant, who drinks first
himself, and then gives the cup to the company, in the order of
their quality.

The meaner sort of people here dress themselves very plain; they
only wear drawers, and a thick garment of cotton, that covers the
rest of their bodies: the people of quality, especially those that
frequent the court, run into the contrary extreme, and ruin
themselves with costly habits. They wear all sorts of silks, and
particularly the fine velvets of Turkey.

They love bright and glaring colours, and dress themselves much in
the Turkish manner, except that their clothes are wider, and their
drawers cover their legs. Their robes are always full of gold and
silver embroidery. They are most exact about their hair, which is
long and twisted, and their care of it is such that they go bare-
headed whilst they are young for fear of spoiling it, but afterwards
wear red caps, and sometimes turbans after the Turkish fashion.

The ladies' dress is yet more magnificent and expensive; their robes