fast; and from the Thursday preceding Easter till the Sunday, no morsel of
meat is to enter the lips, and the prohibition against drink is equally
rigorous. St Michael and the Virgin Mary are venerated in the highest
degree; St Michael as the leader of the hosts of heaven, and the latter as
the chief of all saints, and queen of heaven and earth, and both as the
great intercessors of mankind.

Like the Jews of old, the Abyssinians weep and lament on all occasions of
death; and the shriek ascends to the sky, as if the soul could be recalled
from the world of spirits. As with the Jews, the most inferior garments
are employed as the weeds of woe; and the skin torn from the temples, and
scarified on the cheeks and breast, proclaims the last extremity of grief.
As the Rabbins believe that angels were the governors of all sublunary
things, the Abyssinians adopt this belief: carrying it even further, they
confidently implore their assistance in all concerns, and invoke and adore
them in a higher degree than the Creator. The clergy enjoy the price of
deathbed confession; and the churchyard is sternly denied to all who die
without the rite, or whose relations refuse the fee and the funeral feast.
Eight pieces of salt are the price of wafting a poor man's soul to the
place of rest, and the feast for the dead places him in a state of
happiness, according to the cost of the entertainment. For the rich, money
procures the attendance of priests, who absolve, and pray continually day
and night. The anniversaries of the deaths of the six kings of Shoa are
held with great ceremony in the capital; and once every twelvemonth,
before a splendid feast, their souls are absolved from all sin.

Major Harris expresses himself ardently and eloquently on the hopes of
commerce which might be maintained by Great Britain with this little-known
but productive part of the world. It is notorious that gold and gold dust,
ivory, ostrich feathers, peltries, spices, wax, and precious gums, form a