bouring nations is with them upon this subject, whether they be friends or enemies. They only differ in the name of the queen. or in giving her two names.

This difference, at such a distance of time, should not break scores, especially as we shall see that the queens in the present day have sometimes three or four names, and all the kings three, whence has arisen a very great confusion in their history. And as for her being an Arab, the objection is still easier got over.For all the inhabitants of Arabia Felix, especially those of the coast opposite to Saba, were reputed Abyssinians, and their country part of Abyssinia, from the earliest ages, to the Mahometan conquest and after. They were her subjects; first, Sabean Pagans like herself, then converted (as the tradition says] to Judaism, during the time of the building of the temple, and continuing Jews from that time to the year 622 after Christ, when they became Mahometans. The bearing of the kings of Abyssinia is a lion passant, proper upon a field gules, and their motto, "Mo Anbasa am Nizilet Soloman am Negade Jude;" which signifies, the lion of the race of Solomon and tribe of Judah hath overcome.'

OF THE ABYSSINIAN CANNIBALS. *

Mr. Bruce's account of a detestable practice among the Abyssinians of eating live Flesh; and which, perhaps, elucidates the justice and propriety of the divine command against eating

Blood.

AN unnatural custom prevails universally in Abyssinia, and which in early ages seems to have been common to the whole world. I did not think that any person of moderate knowledge in profane learning could have been ignorant of this remarkable custom among the natious of the east. But what still more surprised me was the ignorance of part of the law of God, the earliest that was given to man, the most frequently noted, insisted upon, and prohibited. I have said, in the course of the narrative of my journey from Masuah, that, a small distance from Axum, I overtook on the way three travellers, who seemed to be soldiers, driving a cow before them. They halted at a brook, threw down the beast and one of them cut a pretty large collop of flesh from its buttocks, after which they drove the cow gently on as before. A violent outcry was raised in England at hearing this circumstance, which they did not hesitate to pronounce impossible when the mauners and customs of Abyssinia were to them utterly unknown. The Jesuits established in Abyssinia for above a hundred years, had told them of that peo

ple eating, what they call raw meat, in every page; and if any writer upon Ethiopia had omitted to mention it, it was because it was one of those facts too notorious to be repeated.

It must be from prejudice alone we condemn the eating of raw flesh; no precept, divine or human, that I know, forbids it; and if it is true, as later travellers have discovered, that there are nations ignorant of the use of fire, any law against eating raw flesh could never have been intended as obligatory upon mankind in general. At any rate, it is certainly not clearly known, whether the eating raw flesh was, not an earlier and more general practice than by preparing it with fire; I think it

was.

Many wise and learned men have doubted whether it was at first permitted to man to eat animal food at all. I do not pretend to give any opinion upon the subject, but many topics have been maintained successfully upon much more slender grounds. God, the author of life, and the best judge of what was proper to maintain it, gave this regimen to our first parents -"Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be for meat." Gen. i. 29. And though, immediately after, he mentions both beasts and fowls, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, he does not say that he has designed any of these as meat for man. On the contrary he seems to have intended the vegetable creation as food for both man and beast-" And to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat and it was so.' Gen. i. 30. After the flood, when mankind began to repossess the earth, God gave Noah a much more extensive permission--" Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things." Gen. ix. 3.

As the criterion of judging of their aptitude for food was declared to be their moving and having life, a danger appeared of misinterpretation, and that these creatures should be used living; a thing which God by no means intended, and therefore, immediately after, it is said, "But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat ;" Gen. ix. 4. or, as it is rendered by the best interpreters, "Flesh, or members, "torn from living, animals having the blood in them, thon shalt "not eat." We see then, by this prohibition, that the abuse of eating living meat, or parts of animals while yet alive, was known in the days of Noah, and forbidden after being so known, and it is precisely what is practised in Abyssinia to this day.This law was prior to that of Moses, but it came from the same

legislator. It was given to Noah, and consequently obligatory upon the whole world. Moses, however, insists upon it throughout his whole law; which not only shews that this abuse was common, but that it was deeply rooted in, and interwoven with, the manners of the Hebrews. He positively prohibits it four times in one chapter in Deuteronomy, and thrice in one of the chapters of Leviticus-" Thou shalt not eat the blood, for the blood is the life; thou shalt pour it upon the earth like water.” Deut. xii. Lev. xvii.

Although the many instances of God's tenderness to the brute creation, that constantly occur in the Mosaical precepts, and are a very beautiful part of them, and though the barbarity of the custom itself might reasonably lead us to think that humanity alone was a sufficient motive for the prohibition of eating animals alive, yet nothing can be more certain, than the greater consequences were annexed to the indulging in this crime than what was apprehended from a mere depravity of manners. One of the most learned and sensible men that ever wrote upon the sacred scriptures observes, that God, in forbidding this practice, uses more severe certification, and more threatening language, than against any other sin, excepting idolatry, with which it is constantly joined. God declares, will set my face against him that eateth blood, in the same manner as I will against him that sacrificeth his son to Moloch; I will set my face against him that eateth flesh with blood, till I cut him off from the people." Lev. xvii. 10.

I

We have an instance in the life of Sault that shews the propensity of the Israelites to this crime. Saul's army, after a battle, flew, that is, fell voraciously upon the cattle they had taken, and threw them upon the ground to cut off their flesh, and eat them raw, so that the army was defiled by eating blood, or living animals. To prevent this, Saul caused roll to him a great stone, and ordered those that killed their oxen to cut their throats upon that store. This was the only lawful way of killing animals for food; the tying of the ox and throwing it upon the ground was not permitted as equivalent. The Israelites did probably in that case as the Abyssinians do at this day; they cut a part of its throat, so that blood might be seen upon the ground, but nothing mortal to the animal followed from that wound. But after laying his head upon a large stone, and cutting his throat, the blood fell from on high, or was poured on the ground like water, and sufficient evidence appeared that the creature was dead. before they attempted to eat it. The Abyssinians came from Palestine a very few years after this; and there can be no +1 Sam. xiv. 32. 33.

* Maimon, more. Nebochit.

doubt but that they carried with them this, with many other Jewish customs, which they have continued to this day.

The author I last quoted says, that it is plain, from all the books of the eastern nations, that their motive for eating flesh with the life, or limbs of living animals cut off with the blood, was the purposes of idolatry, and so it probably had been among the Jews; for one of the reasons given in Leviticus for the prohibition of eating blood, or living flesh, is, that the people may no longer offer sacrifices to devils, after whom they have gone a-whering. Lev. xvii. 7.

That this practice likewise prevailed in Europe, as well as in Asia and Africa, may be collected from various authors.The Greeks had their bloody feasts and sacrifices where they ate living flesh; these were called Omophagia. Arnobius says, "Let us pass over the horrid scenes presented at the Bacchanalian feast, wherein, with a counterfeited fury, though with a truly depraved heart, you twine a number of serpents around you, and pretending to be possessed with some god, or spirit, you tear to pieces, with bloody mouths, the bowels of living goats, which cry all the time from the torture they suffer.". From all this it appears, that, the practice of the Abyssinians eating live animals at this day, was very far from being new, or impossible.

I cannot avoid giving some account of this Polyphemus banquet, as far as decency will permit me. In the capital, where one is safe from surprise at all times, or in the country villages, when the rains have become so constant that the valleys will not bear a horse to pass them, or that men cannot venture far from home through fear of being surrounded and swept away by temporary torrents, occasioned by sudden showers on the mountains; a number of people of the best fashion in the villages, of both sexes, courtiers in the palace, or citizens in the town, meet together to dine between twelve and one o'clock.

A long table is set in the middle of a large room, and benches beside it for a number of guests who are invited. A cow or bull, one or more, as the company is numerous, is brought close to the door, and his feet strongly tied. The skin that hangs down under his chin and throat, which I think we call the dew-lap in England, is cut only so deep as to arrive at the fat, of which it totally consists, and, by the separation of a few small blood-vessels, six or seven drops of blood only fall upon the ground. They have no stone, bench, nor altar upon which these cruel assassins lay the animal's head in this operation. I should beg his pardon indeed for calling him an assassin, as he is not so merciful as to aim at the life, but, on the contrary, to keep the beast alive till he be totally eat up. Having satisfied

the Mosaical law, according to his conception, by pouring these six or seven drops upon the ground, two or more of them fall to work; on the back of the beast, and on each side of the spine they cut skin-deep; then putting their fingers between the flesh and skin, they begin to strip the hide off the animal half way down his ribs, and so on to the buttock, cutting the skin wherever it hinders them commodiously to strip the poor animal bare. All the flesh on the buttocks is cut off then, and in solid, square pieces, without bones, or much effusion of blood; and the prodigious noise the animal makes is a signal for the company to sit down to table.

There are then laid before every guest, instead of plates, round cakes, about twice as big as a pan-cake, and something thicker and tougher. It is unleavened bread of a sourish taste, made of grain called teff. It is of different colours, from black to the colour of the whitish wheat-bread. Three or four of these cakes are generally put uppermost, for the food of the person opposite to whose seat they are placed. Beneath these are four or five of ordinary bread, and of a blackish kind.These serve the master to wipe his fingers upon; and afterwards the servant, for bread to his dinner.

Two or three servants then come, each with a square piece of beef in their bare hands, laying it upon the cakes of teff, placed like dishes down the table, without cloth or any thing else beneath them. By this time all the guests have knives in their hands, and their men have the large crooked ones, which they put to all sorts of uses during the time of war. The women have small clasped knives, such as the worst of the kind made at Sheffield.

The company are so ranged that one man sits between two women: the man with his long knife cuts a thin piece, which would be thought a good beef-steak in England, while you see the motion of the fibres yet perfectly distinct, and alive in the flesh. No man in Abyssinia, of any fashion whatever, feeds himself, or touches his own meat. The women take the steak and cut it length-ways like strings, about the thickness of your little finger, then crossways into square pieces, something smaller than dice. This they lay upon a piece of the teff bread, strongly powdered with black pepper, or Cayenne pepper, and fossile-salt, they then wrap it up in the teff bread like a cartridge.

In the mean time, the man having put up his knife, with each hand resting upon his neighbour's knee, his body stooping, his head low and forward, and mouth open very much like an idiot, turns to the one whose cartridge is first ready, who stuffs the whole of it into his mouth, which is so full that he is in con