but few blacks in my country, and that these occupied a

lower social plane than the whites.

Just the reverse is true in Colonel Belik's land. He

considered whites inferior beings, creatures of a lower

order, and assuring me that even the few white freemen of

Abyssinia were never accorded anything approximating a

position of social equality with the blacks. They live in

the poorer districts of the cities, in little white

colonies, and a black who marries a white is socially

ostracized.

The arms and ammunition of the Abyssinians are greatly

inferior to ours, yet they are tremendously effective

against the ill-armed barbarians of Europe. Their rifles

are of a type similar to the magazine rifles of twentieth

century Pan-America, but carrying only five cartridges in

the magazine, in addition to the one in the chamber. They

are of extraordinary length, even those of the cavalry, and

are of extreme accuracy.

The Abyssinians themselves are a fine looking race of black

men--tall, muscular, with fine teeth, and regular features,

which incline distinctly toward Semitic mold--I refer to the

full-blooded natives of Abyssinia. They are the patricians--

the aristocracy. The army is officered almost exclusively

by them. Among the soldiery a lower type of negro

predominates, with thicker lips and broader, flatter noses.

These men are recruited, so the colonel told me, from among

the conquered tribes of Africa. They are good soldiers--

brave and loyal. They can read and write, and they are

endowed with a self-confidence and pride which, from my

readings of the words of ancient African explorers, must

have been wanting in their earliest progenitors. On the

whole, it is apparent that the black race has thrived far

better in the past two centuries under men of its own color

than it had under the domination of whites during all

previous history.

I had been a prisoner at the little frontier post for over a

month, when orders came to Colonel Belik to hasten to the

eastern frontier with the major portion of his command,

leaving only one troop to garrison the fort. As his body

servant, I accompanied him mounted upon a fiery little