Egeria

“ In the general ignorance and vice of the population daily pouring into our country from foreign lands, Egeria finds new reason for activity, in the moral and intellectual advancement of all who are brought within her sphere of influence. ”

“ Son of a fallen dynasty, outcast of a sunken people, upon your breast is a lotus lily, God’s mark to prove your race and descent. You, Ergamenes, shall begin the restoration of Ethiopia. Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever, for wisdom and might are His, and He changeth the times and seasons; He removeth kings and countries, and setteth them up again; He giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding! He revealeth the deep and secret things; He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him! ”

“ Thus converted at an early period of the Christian age, Ethiopia spread her new religion deep into the recesses of heathen Africa. Extending her wide empire on every side, the praise of the Redeemer soon arose from the wildest valleys and the most secluded mountains. From the great river Gochob to the frontiers of Nubia, the crutch and the cowl pervaded the land. Churches were erected in every convenient spot; and the blue badge of nominal Christianity encircled the necks of an ignorant multitude. ”

“ The slave-holding nations which have pillaged them forages, have not been able to destroy them. Ethiopia may well say, stretching out her hands to God, 'Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves.' It is sublime to think what triumphs of redemption there are yet to be on that African continent. But how little, apparently, from all that they ever say, do some of our abolitionist friends seem to think about Africa as a future jewel in Immanuel's diadem! ”

“ Algeria is now a French colony, is well ordered and quite safe for the visitor.
This people is made up of many breeds: we saw thin, bandy-legged Arabs, fat, burly Turks, ramrod-like Bedouins; Kalougis, with a complexion suggesting old sole leather; Greeks, with frilled petticoats; Romans, of course with the toga; Kabeles, with black hair and wearing a robe like a big gas-bag; Moors, with the Duke's nose and spindle shanks; Mohammedans, carrying bannocks with holes in them; and dragomans, with "bakshish" stamped on every department of their anatomy. ”

“ But the Nile does not traverse the whole of Ethiopia, nor alone, nor in a straight line, nor a country which is well inhabited. But Egypt it traverses both alone and entirely, and in a straight line, from the lesser cataract above Syene and Elephantina, (which are the boundaries of Egypt and Ethiopia,) to the mouths by which it discharges itself into the sea. The Ethiopians at present lead for the most part a wandering life, and are destitute of the means of subsistence, on account of the barrenness of the soil, the disadvantages of climate, and their great distance from us. ”

“ The consequence is, that Algeria has no natural frontiers at all, and it has on either side of it one of the strongest, most warlike and most turbulent tribes in North Africa, the Khomair to the east and the Beni Snassen to the west. ”

“ THROUGHOUT North Africa, from Oran to Tunis, one encounters everywhere, in the town as in the country, the distinct traits which mark the seven races which make up the native population: the Moors, the Berbers, the Arabs, the Negroes, the Jews, the Turks and the Koulouglis. One may see all these types, living their own distinct and characteristic lives, all within a radius of a half a dozen leagues of Algiers’ port and quais. ”

“ Reflect, Master, on the hunting we will have yonder in Ethiopia. No more cares, no more plannings for the welfare of Egypt, no more persuading of the doubtful to take up arms, no more desperate battle-ventures with your country’s honour on your sword-point. And if you must see women—well, there are plenty in Ethiopia who come and go lightly as an evening breeze laden with the odour of flowers, and never trouble in the morning.”
“At any rate you are not free from such coils, Bes,” I said and in the moonlight I saw his great face fall in. ”

“ The wheels were turned by oxen, driven by Dinka slaves, who sang vociferous melodies the while, and the water was conveyed to fields distant from the river in the hollow trunks of the doum-tree.
There, where I expected to sail through a wilderness, I found a garden. Ethiopia might become, in other hands, the richest and most productive part of Africa. The people are industrious and peaceable, and deserve better masters. Their dread of the Turks is extreme, and so is their hatred. ”

“ I am, as you surmised, an Egyptian—not one of the down-trodden race of slaves who now inhabit the Delta of the Nile, but a survivor of that fiercer and harder people who tamed the Hebrew, drove the Ethiopian back into the southern deserts, and built those mighty works which have been the envy and the wonder of all after generations. ”

“ Henceforth connected with Europe, Northern Africa has acquired considerable importance in contemporaneous history, and Algeria especially participates in the intense life which now animates civilised society. After Egypt, Algeria of all other African regions has been the theatre of events whose influence has been most far-reaching. Next to Cape Colony, Algeria is the largest centre of Euro- pean populations, and in spite of thirty years of almost incessant wars, it has. relatively speaking, even been more rapidly peopled by European immigrants than the English possessions in South Africa. ”

“ The French have not shown their usual sagacity in fixing the boundaries of their colony, or rather I should say a desire to avoid even the appearance of encroaching on their neighbours, and perhaps some pressure from other European Powers, has induced them to abandon much valuable territory, which, if the prescription of eighteen centuries deserves to be taken into account, undoubtedly belonged to Algeria.
After the fall of Jugurtha, 106 B.C., the country between the east coast of Tunis and the Atlantic was divided into three provinces, Africa proper, Numidia and Mauritania. ”

“ The military and civil control of a subject population, such as the English rule in India, and in recent days the pax Gallica of the Sahara, may be an excellent undertaking for a people of super-abundant energies; for Bugeaud the conquest of Algeria was only a necessary preliminary to its organization as a French colony. “La conquête,” he said in his first proclamation, “serait stérile sans la colonisation. Je serai donc colonisateur ardent, car j’attache moins de gloire à vaincre dans les combats qu’à fonder quelque chose d’utile et de durable.” ”

“ This curious wave of invasion from the East seems to have simply skirted the northern parts of Africa, until it reached what is now Algeria. It never penetrated far south, and yet it represents one of the few traces of civilisation in the dark continent. Most curious of all is it that African aborigines have done so little for themselves. All the civilising waves have been immigrant, from those who built the dead cities of Mashonaland to the men who have made Buluwayo. Such civilisation as North Africa possesses has been wholly of foreign origin. ”

“ The kingdom of Habbesh, Abyssinia, or Ethiopia, the oldest monarchy in Africa, is a small, highly-elevated, mountainous district, lying in the middle of the north torrid zone, within the limits of the tropical rains, enclosed by forests of enormous extent, a small part of the Red Sea, and unknown, trackless regions. ”

“ It remains for us to go forth, sons and daughters of Ethiopia, embrace our privileges, obtain the lands, dwell thereon, and become a great nation. Then the heathen will be turned from their idols, and join the true worship: then Ethiopia will stretch her hands unto God, and the islands shall be filled with his glory. Thus shall we be a blessing to all people, and all people will be a blessing to us, and the Lord will prosper us in all things. ”

“ Governments seldom dream imperial dreams; they are more concerned to keep their seats. Sovereigns like George III may lose an empire. Mere accidental citizens, as Clive or Rhodes, may create one.
So this fertile North Africa, through history the shuttle-cock of Asia and Europe, with an illimitable hinterland of “rather light soil,” to quote the words of a statesman who had little sympathy with African conquest, became French because an Algerian Dey struck a consul with his fan. ”

“ I found my sympathies in Algeria going out wholly to the Arabs. In the Sahara, beyond the Atlas, where military rule prevailed, things were somewhat better, for the French officers for the most part appreciated the nobler qualities of the Arabs and despised the mixed rascaldom of Europe—Spanish, Italian, and Maltese as well as their own countrymen—which made up the "Colonie." The great tribes of the Sahara were still at that time materially well off, and retained not a little of their ancient pride of independence which the military commandants could not but respect. ”

“ Egypt has produced the Young Egypt movement; India, the Swadesha, the All-India Congress, and the present revolutionary movement which has lit the fuse of the powder-keg on which Britain sits in India today; Africa has her Ethiopian Movement which ranges from the Zulus and Hottentots of the Cape to the Ekoi of Nigeria; in short, the darker races, chafing under the domination of the alien whites, are everywhere showing a disposition to take Democracy at its word and to win some measure of it for themselves. ”

“ The people who now inhabit the regions of the coast of Guinea and the middle parts of Africa, as inner Lybia, Nubia, and various other extensive regions in that quarter, were anciently called Ethiopians and Nigritae, which we now call Moors, Moorens, or Negroes; a beastly living people, without God, law, religion, or government, and so scorched by the heat of the sun, that in many places they curse it when it rises. ”

“ For much fatigue and privation the traveller in Algeria will be compensated by many a glimpse of picturesque Oriental manners and costumes and by the varied scenery of the peaceful and luxuriantly fertile plains, the wild mountains, and the stony and sandy wastes of steppe and desert. Most striking of all are the wonderful effects of light and shade on land, sea, and sky, under the glorious African sunshine. ”

“ But with the Almighty Power of God and with the guidance and mercy of our Blessed Lord we feel that one day Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hand, and whether it be at the second coming or before, we shall all sing our Hosannas, shout our praises to God for freedom, for liberty, for life. ”

“ And this father wrote a letter of blessing, and sent it to the King of Ethiopia, and to all the Ethiopians, and blessed them. When that letter reached the country of Ethiopia God removed His anger from them and sent to them His compassion and mercy; and the rain descended upon them, and God removed the famine and the plague and the people rejoiced with great joy. And this is what happened in the days of that king. Salutation to the Patriarch, the son of Torayk, to whose name was added that of the angel Gabriel. Glory be to God Who is glorified in His Saints. ”

“ In this system resides our superiority over all neighbors. The Ethiopians were as numerous as we, but their king himself took care of his own cattle, and beat his own subjects with a club; he knew not how many subjects he had, nor was he able to collect them when our troops invaded his country. There was not a united Ethiopia, but a great crowd of unorganized people. ”

“ And the warbling melody, sweeter and richer far than the notes of a bugle-band, shall fill and thrill the very desert airs of Africa. The wild men of Ethiopia shall catch the sounding song, and leap as harts on the mountains. ”

“ To hold Algeria is to cripple France.
What, then, is the cause of the fatality which has thus ever attended African colonization by Europeans? In tropical Africa, the heat and insalubrity, and consequently the total unfitness for European life, are causes quite sufficient to account for the failure; and the failure has been eminent with French, Dutch, English, and Danes. But this will not account for want of success in temperate Africa, whether beyond the northern or southern tropic. ”

“ It has increased fourfold the traveller’s opportunities of observation. Algeria, a land of great distances and admirable roads, is especially suited to its use. And it is a country brimful of interest, historical and actual. The scholar may dig 6in the debris of the Roman and Byzantine dominions; the connoisseur revel in the relics of Moorish art; the politician contemplate the colonization of a conquered territory in the face of a subject population alien in race and religion; the ordinary traveller will be content to sip a little at each source. ”

“ Algeria, “la belle Algérie” as the French fondly call it, is not a mere strip of mountain land and desert. It is one of the richest agricultural lands on earth, running eastward from the Moroccan frontier well over into Tunisia; and, for ages, it has been known as the granary of Europe. The Carthaginians and the Phœnicians built colonies and empires{32} here, and Rome was nourished from its wheat-fields and olive-groves. ”

“ Ethiopia and Ethiopians are labouring today not only for the peace and prosperity of our people, but also, realizing the fundamental common interest which we share with other African people, we have dedicated Ourselves to building a united and a more prosperous Africa. We found that the interest that affects Africa affects also Ethiopia and vice versa, because our destiny with the African Continent is a common one. ”