pinion that no Christians beside themselves have
a true sense of the greatness of the mother of God, or pay her the
honours that are due to her. There are some tribes amongst them (for
they are distinguished like the Jews by their tribes), among whom the
crime of swearing by the name of the Virgin is punished with forfeiture
of goods and even with loss of life; they are equally scrupulous of
swearing by St. George. Every week they keep a feast to the honour of
the apostles and angels; they come to mass with great devotion, and love
to hear the word of God. They receive the sacrament often, but do not
always prepare themselves by confession. Their charity to the poor may
be said to exceed the proper bounds that prudence ought to set it, for it
contributes to encourage great numbers of beggars, which are a great
annoyance to the whole kingdom, and as I have often said, afford more
exercise to a Christian's patience than his charity; for their insolence
is such, that they will refuse what is offered them if it be not so much
as they think proper to ask.

Though the Abyssins have not many images, they have great numbers of
pictures, and perhaps pay them somewhat too high a degree of worship. The
severity of their fasts is equal to that of the primitive church. In
Lent they never eat till after sunset; their fasts are the more severe
because milk and butter are forbidden them, and no reason or necessity
whatsoever can procure them a permission to eat meat, and their country
affording no fish, they live only on roots and pulse. On fast-days they
never drink but at their meat, and the priests never communicate till
evening, for fear of profaning them. They do not think themselves
obliged to fast till they have children either married or fit to be
married, which yet doth not secure them very long from these
mortifications, because their youths marry at the age of ten years, and
their girls younger.

There is no nation where excommunication carries greater terrors than
among the Abyssins, which puts it in the power of the priests to abuse
this religious temper of the people, as well as the authority they
receive from it, by excommunicating them, as they often do, for the least
trifle in which their interest is concerned.

No country in the world is so full of churches, monasteries, and
ecclesiastics as Abyssinia; it is not possible to sing in one church or
monastery without being heard by another, and perhaps by severa