s a matter of
course, Baruch. The usefulness of this fine-spun analogy becomes
apparent when we recall that Queen Victoria boasts descent from Fergus
of Scotland, and so is furnished with a line of descent which would
justify pride if it rested on fact instead of fancy. On the other hand,
imagine the dismay of Heinrich von Treitschke, Saxon _par excellence_,
were it proved that he is a son of the ten lost tribes!

"Salvation is of the Jews!" is the motto of a considerable movement
connected with the lost tribes in England and America. More than thirty
weekly and monthly journals are discharging a volley of eloquence in the
propaganda of the new doctrine, and lecturers and societies keep
interest in it alive. An apostolic believer in the Israelitish descent
of the British has recently turned up in the person of a bishop, and the
identity of the ancient and the modern people has been raised to the
dignity of a dogma of the Christian Church by a sect which, according to
a recent utterance of an Indianapolis preacher, holds the close advent
of Judgment Day. Yet the ten lost tribes may be a myth!

One thing seems certain: If scattered remnants do exist here and there,
they must be sought in Africa, in that part, moreover, most accessible
to travellers, that is to say, Abyssinia, situated in the central
portion of the great, high tableland of eastern Africa between the basin
of the Nile and the shores of the Red and the Arabian Sea--a tremendous,
rocky, fortress-like plateau, intersected closely with a network of
river-beds, the Switzerland of Africa, as many please to call it.
Alexander the Great colonized many thousands of Jews in Egypt on the
southern and northern coasts of the Mediterranean, and in south-eastern
Africa. Thence they penetrated into the interior of Abyssinia, where
they founded a mighty kingdom extending to the river Sobat. Abyssinian
legends have another version of the history of this realm. It is said
that the Queen of Sheba bore King Solomon a son, named Menelek, whom he
sent to Abyssinia with a numerous retinue to found an independent
kingdom. In point of fact, Judaism seems to have been the dominant
religion in Abyssinia until 340 of the Christian era, and the _Golah_ of
Cush (the exiles in Abyssinia) is frequently referred to in mediaeval
Hebrew literature.

The Jewish kingdom flourished until a great revolution broke out in the
ninth century under Queen Judith (Sague), who conquered Axum, and
reig