South of Suez Author:William Ashley Anderson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Cross and Scimitar in Abyssinia I. The Prince Dons a Turban ABOUT a year after my arrival at Aden there occurred in Abyssinia an event shrouded yet rich in t... more »he mystic gloom of mediaevalism; and, at the same time, behind the curtain of its isolation, stirring with all the clashing tumult of contemporary times. I saw much of it—as through a shimmering mist— but, so far as I know, no words have as yet been written in English to describe it, save such perhaps as have taken their way to the dusty archives of Whitehall. What I did not myself hear and see, I learned from chance-flung phrases over the shoulders of warriors on cantering ponies; over glasses of tedj in thatched tokhuls; amid the clatter and confusion of native troop trains; at dainty luncheons amid incongruous settings from the lips of silent men of great experience; andparticularly over a map sketched on a scrap of paper by a Germano-Ethiopean, while at the other end of the room there was uproar and crashing of chairs as some Greeks and renegade Italians struggled furiously over a matter of no consequence to us. If I have slipped in particulars, it is due to mixed tongues, incoherent phrases, and the distractions of personal events—which I pass over lightly. . . . My good fortune, then, found me in Djibouti, the port of French Somaliland, stranded, waiting for a boat that never came, just at the time when Abyssinian troubles had swelled to the bursting point. For at least a year all Northeast Africa had been feeling the restiveness of too long a period of peace. Sporadic outbreaks in Somaliland and in the Soudan gave sufficient indication that the hot lid was quivering. District Commissioners of conquered provinces, thin- lipped, went coolly on with their work, and sent in reports that were forgotten in the tu...« less