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difficult for him to believe my assertion that there were 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 Abyssinian pony.

We marched rapidly for ten days through the heart of the ancient German

empire, halting when night found us in proximity to water. Often we passed

small posts similar to that at which the colonel's regiment had been quartered,

finding in each instance that only a single company or troop remained for

defence, the balance having been withdrawn toward the northeast, in the same

direction in which we were moving.

Naturally, the colonel had not confided to me the nature of his orders. But the

rapidity of our march and the fact that all available troops were being hastened

The Lost Continent