"Abyssinian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rainless country grow anything? The secret is the Nile. Every year, when the rains fall in the great lake-basin of Central Africa, from which one branch of the great river comes, and on the Abyssinian hills, where the other branch rises, the Nile comes down in flood. All the lower lands are covered, and a fresh deposit of Nile mud is left upon them; and, though the river does not rise to the higher grounds, the water is led into big ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... next morning, in the garden of whatever house I am occupying. I do not know whether you are greedy? If so, it may interest you to learn that I have a third chef, who makes only souffles, and an Italian pastry-cook; to say nothing of a Spaniard for salads, an Englishwoman for roasts, and an Abyssinian for coffee. You found no trace of their handiwork in the meal you have just had with me? No; for in Oxford it is a whim of mine—I may say a point of honour—to lead the ordinary life of an undergraduate. What I eat in this room is cooked by the heavy and unaided hand of Mrs. Batch, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... broken into open revolt, and one of them had proclaimed himself king of a certain province. Sir Robert Napier presented this chieftain with four guns and a thousand rifles, and this recognition on the part of the conquerors enabled the chief in question to mount the Abyssinian throne, taking for himself the name ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... forty-five islands in Lake Tzana; but this number may be safely reduced to eleven. The largest is named Dek, Daka, or Daga; the next in size are Halimoon, on the Gondar side of the lake, Briguida, on the Gorgora side, and Galila, beyond Briguida. All these islands were formerly used as prisons for Abyssinian chieftains, or as retreats by such as were dissatisfied at court, or wished to secure their ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... charming polished manner vanished in an instant, and one day, without any warning, little Mirak, playing in the garden, was kidnapped by two stalwart Abyssinian slaves and carried off, howling horribly and fighting with his fists, to the palace where Kumran's wife lived. Tumbu, who was with him at the time, made a gallant show of resistance, and actually bit one of the kidnapper's ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... like their fathers; and I said to myself:—He who took thy sire will not spare thee. Now the night I first visited thee,[FN27] thou madest me swear that I would never take a second wife over thee nor a concubine, Abyssinian or Greek or handmaid of other race; nor would lie a single night away from thee: and behold, thou art barren, and having thee is like boring into the rock." Rejoined she, "Allah is my witness that the fault lies ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... where's the wonder? We live in a glorious age" (Raby smiled) "that has read the written mountains of the East, and the Abyssinian monuments: and he is a man of the age, and your mediaeval brasses are no more to him than cuneiform letters to Rawlinson. Let me read this resuscitated record. 'Edith Little, daughter of Robert Raby, by Leah Dence his wife:' why here's ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... the Alpine climber who occupies the responsible post of "Cook of the Canoe Club," and modified (after consulting Professor Tyndall), is less than three inches each way, and it acts after the manner of a blow-pipe. It was also adopted in the Abyssinian expedition. In two minutes after lighting it pours forth a vehement flame about a foot in height, which with a warming heat boils two large cups full in my flat copper kettle in five minutes, or a can of preserved meat ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... the travels of Covilham, who first saw cloves and cinnamon, pepper and ginger, and who pined away in a state of confinement at the Prester's Abyssinian Court, but the voyage of Diaz hardly finds a place in the Lusiads and the very name of the discoverer is generally forgotten. Vasco da Gama has robbed ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... labyrinth of bazaars, were stores of sandalwood, and spices smelling like Araby the blest; open-fronted shops showing splendid leopard skins, crocodile heads bristling with knives, carved tusks of elephants, shields, armour said to have been captured from crusaders; Abyssinian spears, swords and strange headgear used by the Mahdi's and Khalifa's men. The bazaars of Cairo and even Assuan seemed tame and sophisticated compared to this wild market of the Sudan, where half ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... is vinegar, pepper, and mustard, it is sardines, it is lobster, it is the unconsidered world of trifles which make up the visible difference between the table of high civilization and that of the Abyssinian or the Blackfoot Indian. Let us hope it is not much cream-of-tartar or saleratus. It is grits and grapes, it is lard and lemons, it is maple-sugar and melons, it is nuts and nutmeg, or any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... rock portals none save Jabez and Milo, the herculean Abyssinian slave, had ever passed. Dolores, next in line, was in ignorance as deep as her meanest slave, concerning what lay beyond the great mass of rock which formed the door, and which Milo alone could move. She knew, as did every ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... from that wonderful atchievement of genius and labour, his Dictionary of the English Language; the merit of which I contemplate with more and more admiration. BOSWELL. In like manner we have 'Hermes Harris,' 'Pliny Melmoth,' 'Demosthenes Taylor,' 'Persian Jones,' 'Abyssinian Bruce,' 'Microscope Baker,' 'Leonidas Glover,' 'Hesiod Cooke,' and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... 1605 and was succeeded by his son Selim, who took the title of Jehan Gir. The Deckan, hardly subdued, achieved something like independence under a great soldier and administrator of Abyssinian origin, named Malik Amber. In the sixth year of his reign Jehan Gir married the beautiful Nur Jehan, by whose influence the emperor's natural brutality was greatly modified in practice. His son, Prince Khurram, later known as Shah ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... and dreamed his own dreams. His opposite neighbours, who watched him on sultry summer evenings as he lounged near an open window smoking his cigar, had no more knowledge of his thoughts and fancies than they might have had if he had been a Calmuck Tartar or an Abyssinian chief. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... interest he had excited in her for his pursuits. But, as he said in apology, what had he to write about in that savage land, but his love, and his researches, and travels? There was no society, no gaiety, no new books to write about, no gossip in Abyssinian wilds. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... antelope of Senegal; the Red-crowned bush-boc, also of Western Africa; and, belonging to the same region, the White-backed bush-boc. In the Island of Fernando Po there is found the Black-striped bush-boc; and in Abyssinia, the Madoqua, or Abyssinian bush-goat, of a yellow colour. The Bay bush-buck and Bay bush-goat are two species described as natives of Sierra Leone; while the Black bush-boc, of a sooty black colour, is found on the coast ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... other modes of illumination. Years ago a limelight was so arranged as to be used on board ship for illuminating objects at a great distance. By its means, an intended attack of torpedo vessels could be detected. It was employed also in the Abyssinian expedition, for illuminating the advance camp when there was a possibility of it being attacked by Theodore's troops. Now, however, electric lights are used on board all the first-class men-of-war, incandescent lamps being fitted for internal use, and arc lights ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... sense,' I said. 'But you must begin at the right end. First find the race that fears its priests. It is waiting for you—the Mussulmans of Somaliland and the Abyssinian border and the Blue and White Nile. They would be like dried grasses to catch fire if you used the flint and steel of their religion. Look what the English suffered from a crazy Mullah who ruled only a dozen villages. Once get the flames going and they ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... hung upon pegs set in the wall of the cell or the church or the tower where they were preserved.[2] We have already noted the legend which tells how all the satchels in Ireland slipped off their pegs when Longarad died. A modern writer visiting the Abyssinian convent of Souriani has seen a room which, when we remember the connection between Egyptian and Celtic monachism, we cannot help thinking must closely resemble an ancient Irish cell.[3] In the room ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, 40 Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, 45 I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice![298:2] And all who heard should see them ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... is ruled by two Wahuma chieftains of foreign blood, descended from the Abyssinian stock, of whom we saw specimens scattered all over Unyamuezi, and who extended even down south as far as Fipa. Travellers see very little, however, of these Wahuma, because, being pastorals, they roam about with their ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the sandstone, but at the bottom of the red marl which caps the sandstone. It was formed most probably by the gradual drying up of lagoons, such as are depositing salt, it is said now, both in the Gulf of Tadjara, on the Abyssinian frontier opposite Aden, and in the Runn of Cutch, near the Delta of the Indus. If this be so, then these New Red sandstones may be the remains of a whole Sahara—a sheet of sandy and all but lifeless deserts, reaching from the west of England into Germany, and rising slowly out of the sea; ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... Writing to Dilke, of The Athenaeum, for books, some years later, Lamb makes a point of "no natural history or useful learning" being sent—such as Giraffes, Pyramids and Adventures in Central Africa. None the less, as a boy, he tells us, he had read Bruce and applied his Abyssinian methods to the New River (see the Elia essay ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of power during the submergence which the Initiates knew to be impending. Map No. 3 shows Egypt at that date as under water. It remained so for a considerable period, but on its re-emergence it was again peopled by the descendants of many of its old inhabitants who had retired to the Abyssinian mountains (shown in Map No. 3 as an island) as well as by fresh bands of Atlantean colonists from various parts of the world. A considerable immigration of Akkadians then helped to modify the Egyptian type. This is the era of the second ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... death, so he did not at all beg Hatim that he should not send them upon a new journey, the third in rotation. In his soul, he thought also that riding in an easterly and southerly direction, he must approach the Abyssinian boundaries and that he might escape. He had a hope that upon the dry tableland Nell would be safeguarded against the fever, and for these reasons he willingly and zealously entered into the preparation for ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... was merely in their use at table. He was fond of knives of all sorts, and he regarded them always as his legitimate spoil whenever he dined anywhere, pocketing every one he could lay his hands on with as much facility as the Egyptian, and Abyssinian drummers who visited our section of the country every year made off with the spoons of our hostelries. Nor could we ever appeal to him on the score of etiquette. Any observation as to the ways of our first families was always met by a cold but quick response that if there ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... sway to and fro of the human tides, seething with sobs and quarrels; flowing into the planless maze of chapels and churches of all ages and architectures, that, perched on rocks or hewn into their mouldy darkness, magnificent with untold church-treasure—Armenian, Syrian, Coptic, Latin, Greek, Abyssinian—add the resonance of their special sanctities and the oppression of their individual glories of vestment and ceremonial to the surcharged atmosphere palpitant with exaltation and prayer and mystic bell-tinklings; overspreading the thirty-seven sacred ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... had breakfast, and soon after they had finished the cavalry arrived from the other zareba. At eight o'clock the Mounted Infantry moved out, accompanied by a party of Abyssinian scouts. They had gone but a short distance when a very heavy fire was opened upon them, and the officer in command sent back to the general to say that there was a broad ravine stretching across the country a few hundred yards ahead, although hidden by the bushes from observation until ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... on Streatham Common. A large part of every year he passed in those abodes, abodes which must have seemed magnificent and luxurious indeed, when compared with the dens in which he had generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called "the endearing elegance of female friendship." Mrs Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed him, and, if she sometimes provoked him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening to his reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he was diseased ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the Caliph, taking his dagger from his girdle, struck the head of one of the serpents thrice. The massy portal opened with a whirl and a roar, and before them stood an Abyssinian giant,[26] holding in his leash ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... a friend." In other parts of India the Siddis are usually beggars and are described as 'Fond of intoxicating drinks, quarrelsome, dirty, unthrifty and pleasure-loving, obstinacy being their leading trait.' They worship Baba Ghor, an Abyssinian saint. [500] ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... have then shown an Abyssinian, Nubian or Ethiopian, who, black from head to foot, had been found wanting in certain virile properties with which all good Christians are usually furnished, who, having persevered in his silence, after having been tormented ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... attention are given by Mr. J.G. Baker in "Nature," December 9th, 1880, page 125. He mentions the Madagascar Viola, which occurs elsewhere only at 7,000 feet in the Cameroons, at 10,000 feet in Fernando Po and in the Abyssinian mountains; and the same thing is true of the Madagascar Geranium. In Mr. Wallace's letter to Darwin, dated January 1st, 1881, he evidently uses the expression "passing through the air" in contradistinction to the migration of a species by gradual extension of its area on land. "Through the air" ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the Abyssinian war. It is not likely that two great barbaric kingdoms living side by side, but differing in race and religion, will long continue at peace; nor was it difficult to discover a cause of the quarrel between the Dervishes and the Abyssinians. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... "A wonderful panorama of the life of a decadent Abyssinian Prince; with full details of his wardrobe, his taste in liqueurs, his emotions and dissipations.... Simply must be read by anyone who wishes to be 'in it.' It is a ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw; It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Strange as it may appear, neither these Watuta nor the Watusi know anything of their common origin. They are very different in physical form and appearance from one another; for, whilst the Watusi alias Wahuma retain their Abyssinian type, the Watuta alias Zulu Kafirs are much more like the Somali and Masai—thus, I think, showing that the Wahuma have detached themselves at a later period than the Kafirs from the parent stock. The Wahuma are certainly the finer-looking people ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... breeds have descended from several wild stocks, their difference can obviously in part be explained by that of their parent species. For instance, the form of the greyhound may be partly accounted for by descent from some such animal as the slim Abyssinian Canis simensis (1/52. Ruppel 'Neue Wirbelthiere von Abyssinien' 1835-40 'Mammif.' s. 39 pl. 14. There is a specimen of this fine animal in the British Museum.), with its elongated muzzle; that of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... sea-coast, where many of them, as the Papels, have scarcely any other means of subsistence than shell fish, and the accidental gifts of the sea. In many places similar Negro tribes occupy thick forests in the hollows beneath high chains of mountains, the summits of which are inhabited by Abyssinian or Ethiopian races. The high table-lands of Africa are chiefly, as far as they are known, the abode or the wandering places of tribes of this character, or of nations who, like the Kafirs, recede ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... Jerusalem; but being dissuaded from the attempt, on account of the Saracen kingdoms which were in the way, he sent a pious bishop to perform his devotions for him at the holy sepulchre. On his return, the bishop was made prisoner by the sultan of Aden, and circumcised by force. On this affront, the Abyssinian monarch raised an army, with which he defeated the sultan and two other Saracen kings, and took and destroyed the city of Aden. Abyssinia is, rich in gold. Escier, subject to Aden, is forty miles distant to the south-east, and produces abundance of fine white frankincense, which is procured by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... pipes, curiously made, with carved amber mouthpieces, and others with long, flexible, silken tubes. Turbaned crowds stroll leisurely about. Now a strong and wiry Bedouin passes, leading his horse and taking count of everything with his sharp, black eyes, and now a Nile boatman. Yonder is an Abyssinian slave, and beyond is an Egyptian trader, with here and there a Greek or a Maltese. Amid it all one feels curious as to where Aladdin's uncle may be just now, with his new lamps to exchange for old ones. We will ascend the loftiest point of this Arabian ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... our subjects was triumphantly vindicated; other good was not achieved. Theodore, unwilling to survive defeat, was found dead by his own hand when Magdala was carried, and he was afterwards succeeded on the Abyssinian throne by a chief who had more than all his predecessor's vices and none of his virtues. For this well-managed campaign Sir Robert Napier was raised to the peerage as Lord Napier of Magdala. The swift success, the brilliant promptitude, of his achievement ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... Cinquecento, but she afterward adopted a rather bombastic and theatrical style. Her only statue, a Pythia, in bronze was placed in the Grand Opera at Paris (1870). In the Luxembourg Museum are marble busts of Bianca Capello (1863) and an "Abyssinian Sheikh" (1870). A "Gorgon" (1865), a "Saviour" (1875), "La Bella Romana" (1875) are among her other works. She left her art treasures, valued at about fifty thousand francs, to the Cantonal Museum at Fribourg, where they occupy a separate room, called ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... influence. Jesuits had disputed in theology with the bonzes of Japan, and taught astronomy to the mandarins of China; had wrought prodigies of sudden conversion among the followers of Bralinra, preached the papal supremacy to Abyssinian schismatics, carried the cross among the savages of Caffraria, wrought reputed miracles in Brazil, and gathered the tribes of Paraguay beneath their paternal sway. And now, with the aid of the Virgin and her votary at court, they ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... reception of me, from which I augured well; but I could learn nothing definite, and it was not until quite the end of September that it was announced that Colonel Donald Stewart was to have command of the Bengal Brigade with the Abyssinian Force, and that I was to be his Assistant- Quartermaster-General. We at once hastened back to Allahabad, where we only remained long enough to pack up what we wanted to take with us, and arrange ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... LL.D., F.R.S.; (1832-1905), on staff of Geological Survey of India, 1855-1882; accompanied Abyssinian Expedition and Persian Boundary Commission; sometime President of Geological Society and of Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, also of Geological Section British Assoc.; author of works dealing with the geology and zoology of Abyssinia, Persia, ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... and between A Yasouses and Ozoros? and do you firmly believe that an old man and his son were sent for and put to death, because the King had run into a thornbush, and was forced to leave his clothes behind him? Is it your faith, that one of their Abyssinian Majesties pleaded not being able to contribute towards sending for a new Abuna, because he had spent all his money at Venice in looking-glasses? And do you really think that Peter Paez was a Jack-of-all-trades, and built ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... canariensis). The valuable material, which resists damp and decay for centuries, and which Decandolle declares would grow in Scotland, is rapidly disappearing from the Pinals. The travellers carried cochineal-seed, for which their village is famous, and a hive which might have been Abyssinian. It was a hollow cylinder of palm-bole, closed with board at either end; in July and August it is carried up the mountain, where the bees cannot destroy the grapes. We searched in vain for M. Broussonet's ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... before the end of the sixth century, was translated from the Syriac into the Latin language, by the care of Gregory of Tours. The hostile communions of the East preserve their memory with equal reverence; and their names are honorably inscribed in the Roman, the Abyssinian, and the Russian calendar. [46] Nor has their reputation been confined to the Christian world. This popular tale, which Mahomet might learn when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria, is introduced ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... cushions, dividing her time between her pipe and her needle-work. She merely made a slight inclination of her head as we entered, and went on with her occupation. Presently her two daughters and an Abyssinian slave appeared, and took their places on the cushions at her feet, the whole forming a charming group, which I regretted some of my artist friends at home could not see. The mistress was so exceedingly dignified, that she ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... uncommon, and the average is well above six. They are strongly and lithely made. Their skins are a red-brown or bronze, generally brought to a high state of polish by liberal anointing. In feature they resemble more the Egyptian or Abyssinian than the negro cast of countenance. The women are tall and well formed, with proud, quaintly quizzical faces. Their expressions and demeanour seem to indicate more independence and initiative than is usual with most savage women, but ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White |
