"The quarry, dream, vocate, and nattle, are their weights." These are evidently derived from the Arabs, zellery, drahm, ukiat, and râttle. Among the latter many zellerys go to the drahm; 10 drahms to the ukia or ounce, and 12 ounces to the râttle or pound. The weights of Abyssinia are: 10 quarrys 1 dream, 10 dreams 1 vocate, 12 vocates 1 nattle or pound. They have no larger weights. They have no measures of length but the gudge, which is from the elbow to the end of the middle finger." Note. This is precisely the same measure that is used throughout the Muselman countries of Africa, and called the drâa*, and known in Europe by the name of the Egyptian cubit. The price of Articles in the markets of Abyssinia. Corn is sold 6 or 8 bushels for one dollar. Two plough-shares, about 7 lbs. weight each, for ditto. A measure, or a piece called a guess, containing about 30 lbs. tobacco, for ditto. Fat cows, from 2 to 4 dollars each. Ploughing bullocks, 4 to 6 dollars each. Mules, from 15 to 60 dollars each. Horses, 30 to 130 dollars each. Slaves, 20 to 40 dollars each. All articles are sold by the guess, except gold and cotton, which are sold by weight. · Prices of articles brought by the Coffler from Marsaw, used by the The oil of cloves and other sweet scents, brought by the Muselman Coffler from Marsaw, sell very quick. The oil of cloves is one vocate for the dollar. They use cloves in all their cooked victuals as well as in their hair. Negus or Itsa, signifies a king. Ras or Gasmartie, a prince. The higher classes of society are very proud in general; they are also great misers. Their children cannot be distinguished from those of the poor, for they go naked till they grow up, they then clothe Ukiat or ounce. + See Literary Gazette, Oct. 7th, 1820, page 649. them, but poorly. They keep the lower class very much under. A common servant's pay is one dollar for four months: one cake of bread, morning and evening, which cake is like a pancake,* and is exactly half a pint of corn before it is ground. 66 Saltpetre is sold about 23 pounds for a dollar; brimstone 12 or 13 pounds for a dollar. The musket-men make far better gunpowder than is made in Arabia. To seven measures of nitre they add one of sulphur, to which they add the willow charcoal by degrees, drying it every now and then with fire upon a clean stone, until they perceive it goes clean off. They sometimes grind it, and sometimes beat it in a wooden mortar, and make it into very large and irregular grains." A similar kind of gunpowder is manufactured by the Arabs, particularly by the Howara tribe. Pearce concludes his interesting detail by the following account of the princes of Abyssinia. "Ras Walder Serlassey is the strongest prince in Abyssinia, and has of his own 8500 match-locks, besides a great quantity belonging to his chiefs; about 2000 horses and above 20,000 shieldsmen; still he is as mean as a common Jew, and a great liar; though he is very merciful to prisoners, and a brave hard fighter. "Ras Gabri is free, but barbarous to those he dislikes; he has about 700 muskets, and but few horse, though his country is the hardest in Abyssinia to conquer, through the strong mountains it contains, which are cultivated on the tops, and have water. It also commands all passes from the Ammerrer to Zegri. "Guxar is not barbarous, though he is of a Garlar descent, he has 8000 horse, but few muskets. "Ras Ilow is not very strong, though his country produces brave soldiers. He is an ally constant to Walder Serlassey. "Libban is barbarous and revengeful; he has about 10,000 horse, though Guxar beat him in two battles. 66 Goga is uncommonly barbarous, and friendly with no one, but always at war; and indeed, all except Ras Walder Serlassey fear him. "Those are the great princes of Abyssinia who have the whole country in their hands. The king, Itsa Ġuarlu, now in Gondar, has no sway at all, is very poor, and has only the name of a king." The residences of the kings now alive are "Itsa Takely Gorges, at Axume. Itsa Yoas, at Begandre. Itsa Yonas, at Gogam. Itsa Bedemarian, at Seamon. Itsa Guarlu, at Gondar." Our honest sailor concludes, by assuring his readers that his account is a real and true one, and no hearsay whatever. It is dated at Challicut Inderter, Abyssinia, October, 1814. To all our readers interested in African matters we recommend the perusal of this letter of Nathanial Pearce the sailor. It is simple, and we have every reason to think a faithful and true description of what little is known of that interesting country. This bread appears to be the same that is made by the Arabs, and called by them (we think) teff; it is described in Shabeeny's account of Timbuctoo, &c. ་ LECTURES ON POETRY, BY T. CAMPBELL. LECTURE V. PART I. Greek Poetry. HOMER, Hesiod, and the greater part of the earliest Greek poets, were Asiatics. The fine arts had blossomed in Ionia before they were transplanted to proper Greece, and long before they attained to maturity on the Athenian soil. The rise of those Greek states of Asia Minor, which, unlike all modern colonies, took the lead of the parent country in improvement, lies very far back in the national history. Eighty years after the Trojan war, the princes descended from Hercules returned from the north of Greece, wrested back the sceptre of Argos from the house of Pelops, and subdued almost all the Peloponnesus. They rewarded their Doric followers with grants of land, and thus reduced the old inhabitants to slavery or exile. Among the sufferers who were first driven to emigration, was a horde of Eolians, who passed over to the places which had been the scenes of the Iliad, and gave the name of Æolis, or Eolia, to their settlements between the Propontis and the river Hermus, which is now called the Sarbat. Considerably later came another emigration from proper Greece into Asia, which, though connected with other causes, had its primary origin in the oppressive government of the Heraclide. This was called the Ionic migration, from the race who chiefly composed it. Of that race, Attica was considered as the original country. The Athenians were not within the range of the Heracleid conquests, but they received the refugees of the oppressed Peloponnesus, till their scanty and overpeopled territories could no longer support them. At last they took arms against the Dorian conquerors. Codrus, their king, delivered them from this danger by his voluntary martyrdom. But a change of government succeeded, which induced the sons of Codrus to put themselves at the head of adventurers from all parts of Greece; and, under their auspices, Asia Minor received the most important body of her colonists.* The Ionian emigrants, it is true, settled themselves, like their Eolian predecessors, not without bloodshed and violence +, and seized not only on the property but the wives and children of the conquered people. But they planted a range of states south of the Hermus, destined to prosper for a long time under the common name of Ionia, when that appellation was dropped in proper Greece, and when the Athe * There was a third and Doric emigration from Greece to Asia, but of much less consequence than the two preceding ones. + Herodotus, i. 145. Pausanias, vii. 1, 3. Strabo, xiv. 938. 2 IN VOL. JI. NO. XI. nians remembered their descent from Ion only in the pages of their poetry. It has been argued by the ingenious Wood*, that Homer must have lived before those migrations had taken place: otherwise, that he could not have failed to notice events so important both to Europe and Asia. And it is, no doubt, difficult to reconcile his silence respecting them, with the idea of his having known them. Yet the weight of opinion, both ancient and modern, seems inclined, I think, to the supposition that he lived after those migrations. But whether Homer sprang up among some earlier Greek tribes, that had lingered in Asia after they had fought under the walls of Troy, or owed his birth to a later race of emigrants, it is certain the Ionian and Eolic colonists preserved his writings, and that they materially influenced the future literature and history of the mother-country. The Asiatic Greeks grew rich, powerful, and polished. The Eolians had the better soil; the Ionians the finer climate and harbours. Of those advantages they availed themselves (the Ionians especially) with that spirit which is natural to adventurers, whose powers of mind have been excited by success, and by new circumstances. Their governments. ceased to be hereditary monarchies probably a considerable time before the Olympiads +; and it does not appear, that the people always escaped, in those mutations, from oligarchy or despotism. But still their freedom, till the Orientals conquered them, on the whole survived; and those rulers called Asymnetest, whom they chose either for life or for a certain number of years, are expressly distinguished by Aristotle from tyrants; for their power, though great, was given them by the people, and was directed by laws. the Asiatic states, though divided and often contending among themselves, were for a long time the outposts of Greek liberty and independence; and though at last they were overwhelmed by Persian invasion, yet they stemmed its progress till Greece was ripe to resist it. Lying almost all in the immediate vicinity of the sea, and many of them at the mouths of navigable rivers, they. held the keys of commerce in their own hands; and their factories extending as far as Egypt, their numerous settlements on the coasts of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and their voyages to regions which had never before been explored by Greeks, were the happy results of their situation and their enterprise. Among the Ionian states, Colophon and Miletus became proverbial for their power and valour; and Samos, the birth-place of Pythagoras, * Wood's Essay on Homer. + The Olympiads commence in chronology 776 years B. C. § The Milesians alone established fifty-seven such settlements. Thus was also conspicuously distinguished for that national activity which favours the growth of intellect. It may be objected, perhaps, that I am here noticing traits. in the prosperity of the Asiatic Greeks which have by no means uniformly favoured the progress of poetry. Wealth and conmerce may have been often adverse to the poetical spirit of a people, and are neither its necessary nor its primary springs. Homer seems to have existed in the infancy of all the arts. It should be always recollected, however, with regard to Homer, that we can only guess at the period in which he lived, and can never make the state of society, in which we suppose him to have existed, a perfectly secure ground of reasoning on the connexion between poetry and the state of human cultivation. But from the date of the Olympiads and the Ionian commonwealths *, the sun of civilization appears to be fairly above the horizon. How much of the previous day-spring had smiled on Homer is but a subject of speculation; but we have henceforward, from this epoch, comparatively clearer data for computing the influence of social improvement on taste and imagination. And, great as Homer was, Greek poetry had yet to fulfil an important and inspired career for ages after him. She had to receive new measures of harmony, new provinces of composition, and new varieties of excellence. In this second period of her expansion into various forms, all pursuits that cherished a genial ardour in the temperament of society must have conduced to her prosperity. The very mechanical arts which facilitated the use of writing, and the means of finding its materials, humbly, but usefully contributed even to Homer's immortality. And the symptoms of an earlier cultivation of the art of writing in Asiatic than in proper Greece, are strongly evident. Wolfe himself concedes the probability of its use, " especially in the Ionian States," as early as the seventh and even eighth centuries before Christianity.+ As to the fine arts, there can be no doubt of their having been earlier cultivated in Asiatic than in proper Greece. The glory of those arts, so congenial with that of the poet in spirit, though not in form, was coeval with the best post-homeric poetry of Greece, and we can have little doubt that the Poetical Muse was reciprocally influenced and refined by the example of her sisters. Can we believe a Greek poet to have felt no glow at his heart, when I prefer the more general term Commonwealths to that of Republics; for the constitutions of those states had many traits which we should scarcely call Republican, in the common and modern sense. +"Neque adeo dubito quin id sæculis VIII et VII (A. C.) in cæteris civitatibus, nominatim loniæ et Magnæ Græciæ, fecerint sollertiores quidem homines." By the words" id fecerint" Wolfe means practised writing. Wolfii Prolegomena, p. 70. To save the reader discussions on a subject only indirectly connected with poetry, I refer, for a very clear examination of this subject, to Meiner's History of the Arts and Sciences in Greece, Book 1. |