OLD ABYSSINIA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22202, 31 August 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

OLD ABYSSINIA

BY MATANGA

AS FATHER LOBO KNEW IT

To dip again into Father Lobo's story of Abyssinia, as told by Samuel Johnson from Legrand's French translation of tho original Portuguese, is an occupation of unusual interest in these days, when upon doings in and near that land-locked bit of Africa pivots the fate of tbo world. No modern travelbook of tho region has half tho attraction possessed by this, although three hundred years liavo passed since tho time of which it was written. It has the sort of flavour that belongs to all tales of early foreign contact with a remote land and people. The eyes that see are alert to tho strangeness, and tho urge to toll has an enthusiasm unchecked by a dogging remembrance that many others have had their say before. So all is marked by a freshness of vision and a personal intimacy making the tale wonderfully vigorous.

Much of this is duo to the fact that Jeronimo (Jerome) Lobo went into Abyssinia with an intensity of purposo of which tho exploring traveller, to say nothing of the blase globe-trotter, has little. He went on a religious mission. Tho Abvssins, as its people were then generally called, were known to bo alien to the current Christian faith, notwithstanding their agelong heritage of its earlier creed and ritual. They had received, according to their own cherished tradition, a ministry of graco when the Ethiopian court-official enlightened by Philip drove on home to report to his queen, Candace. She, too, it is said, believed, and by royal suasion her people were constrained to accept the imported spiritual cult, just as her ancestral pattern, the Queen of Sheba, was said to have planted in ancient Ethiopia some of Solomon's glory and wisdom. At all events, when in tho fourth Christian century missionaries came south from Egypt, these found tho way prepared, and soon St. Athanasius of Alexandria was able to give Ethiopia its first bishop. Long Isolation

In later days this fealty to the Coptic Church of Alexandria was violently broken, for the sword of Mahomet cut a broad swathe across northern Africa, and the mountain kingdom was sorely imperilled by that brandished menace. Shut in, and at times invaded, by the surging tide of Mohammedanism, the Ethiopian Church, a national institution, nevertheless held its own; but the separation brought a self-centred, stagnant manner of thought and life, spiritual vitality waned, the essential evangel was forgotten in a care for ceremonial usages which inevitably became elaborate, even fantastic, to the neglect of ethical values and the loss of propagating motive. Into this inertness, not peculiar to Abyssinia but extravagantly present there, brol-e the thrusting assault upon unbelief that Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier and their valorous company launched upon the world. Xavier, usually single-handed, went far out, getting at length to Japan and dying on a little island off Canton as, worn with toil and suffering, he vainly tried to enter China. His bones were given honoured sepulture at Goa in Portuguese India, and in emulation of him Lobo set out from that same Goa to reach Abyssinia and bring its people to orthodox belief. The mis3ionary energy of the Society of Jesus was as fervently in him.

Young, highly educated in his native Lisbon, blessed with a remarkablo strength of body and mind and a veritable genius of resource, he was gifted for a dangerous enterprise. From the Indies headquarters of Portugal and tho faith —old Goa, relic of a splendid past, still cherishes Xavier's tomb, and alongside is new Goa with its modern ways—Father Lobo wont on a journey of terrible hazards. Perils ot Travel

How the party of eight was divided to use different routes by land and sea and thus increase the chances of arrival, how capture by English and Dutch ships and Turkish slavers was evaded, how wild Arab tribes were encountered, how death met one after another of the brave travellers, how Lobo got at last a footing on the outskirts of his land of desire and spent nine years within it before revolutionary intrigue destroyed the protection its Emperor vouchsafed him in the face of envious, fanatical monks and self-seeking, treacherous viceroys, how converts were won by instruction and claimed by solemn rite—no more than mention of all this can here be made. Suffice it to add that those days of tho early seventeenth century came before Protestantism acquired missionary zeal and that even Papal authorities were then inadequately moved by it —facts that make this Abyssinian enterprise all the more notable as an example of eourago and fidelity. To most, Father Lobo's plain and quiet yet often whimsical and absorbing recital will bo valuable for its descriptions of tho country and its people, descriptions still so broadly truo that they read like a commentary on the news of the moment. Modern civilisation has in some respects wrought marvels even there, but geographical features remain, life for many of the loosely-attached tribes is much as it was, and beneath tho skin "tho Ethiopian stranger" is still recognisably like tho man Father Lobo found him to bo. Country and People Many of tho names of places and tribes now in the news aro in his story, some identical in form, some others scarcely changed. His description of certain habits of tho people is etill true. He sees troops on the march, and notes their efficiency in clearing ways through forest and thicket, their ordered removal in families "under exact government," their facility in making camps rapidly complete and convenient. And with much to make him marvel are things betokening a crudity of life that awakens pity if not revulsion. On the heights is "ono of tho most beautiful and agreeable places in the world; the air is healthful and temperate, and all the mountains, which aro not very high, shaded with cedars." There all is pleasant as a garden, and tho landscape is entrancing. On the low-lying fringes of tho country, however, little pleasantness is found, and its wild beasts and wild men make a very different picture. Side by side with the plenty of natural orchards and prolific crops on the uplands are habits of diet that fill him with disgust; he excuses himself from sharing somo viands, with shrewd politeness, saying that such things as raw beef garnished after tho Abyssins' taste is too good for hum bio missionaries. This is Abyssinia to-day. Persistent through tho ages, too, is tho thick clustering of churches wherever a town is made; worship in one goes on within earshot of many another. And with all this care for an ancient religion goes a tumult of contending ferocities, as Jew and Moor strive among the tribes for a footing. Hich yet needy, and both in all sorts of ways, Abyssinia won Lobo's heart, and when he was forced out after many escapes from death he tried to persuade Portugal, Spain, tho Pope, to compel its doors to open to him again. To such incorrigible venturing can religious intensity lead.