tely superior to ours, and they have
the additional advantage of not being corrosive or injurious either to
the pen or paper. Their pen is the reed commonly used in the East, only
the nib is made sharper than that which is required to write the Arabic
character. The ink-horn is usually the small end of a cow's horn, which
is stuck into the ground at the feet of the scribe. In the most ancient
Greek frescos and illuminations this kind of ink-horn is the one
generally represented, and it seems to have been usually inserted in a
hole in the writing-desk: no writing-desk, however, is in use among the
children of Habesh. Seated upon the ground, the square piece of thick
greasy vellum is held upon the knee or on the palm of the left hand.

The Abyssinian alphabet consists of 8 times 26 letters, 208 characters
in all, and these are each written distinctly and separately like the
letters of an European printed book. They have no cursive writing; each
letter is therefore painted, as it were, with the reed pen, and as the
scribe finishes each he usually makes a horrible face and gives a
triumphant flourish with his pen. Thus he goes on letter by letter, and
before he gets to the end of the first line he is probably in a
perspiration from his nervous apprehension of the importance of his
undertaking. One page is a good day's work, and when he has done it he
generally, if he is not too stiff, follows the custom of all little Arab
boys, and swings his head or his body from side to side, keeping time to
a sort of nasal recitative, without the help of which it would seem that
few can read even a chapter of the Koran, although they may know it by
heart.

Some of these manuscripts are adorned with the quaintest and grimmest
illuminations conceivable. The colours are composed of various ochres.
In general the outlines of the figures are drawn first with the pen. The
paint brush is made by chewing the end of a reed till it is reduced to
filaments and then nibbling it into a proper form: the paint brushes of
the ancient Egyptians were made in the same way, and excellent brooms
for common purposes are made at Cairo by beating the thick end of a
palm-branch till the fibres are separated from the pith, the part above,
which is not beaten, becoming the handle of the broom. The Abyssinian
having nibbled and chewed his reed till he thinks it will do, proceeds
to fill up the spaces between the inked outlines with his colours. The
Blessed Virgin