ty the
Abyssinian girl is anything but coy. Munzinger thus describes her
character:

"The shepherd girls in the neighborhood of Massua
always earn some money by carrying water and provisions
to the city. The youngest girls are sent there
heedlessly, and are often cheated out of more than
their money, and therefore they do not usually make the
best of wives, being coquettish and very eager for
money. The refinements of innocence must not be sought
for in this country; they are incompatible with the
simple arrangement of the houses and the unrestrained
freedom of conversation. No one objects to this, a
family's only anxiety being that the girl should not
lose the semblance of virginity.... If a child is born
it is mercilessly killed by the girl's grandmother."

Sentimental admirers of what they suppose to be genuine "pastoral love
poetry" will find further food for thought in the following Abyssinian
picture from Parkyns (II., 40):

"The boys are turned out wild to look after the sheep
and cattle; and the girls from early childhood are sent
to fetch water from the well or brook, first in a
gourd, and afterward in a jar proportioned to their
strength. These occupations are not conducive to the
morality of either sex. If the well be far from the
village, the girls usually form parties to go thither,
and amuse themselves on the road by singing sentimental
or love songs, which not unfrequently verge upon the
obscene, and indulge in conversation of a similar
description; while, during their halt at the well for
an hour or so, they engage in romps of all kinds, in
which parties of the other sex frequently join. This
early license lays the foundation for the most corrupt
habits, when at a later period they are sent to the
woods to collect fuel."

James Bruce, one of the earliest Europeans to visit the Abyssinians,
describes them as living practically in a state of promiscuity,
divorce being so frequent that he once saw a woman surrounded by seven
former husbands, and there being hardly any difference between
legitimacy and illegitimacy. Another old writer, Rev. S. Gobat,
describes the Abyssinians as light-minded, having nothing constant but
inconstancy itself. A more recent writer, J. Hotten (133-35),
explains, in the following sentence, a fact which has often misled
unwary ob