F. Xavier said among other things 'that each village had a priest called _kashi_. No man could read. The _kashis_ repeated prayers in a forgotten tongue, frequently scattering incense. A word like Alleluia often occurred. For bells they used wooden rattles. They assembled in their churches four times a day, and held St. Thomas in great veneration. The _kashis_ married, but were very abstemious. They had two Lents, and fasted from meat, milk, and fish.' When Padre Vincenzo the Carmelite visited the island in the seventeenth century he found the last traces of Christianity. 'The people still retained a perfect jumble of rites and ceremonies, sacrificing to the moon, circumcising, and abominating wine and pork. They had churches called _moquame_, dark and dirty, and they daily anointed with butter an altar. They had a cross, which they carried in procession, and a candle. They assembled three times a day and three times a night; the priests were called _odambo_. Each family had a cave where they deposited their dead. If rain failed they selected a victim by lot and prayed round him to the moon, and if this failed they cut off his hands. All the women were called Maria.' Of this there is now no trace. Both Sacraments had died out. This debased form of Christianity existed as late as the seventeenth century. The island was one of the places visited by Sir Thomas Roe in 1615. It is needless to say that all ostensible traces of our cult have long ago been obliterated, and the only Sokoteri religious term which differs in any way from the usual Mohammedan nomenclature is the name for the Devil; but we found, as I have already said, the carved crosses on the flat surface at Eriosh, and we found a rock at the top of a hill to the east of the island which had been covered with rude representations of the Ethiopic cross. Scattered all over the island are deserted ruined villages, differing but little from those of to-day, except that the inhabitants call them all Frankish work, and admit that once Franks dwelt in them of the cursed sect of the Nazarenes. We felt little hesitation in saying that a branch of the Abyssinian Church once existed in Sokotra, and that its destruction is of comparatively recent date. If we consider that the ordinary village churches in Abyssinia are of the flimsiest character--a thatched roof resting on a low round wall--we can easily understand how the churches of Sokotra have disappeared. In most of these ruined villages round enclosures are to be found, some with apsidal constructions, which are very probably all that is left of the churches.