The uncivilized tribes which surround, as well as inhabit Abyssinia, having been now described, the character of the Abyssinians themselves will appear in the following short abstract of their history. FOOTNOTE: [24] The Chinese have a map which consists of a very large country, and a little speck; the former, they say, is "China;" the latter, "the rest of the world." CHAPTER VIII. A Sketch of the History of the Kingdom of Abyssinia. It is a tradition among the Abyssinians, which they say they have had from time immemorial, and which is equally received by the Jews and Christians of that country, that, almost immediately after the flood, Cush, grandson of Noah, with his family, passing through Atbara, then without inhabitants, came to the chains of mountains which separate the flat country of Atbara from the elevated part of Abyssinia. The tradition farther says, that they built the city of Axum early in the days of Abraham; and that they spread from thence until they became (as Josephus says) the Meröetes, or inhabitants of the islands of Meröe. While population was thus extending towards the north, it is supposed that the mountains parallel to the Red Sea, which in all times have been called Saba or Azaba (which means south), became peopled with the Agaazi, or Shepherds, who first possessed the high country of Abyssinia, called Tigré, several tribes afterward occupying the other countries, many of which still retain particular languages of their own.[25] In the most ancient of these languages, tribes or assemblies of people are called Habesh, which appellation was therefore supposed to have been given to the whole country now known to us by the name of Abyssinia. The inhabitants of Saba, Azab, or Azaba, all of which mean south, were a separate and distinct people from the Ethiopians or Arabs; and it was a custom among these Sabeans to have women for their sovereigns in preference to men. One of these queens, called Balkis by the Arabs and Maqueda by the Abyssinians, having heard not only of the wisdom of Solomon, but of the immense riches which he had accumulated in the north, determined to witness for herself the reality of scenes, to the description of which she had listened with so much delight; and, accordingly, this Queen of Saba (Sheba), Azaba, or the South, suddenly appeared before Solomon. Pagan, Arab, Moor, Abyssinian, and, indeed, the inhabitants of all the countries around, vouch for this expedition very nearly in the language of Scripture, which states, "And when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions;" and again, "The Queen of the South shall rise up in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it, for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, a greater than Solomon is here."