The Abyssinian liturgy is not impressive, according to European ideas. Stern was present at one of the services, and gave a lively description of it. “The deafening tom-tom of the _negareet_, intermingled with the nasal chorus of a host of _debterahs_ in varying cadences, reverberated on my ear. This indication that the service had already begun put a stop to our contemplation of the grand mountain scene, and in a most reverent mood we hastened to the uproarious sanctuary. A wooden gate in a circular wall brought us within an open grassy space that formed the cemetery, and the spot where, adjoining to the church, rises the Bethlehem in which the priests prepare the eucharistic bread. A crowd of men and women, as if in some place of amusement and dissipation, were spread in picturesque knots over the soft turf. The majority were busily plying their tongues, but I fear from the burst of merriment which now and then broke from one or the other of those animated groups that their conversations had very little to do either with religion or the service in honour of the saint. Not belonging to this impure class, who are justly excluded from the interior of the sacred edifice (_i.e._ those whose marriage is secular and dissoluble), we mounted a few steps, and then, through a partition occupied by the laity, stepped into a second compartment concentric with the outer one, and there found ourselves at the porch of the enclosure which constitutes the _sanctum sanctorum_. “Crowds of priests and _debterahs_ thronged the whole of that corridor. The _debterahs_ constitute the choir in all their churches; and their devotionless mien, as they chanted to the monotonous sound of the _negareet_, quite excited my indignation. During the maddening noise created by the _debterahs_, the priests, robed in gaudy canonicals, were exerting to the utmost their cracked voices in intoning the liturgy and psalms. At certain intervals an ecclesiastic, clad in his garish finery, and attended by an incense-waving boy-deacon and a bearer of the Ethiopic Gospel, marched out of his sanctum into the cemetery to edify the godless and profane multitude by reading to them a portion of Scripture in an unknown tongue. A reverend gentleman near me, who was evidently a great Church dignitary, as he wore a huge turban, and had a very stupid unmeaning face, pointed his gaunt fingers towards the daubed walls, and condescendingly inquired whether I knew St. George and Miriam, the mother of God? . . .