Asceticism, borrowed from the Christian hermits, has become a practice among the Falasha priests, who “after their initiation frequently pass months and years in swampy marshes, stern wilds and poisonous jungles, where roots or dried peas, which latter they carry with them, are their only means of subsistence. Numbers succumb to the noxious influence of the atmosphere, others perish of famine, whilst not a few become the prey of the lion, hyena, and other voracious beasts which inhabit those unsightly tracts.” There are also Falasha monks, and “the dwellings and convents of these ascetics are carefully isolated from the abodes of the impure and unholy people.” There were, in Stern’s day, three Falasha high-priests in Abyssinia, one in the province of Quara, the other in Armatgioho, and the third, Aboo Maharee, in Dembea. The missionary had some indecisive discussion with the last-named, a man about sixty years of age, “of a noble and commanding figure, swathed in a white _shama_, and holding a long bamboo staff, which in the distance looked like the crosier of a bishop.” He had a “high and expressive forehead, melancholy restless eyes, and a countenance once no doubt mild and pleasing, but to which self-imposed penances and a repulsive practice had imparted an expression most strange and unearthly.” “The common people have all an erect, upright carriage;” the women are intelligent and _sympathiques_, and the younger of them attractive. To judge by Stern’s description,[195] the Falashas are generally a worthy, simple and devout race, bigoted but “exemplary in their morals, and cleanly in their habits”—in which latter respect they form a striking contrast to their co-religionists in the slums of London. Plowden said of the Abyssinian Jews, “They are still found in some numbers, and, though despised, are not persecuted; this may be owing to their poverty. They know nothing of the Hebrew tongue, but some read the Mosaic books in Geez, and are as scrupulous in their ceremonials as their brethren elsewhere. They are the best masons in the country.”[196] “The _mesquids_, like the Christian churches, consist of three divisions, with an entrance towards the east. The admission into these different courts is rigorously regulated by Levitical law, and the severest penalty would be inflicted on any one who should incautiously pollute the sacred edifice. In the rear of every place of worship is a small enclosure with a huge stone in the centre; and on this crude altar the victim is slaughtered, and all other sacrificial rites performed.”[197] For a notice of a curious superstition of which a class of Jewish people are often the object among Christian Abyssinians, see p. 288.