Walderheros was one of the few Abyssinians I have met who appeared to delight in cleanliness, and a pretty dust he was continually raising, by sweeping with a large handful of well-leaved boughs the clay floor of our residence. He delighted also in the unholy pleasures of the pipe, a severe rheumatism always affecting him when he was about to indulge; and I often smile when I think of the canting tone and long visage with which he used to apostrophise the inanimate object of his affections, a gourd shell pipe, as he drew it towards him, and excused such a dereliction of duty as a Greek Christian, upon the plea that nothing but the smoke of tobacco could drive out the “saroitsh,” or demons, who, according to Abyssinian belief, affect the frame when suffering from any disease. According to a tradition of the Greek Church, it appears that the devil paid repeated visits to Noah when he commenced building the ark, for the purpose of ascertaining by what means and of what materials he constructed it. The patriarch, however, kept his own counsel, until the devil called to his aid the herb tobacco, with which, it seems, he made poor Noah drunk, and whilst in that state the enemy of mankind wormed his secret from him. Thus assisted (for it is said Noah became an inveterate smoker), the devil availed himself of the darkness of night to undo all that Noah had put together during the day, and this was the principal cause that the building of the ark extended over so long a period. “Ever since that time,” saith the tradition, “God has laid a heavy curse upon tobacco.”[4] If some of the precepts of the Gospel were observed with equal veneration as is this ridiculous story by Abyssinian Christians, we should not have to regret the low ebb to which our religion has been reduced in this priest-ridden, but I must not say consequently, benighted land.