Explore "Female Warriors, Volume II" by Ellen C. Clayton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The great African continent has contributed but little to the pages of history. Centuries before America was discovered, northern Africa was one of the centres of commerce, its people were amongst the most civilized in the known world; yet America has been explored in almost every part, from north to south, and its history is as well known and almost as full of interest as that of Europe or Asia, while Africa, until within the last three-quarters of a century, remained, geographically and historically, almost as much a mystery as it was in ancient times. Rightly has it been styled the Dark Continent.
Ethiopia, renowned in distant eras for its stately cities adorned with lofty temples and spacious palaces, and inhabited by learned men, is a sad picture of fallen greatness. Its haughty palaces have crumbled to decay long since, and their sites are occupied by the mud cabins of a savage race, who, only for being Christians, differ very little from their fellow-men who dwell on other parts of this great continent. People took but small interest in Abyssinia till the war with King Theodore, and even then we learned very little more about that strange land than our grandfathers told us.