Word: abyssinia
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...poet discovered his fountains both in the great, welling springs of north Florida (in his Travels, William Bartram wrote of them that "the ebullition is astonishing and continual") and in Abyssinia or Ethiopia. Alexander reports ruefully that the Ethiopian fountain, at a place called Gishe Abay, was thought to have magical properties, but may no longer; as a female, she unknowingly defiled the flow with her touch. Or so she was assured by locals...
...near substitute for faith and for the ancient rituals they infrequently observed. Such was their loyalty to their homeland that on the so-called Day of Faith (Dec. 18, 1935), communities even donated gold and silver religious objects from their synagogues to help pay for the invasion of Abyssinia...
...hardly collective. Without the U.S. leading, prodding, bribing and blackmailing, no one would have stirred. Nothing would have been done: no embargo, no Desert Shield. The world would have written off Kuwait the way the last body pledged to collective security, the League of Nations, wrote off Abyssinia...
...future vagabond and his brother were sent to boarding school in England where, he recalls, "as English boys who had barely heard of cricket we were natural targets." Classmates branded him a liar when he told them of warriors and lion hunts. Rejected, he withdrew into primal memories of Abyssinia...
...late father's, invited him to attend his coronation. The feudal pageantry of the occasion has been described with condescending vividness by Evelyn Waugh, then a correspondent for Fleet Street. By contrast, Thesiger notes sadly that during his absence of eleven years "the age-old splendour of Abyssinia" had been fading. The Emperor's bodyguard wore khaki; the palace secretaries were in tailcoats. Thesiger met the celebrated author of Vile Bodies and found him foppish and petulant. He refused Waugh's request to accompany him on an expedition among the touchy Danakil. "Had he come," he adds menacingly, "I suspect...