CAESAR IN ABYSSINIA 77

coffee plantations run by white men. A thin, grey-haired
French planter was lunching there—at the clean little
Greek restaurant where the trains stopped at noon. He
was going home, after thirty years in Africa. It was no
good. Dedjaz Amde, the Governor, had mobilised all the
men who worked for him and taken all the mules that
he used to hire. Amde showed no consideration. There
were only six planters left in Arussi. There used to be
forty, but gradually Ethiopians learnt to be overseers
and pushed the others out. Gloom descended steeply
over the old man. After thirty years in Africa pioneers
assume that they have given everything to the ungrateful
continent.

Diredawa ! The Greeks are reading their alarmist
news sheet avidly. Everybody is on the border of panic.
An Ethiopian station guard has just biffed an Italian
courier over the head because he persisted, after remon-
strances, in pushing baggage through the carriage window
instead of through the carriage door, in contravention of
the company's bye-laws.

Lij Worku, a friend of mine who was chief of the railway
police at Diredawa, had seen the incident. " Yes," he
said, with great satisfaction, " and even when he got down
to Djibouti he had to be carried by four men."

For six dollars I got a seat next the driver in a lorry
going up to Harrar—fifty-six kilometres. Lij Worku fixed
everything up.

It was a funny lorry. Two Ethiopian boys sat on the
front mudguards " for stones," said the driver. This
cryptic remark was explained later at turnings in the
mountain road to Harrar, when the boys jumped off and
fixed stones behind the wheels until the engine cooled
down.

The back was filled, really filled, with bundles, natives
of Ethiopia, chickens and mules. They got on excellently
from start to finish. Now and then one of the live stock
rolled over another, while the natives were continually
jumping off the lorry to buy or sell things at the roadside.
Looking at them with an economist's eye, I was quite
dazzled by the ease with which they exchanged the roles
of retailer and consumer. Sociologically too there was a