ABSTRACT
THE euphoric mood which had taken hold of me so suddenly on leaving St. Petersburg continued undiminished during our trip, as well as after our arrival in Munich. Dr. H., who evidently regarded his job of escorting me to Munich as a little vacation trip, was also in the best of spirits. During our journey he told me a number of interesting things about Abyssinia and the court of the Negus since, he said, he had belonged to the retinue of a certain Leontiev. Leontiev was an adventurer who in the 1890’s had taken a trip on his own to Abyssinia, but was later sent there as an official Russian envoy. This was probably the first Russian attempt to establish relations with an African state, an attempt linked in the contemporary press to the fact that the Abyssinians also belonged to the Eastern Church.
