Coll 1/24 'Aden Protectorate: status of Socotra' [‎39v] (78/94)

in
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978
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
June
Marco Polo touched here, and alludes to the Christians of the island.
Francis Xavier, on his way to India, and Father Vincenzo are explicit
in describing a base form of Christianity as existing here as late as the
middle of the seventeenth century. Needless to say that all osten
sible traces of our cult have long ago been obliterated, and the only
Socoteri religious term which differs in any way from the usual
Mohammedan nomenclature is the name for the devil; but we found,
as I have already said, the carved crosses on the flat surface at
Eriosh, and we found a rock at the top of a hill to the east of the
island which had been covered with rude representations of the
Ethiopic cross. Scattered all over the island are deserted ruined
villages, differing but little from those of to-day, except that the
inhabitants call them all Frankish work, and admit that once Franks
dwelt in them of the cursed sect of the Nazarenes. I feel little hesi
tation in saying that a branch of the Abyssinian Church once existed
in Socotra, and that its destruction is of comparatively recent date.
If we consider that the ordinary village churches in Abyssinia are
of the flimsiest character—a thatched roof resting on a low round
wall—we can easily understand how the churches of Socotra have
disappeared. In most of these ruined villages round enclosures are
to be found, some with apsidal constructions, which are very probably
all that is left of the churches.
Near Eas Momi, to the east of the island, we discovered a curious
form of ancient sepulture. Caves in the limestone rocks have been
filled with human bones from which the flesh had previously decayed.
These caves were then walled up and left as charnel-houses, after
the fashion still observed in the Eastern Christian Church. Amongst
the bones we found carved wooden objects which looked as if they
had originally served as crosses to mark the tombs, in which the
corpses had been permitted to decay prior to their removal to the
charnel-house, or KoifirjTrjpia, as the modern Greeks call them.
The quondam Christianity of Socotra, I think, is thoroughly well
established, and its nature as a branch of the Abyssinian Church. I
wish we could speak as confidently about the origin of the so-called
Bedouins, the pastoral inhabitants of the island, who inhabit the
valleys and heights of Mount Haghier, and wander over the surface of
the island with their flocks and herds.
It has been often asserted that these Bedouins are Troglodytes, or
cave-dwellers pure and simple, but I do not think this is substantially
correct. None of them, as far as we could ascertain, dwell always or
by preference in caves ; but all of them own stone-built tenements,
however humble, in some warm and secluded valley, and they only
abandon these to dwell in caves when driven to the higher regions in
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