On this frontier question, a treaty was concluded on the 15th of May 1902 between England and Abyssinia for the delimitation of the Sudan-Abyssinian frontier.
The greater part of Africa north of the equator is without any representatives of the conifers; Juniperus procera flourishes in Somaliland and on the mountains of Abyssinia; a species of Podocarpus occurs on the Cameroon mountains, and P. milanjiana is widely distributed in east tropical Africa.
The important exports are gums and resin, fibre, hides, ivory, ostrich feathers, coffee, ghee, livestock, gold ingots from Abyssinia and mother-of-pearl; the shells being found along the coast from Zaila to beyond Berbera.
History (12) Abyssinia, or at least the northern portion of it, was included in the tract of country known to the ancients as Ethiopia, the northern limits of which reached at one time to about Syene.
After 1897 British influence in Abyssinia, owing largely no doubt to the conquest of the Sudan, the destruction of the dervish power and the result of the Fashoda incident, was sensibly on the increase.