Volume Three—Chapter Forty One.
The Gothic Hall.
The models and plans of palaces that had been from time to time prepared by Captain Graham, had imparted to the royal mind a new architectural impulse; and after much deliberation with himself, he had finally come to the resolution of expending the timber requisite towards the erection of a chaste Gothic edifice. In the selection of the design. His Majesty displayed unlooked-for taste; for although as a penman his talents rank immeasurably in advance of the most accomplished of his scriveners, his skill as an artist had proved very circumscribed. It was nearly exhausted in the delineation of a nondescript bird, perched upon a tree-top, and did wuth difficulty extend to the one-legged fowler, gun in hand, who was conjectured to be planning its destruction. At the royal desire, I had frequently executed likenesses of the court favourites, and they were invariably acknowledged with much merriment; but, although repeatedly urged, no persuasion could induce the despot to sit for his own, from a firm belief in the old superstition, that whosoever should possess it, could afterwards deal with him as he listed.
“You are writing a book,” he remarked to me on one occasion, with a significant glance, as I was in the act of completing a full-length portrait of himself, which I had contrived to make unobserved from his blind side—“I know this to be the case, because I never inquire what you are doing that they do not tell me you are using a pen, or else painting pictures. This is a good thing, and it pleases me. You will speak favourably of myself; but you shall not insert my portrait, as you have done that of the Negoos of Zingero.” Such was the title with which His Christian Majesty was invariably pleased to dignify his heathen brother, Moselekatse, whose acquaintance he had made through the frontispiece to my “Wild Sports in Southern Africa.”
The Abyssinians have from time immemorial expended an entire tree in the reduction to suitable dimensions of every beam or plank employed in their primitive habitations; and it is not therefore surprising that Sáhela Selássie should have been equally delighted and astonished at the economy of time, labour, and material attending the use of the cross-cut saw. From age to age, and generation to generation, the Ethiopian plods on like his forefathers, without even a desire for improvement. Ignorance and indolence confine him to a narrow circle of observation from which he is afraid to move. Strong prejudices are arrayed against the introduction of novelties, and eternal reference is made to ancestral custom. But in a country where the absence of timber is so remarkable and inconvenient, the advantages extended by this novel implement of handicraft was altogether undeniable.
“You English are indeed a strange people,” quoth the monarch, after the first plank had been fashioned by the European escort. “I do not understand your stories of the road in your country that is dug below the waters of a river, nor of the carriages that gallop without horses; but you are a strong people, and employ wonderful inventions.”
Meanwhile the platform required for the new building advanced slowly to completion. The crowd of idle applicants for justice who daily convened before the tribunal of “the four chairs” were pressed into the service; and whenever His Majesty returned from an excursion in the meadow, the entire cortege might be seen carrying each a stone before his saddle in imitation of the royal example. Early one morning Graham received a message from the impatient despot to announce that the day being auspicious, he was desirous of seeing one post at least erected without delay. Greatly to his satisfaction the door-frames, which had previously been prepared by the carpenters of my escort, were simultaneously raised; and it being ascertained that the sub-conservator of forests had neglected to make the requisite supplies of timber, the delinquent was, with his wife and family, sentenced to vacate his habitation forthwith, and to bivouac sub divo during twenty days upon the Angollála meadow—a punishment not unfrequently inflicted for venial derelictions of duty, and attended during the more inclement seasons with no ordinary inconvenience.
But the endless succession of holydays, during which no work can be performed, interfered in a much greater degree with the completion of the rising structure—it being superstitiously imagined that any portion of a work erected on the festival of a saint, with the aid of edged tools, will infallibly entail a curse from above. No little delay arose also from the whims and caprices of His Majesty, who could never satisfy himself that the doors and windows occupied the proper places. On this subject his ideas wandered perpetually to the ruins of a certain palace on the banks of the Nile, which he had visited whilst hunting the wild buffalo—“It is overgrown with trees and bushes,” was his lucid description, “and it has two hundred windows, and four hundred pillars of stone, and none can tell whence it came.”
On lawful days, however, the soldiers continued to work as diligently as the quantities of hydromel would permit, with which they were supplied by the royal munificence; and at length the Gothic hall was complete. It had been amusing in the interim to watch the persevering industry of an unfortunate gun-man of the body-guard, who was constructing a hut immediately below the palace. Whensoever the vigilant eye of the church permitted, he would add to the frail wall of his circular dwelling a few layers of loose stone which, with his own single labour, he had collected in the meadow; but each morning’s dawn revealed to his sorrowing eyes some monstrous breach in the unstable fabric, which, like Penelope’s web, was never nearer to completion, and his patience being fairly exhausted, he finally gave up the task in despair.
The novel style of architecture introduced by the Gyptzis, so immeasurably superior in elegance, stability, and comfort, to anything before witnessed in Shoa, and combining all these recommendations with so limited an expenditure of material, afforded an undeniable contrast to the adjacent tottering pile upon vaults on which Demetrius the Albanian had expended three years of labour. Beyond the rude fabrics of the neighbouring states, where the more common manufactures have attained a somewhat higher cultivation, the palace of the king can boast of no embellishment saving the tawdry trappings which decorate the throne—gaudy tapestries of crimson velvet loaded with massive silver ornaments, but ill in keeping with the clumsy mud walls to which they are appended, and serving to render the latter still more incongruous by so striking a contrast. But the new apartments were elegantly furnished throughout, and with their couches, ottomans, carpets, chairs, tables, and curtains, had assumed an aspect heretofore unknown in Abyssinia. “I shall turn it into a chapel,” quoth His Majesty, accosting Abba Raguel, and patting the little dwarf familiarly upon the back—“What say you to that plan, my father?”
As a last finishing touch, we suspended in the centre hall a series of large coloured engravings, which the cathedral of Saint Michael might well have envied, for they represented the chase of the tiger in all its varied phases. The domestication of the elephant, and its employment in war, or in the pageant, had ever proved a stumbling-block to the king, who all his life had been content to reside in a house boasting neither windows nor chimneys, and who reigned not in the days when “the Negus, arrayed in the barbaric pomp of gold chains, collars, and bracelets, and surrounded by his nobles and musicians, gave audience to the ambassador of Justinian, seated in the open field upon a lofty chariot drawn by four elephants superbly caparisoned.” (Gibbon.) The grotesque appearance of the “hugest of beasts” in his hunting harness, struck the chord of a new idea. “I will have a number caught on the Robi,” he exclaimed, “that you may tame them, and that I too may ride upon an elephant before I die.” A favourite governor from a remote frontier province was standing meanwhile with his forefinger in his mouth gazing in mute amazement at the wonders before him. “This place is not suited for the occupation of man,” he at length exclaimed in a reverie of surprise, as the monarch ceased:—“this is a palace designed only for the residence of the Deity, and of Sáhela Selássie.”
Volume Three—Chapter Forty Two.
The “Pro Rex of Efát” in tribulation.
Although we had found small reason to be flattered with our first reception in the kingdom of Shoa, at the hands of a Christian ruler who had sought alliance with Great Britain, it was nevertheless matter of notoriety that no previous visitors had, under any circumstances, been treated with one-hundredth part of the same courtesy and condescension, or had experienced such unequivocal marks of confidence and favour. Formed on the most liberal scale, and supplied with all that was likely to add to its weight in such a country, the embassy was almost from the outset admitted to terms of perfect equality with the haughty despot, yet numberless diplomatic troubles were still interposed by the general ignorance of the many, and by the envy and jealousy of a few. No veil had been thrown over the deep-rooted enmity of the bigoted and powerful priesthood, who, to serve their own sinister purposes, cunningly contrived to construe the costly gifts of the British Government into tribute to the illustrious descendant of the house of Solomon; but the assertion carried its own refutation. In a weak moment Comus Unquies, “the king’s strong monk,” so far forgot the dignity due to his station, as to barter his bishop’s staff to the heretic Gyptzis for a pair of Birmingham scissors! European medicines had rescued three thousand patients from the jaws of death; and improved intercourse with the monarch finally dispelled the jealousy created in a suspicious breast by the treasonable designs imputed to the foreign visitors, who were found to have brought no king or queen in a box, and to entertain designs neither upon the sceptre nor upon the church of Ethiopia.
The opposition of inimical functionaries dressed in fleeting authority, exposed us to a train of persecutions, trifling perhaps in themselves, but amounting in the aggregate to more than martyrdom. Few of the commands issued were obeyed so much in the spirit as to the letter. Eshee, or Basanye (i.e. “Very well.”), although doubtless signifying assent, did not always bring compliance with even the most trifling application for assistance. The king was too polished to say “No,” when he had inwardly resolved to do nothing; and an uneducated despot, who has never known any law but his own absolute will, and who lives for himself alone; who considers and claims as his property every thing in the country over which he wields the arbitrary sceptre, and whose only idea of wealth, power, and happiness, is centred in individual existence, can so ill understand the wants of others, that His Majesty’s offences towards his guests, founded in Oriental suspicion, might rather be termed sins of omission than of commission.
Covetous, and eager for novelties, Sáhela Selássie never fails to wish for every thing that comes under his observation, but, like a child with a new toy, soon weary of looking at the bauble, though still vain of its possession, he casts it aside to be hoarded in the mouldy vaults of some distant magazine. The savage is the same under every possible form, and in every grade and position—the one stealing what he covets, whilst another, seeking plausible pretexts, obtains possession through low cunning and stratagem. Among such a nation of beggars as the people of Southern Abyssinia, it was not always easy to satisfy the rapacity of fastidious extortioners. All wanted “pleasing things”—many demanded dollars to defray the cost of slaves that they had purchased, but for whom they could not pay; and for months after my arrival, requisitions for our own private property were unceasing on the part also of the monarch.
Neither compulsory measures nor direct applications were ever employed; but the means resorted to were not the less certain of success. With that duplicity and want of candour which ever marks uncivilised man, he was wont to send underhand communications, or meanly to depute his emissaries to reveal his desires and his intentions in a manner which, in so despotic a land, could leave no doubt of authenticity; and an offer of the article coveted being forthwith made, His Majesty hesitated not, in the presence of his agents, to deny all cognisance of the transaction, or to swear by the saints that he never sought the property tendered for his acceptance. Persuasion would not induce him to receive it at once, and thus to terminate the matter; but no sooner had it been removed from his sight, than his creatures were again at work with even greater activity than before; and rude taunts of breach of promise, with not-to-be-mistaken hints, veiled under the cloak of friendship, were certain to instigate a second and a third offer, which invariably elicited an avowal of the disinclination entertained to “receive the property of his children,” but uniformly ended in his accepting it “as a free gift from the heart,” acknowledged in all gratitude by the benediction—“God restore it to thee, my son! May the Lord glorify and reward thee!”
Chief of all the sycophants who bask in the favour of the monarch, may be ranked Wulásma Mohammad, who, in finesse, plausibility, and the manifold specious devices that are employed to cover total want of sincerity, can find no equal in the kingdom of Shoa. Lavish in professions of friendship, he never suffered to escape an opportunity of gratifying his inwardly-cherished animosity. Presents were frequently exchanged—the sugarcane and the bunch of green gram, which are the symbols of hearts knit together in the bonds of unity, arrived with the same regularity as the week, coupled, of course, with a description of some “pleasing thing” that was not to be found in Góncho. The lemon, denoting by its aromatic fragrance the beauties of permanent amity, was ever sure to follow the receipt of the desired article.
Professions daily grew more profuse, and complimentary inquiries, which constitute the very essence of friendship, waxed more and more frequent; but although the regard entertained “amounted even to heaven and earth,” and although every aid and assistance was volunteered, no packet of letters ever arrived to the address of the Gyptzis, neither did any courier ever depart for the sea-coast without being subjected to a tedious detention on the frontier at the hands of the despotic state-gaoler.
On the first of these occasions, the king, before sending the packet to the Residency, had taken the trouble of breaking the seal of every individual cover with his own royal fingers; and a protest having been entered against a procedure so utterly foreign to European ideas of propriety. His Majesty inquired, with well-feigned simplicity, “Of what use should my children’s letters be to me, who understand not their language?” Remonstrances were in like manner made to the Abogáz touching his interference in such manners; but as the crafty old fox screened himself behind total ignorance of the value attached to written documents, and volunteered better behaviour, the subject was set at rest.
But although letters were now thoroughly understood to be held in higher estimation even than fine gold from Guráguê, the evil, far from being abated, became greater and greater, until at last it was no longer to be borne. Promises made, were made only to be broken; and a serious complaint was at last carried to the throne at Angollála, representing that another packet had been secreted during an entire fortnight in the fortified vaults of Góncho. After stoutly denying all knowledge of it, until convicted by incontrovertible evidence, and then declaring it to be deposited, for safety-sake, in the custody of his brother Jhália, who was absent on the frontier, the Wulásma was commanded to set out forthwith upon the quest, and to return at his peril empty-handed. “Our friendship has ceased for ever,” muttered the burly caitiff betwixt his closed teeth as he descended the ladder—“for through your means the king hath become wroth with his servant.” “Let his friendship go into the sea,” quoth His Majesty, who had overheard this appalling announcement—“Is not he an accursed Moslem? Look only to me. Have I not always told you that my people are bad? Ye have travelled far into a strange land, and are to Sáhela Selássie even as his own children. Ye have no relative but me.”
The escape of the rebel Medóko had formerly led to the suspension of the Abogáz from rank and office for a period of two years, during which he danced attendance upon the monarch with shoulders bared, as is the wont of the disgraced noble. His troubles had now returned. “My ancestors owed a debt of gratitude to Mohammad’s father,” continued His Majesty, after a pause, “and I would fain overlook his faults; but this insolence is no longer to be borne. I have removed the drunkard from office, confiscated his goods and chattels, and by the death of Woosen Suggud, I swear, that unless you intercede, there can be no hope of his restoration to favour.”
Down came the ex-Wulásma in a furious passion, boiling with old hydromel, and flushed with his rapid ride:—“How should I know that you wanted these vile letters?” he exclaimed, throwing the packet scornfully upon the ground—“I have done nothing. What offence have I committed, that I am thus to suffer through your means?—There is a proverb, that ‘the dog of the house is faithful to its master, whereas he who cometh from beyond is worse than a hyena.’”
But a week had wrought a wonderful change in the sentiments of the humbled grandee, whose beeves were indeed grazing in the royal pastures, whilst his jars of old mead reposed in the royal cellars. He at whose sullen nod the subjects of Efát quailed, and whose presence was as an incubus to the state-prisoners in Góncho, had been, at the representation of a foreigner, stripped of wealth and power, and, in accordance with the usage of the country, was now fain to wait during a succession of days upon those whom he had injured. Seating himself at the door of the tent in sackcloth and ashes, he sent in two friends, who came, according to the custom of the country, to serve as mediators. “Behold, I am reduced to the condition of a beggar,” was his abject message, “and have no support but in your intercession. My children are deprived of their bread, and they starve through the faults of their father.”
The Commander-in-chief of the Body-Guard was spokesman on behalf of the caitiff. He brought me, as a mamálacha, a huge Sanga horn, filled to the brim with the liquor that he loved, and ushered himself in with his customary string of complimentary enquiries, “Endiet aderachoon? Ejegoon dahenaderachoon? Dahena sanabatachoon? Dahena karamoon? Ejegoon dahena natchoon?” “How have you passed the night? Have you rested very well? Have you been quite well since our last interview? How have you spent the rainy season? Are you in perfect health?”
“Half the people of Hábesh,” he resumed, in his husky voice, when each of these points had been satisfactorily disposed of—“have ears like a hill, and they cannot hear—the residue are liars. Furthermore, one-half are thieves and drunkards, and the remainder are cowards.” There was no refuting the arguments adduced in support of this position, and his eloquence proved quite irresistible. A solemn oath was therefore administered upon the Korán, by which the suppliant, who united in his own person all the attributes embraced in this able classification, became pledged never again to interfere with messengers bearing letters to or from the low country. His pardon was finally obtained; and he was once more invested with the silver sword of office: nor is it easy to determine whether the disgrace or the restoration of the fat frontier functionary created the greater sensation throughout the realm.
“What can you expect from that besotted old man?” inquired Ayto Melkoo, who had been a silent spectator of all that passed, and who hated both the Abogáz and his mediator with equal intensity. “Did you never hear that the Negoos was once displeased with me, and that I passed a few months beneath the grates at Góncho; and furthermore, that when the royal order came to set me at large, the State-Gaoler was drunk, and never thought again of his prisoner for a full fortnight? Sáhela Selássie ye moot! May the king die if it be not so!—the infidel may swear as long as he pleases, ay, and take his sacred book to witness; but how can you suppose that he will ever be able to think of these letters of yours?”
Volume Three—Chapter Forty Three.
The Bereavement.
A calamity shortly afterwards overtook the Master of the Horse, whose spouse—a gift from the monarch to his faithful subject—was seized with alarming influenza, and became an object of universal attention. The first intimation of the disorder being serious was received from himself, when he came one morning to Graham’s tent, in order to perform the interesting operation of shaving with a notched razor that he invariably patronised, and also to demand how it occurred that our inquiries were not more frequent. The not dispatching couriers daily to ascertain how each of your acquaintance fares and has rested, is perhaps the greatest offence that can be committed against Abyssinian etiquette. “Send to me” is a caution invariably given; and such being an indispensable ceremony when people are believed to be well, what must not be exacted when it is supposed that they are invalids? If hourly inquiries be not made, the best friends are sure to become the worst; and in every case the amount of real solicitude felt, is estimated by the frequency of “amicable correspondence.”
“The patient’s uvula has been cleverly plucked out with a silken thread,” observed the visitor exultingly, when his toilet was happily completed:—“the thorax has been well scarified, and furthermore, we are giving ya medur oomboi (Cucumis Africanus, Linn). This medicine is infallible; but remember,” he added, lowering his voice, and looking suspiciously round to see that no eaves-dropper profited by the wisdom he was about to impart in confidence—“remember that it must be gathered by a finger on which there is a silver ring, or, by Michael, it possesses no virtue whatever.”
The good lady did not, however, long stand in need either of treatment or inquiry. She closed her bright eyes shortly after swallowing the infallible nostrum, administered by her quack husband in a jorum of oatmeal gruel, stirred with honey and rancid butter to such a consistency that the spoon would stand—and death left her barely time for confession and absolution.
Every priest in the neighbourhood was instantly called in to the rescue; and the enchifchif (i.e. belt of charms and amulets) and máteb having been immersed in water, and restored to the body, the sacrament was administered; and under the blazing light of the torch, prayers were chanted for the soul of the deceased until the morning dawned. Then commenced the frantic shrieks of the female crowd that flocked to the house of mourning. Cloths were torn in shreds from the bosom, and the skin plucked from the temples, whilst the low moaning dirge was at frequent intervals interrupted by the hysterical sob of some new arrival, who came to add her voice to the dismal coronach, and to excite renewed bursts of lamentation.
Preceded by the gay orange umbrellas of the church of the “Covenant of Mercy,” the funeral procession wound up the palace hill. A pall of printed Surat chintz, supported by six bearers, was waved alternately with a fanning motion, whilst a numerous train of mourners followed, with loud wails, all having their hands clasped behind their neck in token of the triumph obtained by Death over Sin. The corpse was laid in the sacred edifice, surrounded by twelve lighted tapers betokening purity of life; and when these were nearly consumed, they were lowered with the bier into the sepulchre. The head was laid to the west, in order that on the morn of resurrection the face might be towards the rising sun. A quantity of frankincense was deposited in the grave; and a copy of the book styled Lefáfa Zádik, “The supplication of Righteousness,” having been placed on the body, the mortal clay was returned whence it came, “ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.”
Ecclesiastics alone possess the privilege of a last resting-place within the walls of the church, or on the eastern side, four paces from the porch. The aristocracy occupy the north, and warriors, women, and children, the south and west. All who die without confession or absolution are either interred by the highway-side or in some unconsecrated ground. Governors, men of rank, and all wealthy commoners who have not during life worked in wood, iron, or precious metals, are covered in the sepulchre with the green branches of the juniper; but smiths and artificers being regarded as sorcerers, every care is taken to keep them under ground when once deposited, to which end great stones are heaped over the body, and the earth is well trampled and secured.
Funeral obsequies concluded, the dirge of mourning, as usual, gave place to the notes of the violin, for harpers and fiddlers usually attend to the last resting-place the mortal remains of the great, and exert their utmost endeavours to raise the spirits of the return party by the liveliest airs. At the funeral feast which followed, oxen and sheep were freely slaughtered, and charity was liberally distributed, in order that requiems might be chanted during forty consecutive days for the soul of the departed.
It has been shown that the Abyssinian Christian, whilst execrating Mohammadanism, and forswearing all its abominations, can take unto his bosom four wives and more, and that the solemnisation of matrimony is almost the only occasion on which the priest is not called in. Such had ever been the case in the house of the Master of the Horse, who was nevertheless inconsolable under his present bereavement. Certain malicious whispers had flown abroad, to the effect that applications of the cudgel were sometimes resorted to by the epicure in support of his marital authority; but whether true or without foundation, these scandalous tales were known to have been circulated by Dinkoo, a mischief-making brat, with the falsest of tongues, and the offspring of one whose divorce, from incompatibility of temper, had left the deceased undisputed mistress of the premises, whereas of the matchless “Etagainya” now no more, the neighbours were ever wont to exclaim, “Where shall you find her equal?”
At the appointed season, Graham and myself went in compliance with Abyssinian custom, to pay a visit of condolence, after having with considerable difficulty succeeded in shaking off the attentions of the court buffoon, who, with his wonted politeness, exerted somewhat mal-à-propos to so melancholy an occasion, insisted upon the exercise of his ingenuity in the comic drama. The widower, enveloped in a black woollen mantle, was seated in a gloomy corner, the very personification of mourning—his temples deeply scarified with his little finger nail, as were those also of the wrinkled old woman who wept beside him. In an opposite corner, equally the victim of grief, and supported by the family priest with cross, crutch, and cowl, sat Marietta, a fat daughter of the former unfortunate union, who, like her mother, had been wedded and divorced, and having taken shelter again under her father’s roof, was now sobbing aloud.
“God hath taken her,” said one of the guests, breaking silence after the conclusion of the customary salutations. “The life of man is in His hand.”
“Alas!” sobbed the bereaved, “that it had pleased Heaven to spare her until after you had left Abyssinia, that I alone might have found cause for affliction. Who could prepare shiro, and wotz, and dilli, like Etagainya? When was the house ever destitute of quanta or of qualima? (Note 1) and who ever asked for tullah or for tedj, that she did not reply, ‘Malto,’ There is abundance? ‘Waiye, waiye,’ Woe is me. Where shall I find her equal? But there could have been no ring on the finger that gathered the medánit!”
Note 1. Shiro, a sauce composed of peas or lentils boiled with grease and spices. Wotz, another, consisting of grease and red pepper. Dilli, a third abominable condiment. Quanta, sun-dried flesh. Qualima, sausages.
Volume Three—Chapter Forty Four.
The Great Annual Foray.
Another Abyssinian year had floated away upon the stream of time, and again the return of spring had been celebrated by the green fillet of enkotátach, by the tournament in the bright meadows of Debra Berhán, and by the plaintive ditty of the king’s Guráguês, who, with yellow garlands of the cross-flower wreathed among their raven tresses, once more chanted away their three days of privileged inebriety. As September drew towards a close, it had been confidently predicted that the rain would terminate according to its “covenant;” but it still poured on with unabated violence, and the review of Máskal was achieved under a pitiless deluge, which exerted its best endeavours both to mar the pageant, and to extinguish the evening bonfire raised in honour of Saint Helena.
But the beat of the nugáreet, and the voice of the herald beneath the solitary tree at Angollála, proclaimed the great annual foray as heretofore; and the plain below the palace hill was soon dotted with the black woollen tents of the leaders of cohorts. There were the governors of Bulga and of Mentshar, and of Morát and Morabeitie, and Efrata and Antzochia, and of Mahhfood and of Shoa-Méda, with all their subordinates, each surrounded by his own retainers; and the rear division of this feudal host was placed under the command of Besuenech, now governor of Giddem, the father of the king’s grand-nephew, who fell the preceding year upon the fair plains of Germáma.
Led on to victory by the holy ark of Saint Michael, the great crimson umbrellas streamed again through the barrier wall at the head of the Christian chivalry. Twenty thousand troopers pursued the route of the Sertie Lake to the Metta Galla, occupying the plains immediately contiguous to the valley of Finfinni, who were now the victims marked out for spoliation. The despot had so invariably passed this tribe without offering any molestation, that the heathen were little prepared for the thunderbolt that was about to fall, and of which the first intimation was afforded in the simultaneous invasion of the entire district. Overwhelmed by the torrent of desolation which had so suddenly burst in, four thousand five hundred Gentiles of all ages were butchered by the “soldiers of Christ,” and of these the greater number were shot from trees that they had ascended in the vain hope of eluding observation. Three hapless individuals were thus barbarously destroyed by the hands of Sáhela Selássie, who for the first time led his troops to the summit of the mountain Entótto—the ancient capital of Ethiopia—and, taking formal possession, appointed the arch-rebel Shambo to the government, under the title of “Shoom of all Guráguê.”
Forty-three thousand head of cattle were on this occasion swept away to replenish the royal pastures, and the rich prize had been obtained with the loss of only nine of the king’s liege subjects. Of the heroes who fell, one was torn by a lion in the deep juniper forest, and another basely assassinated by his comrade in arms, whose disfigured corse was subsequently left in retribution to the hyenas; whilst a third, a priest of extraordinary piety, and the father of the young page Besábeh, was transfixed by the spear of a Pagan who sat concealed amid the branches of a tree, beneath which the holy man rode in a rash attempt to secure a fugitive. The king’s Master of the Horse wore the vaunting green saréti for having achieved the capture of a child scarce five years of age; and upwards of one thousand captives, chiefly women and young girls, swelled the barbaric pomp of triumphal entry to Angollála.
I considered that the opportunity had again arrived, when a remonstrance from the Embassy would promote the release of these unfortunate slaves; and after reminding His Majesty of his noble conduct with respect to the prisoners taken during the preceding foray, I entreated him not to tarnish, in the eyes of the civilised world, the reputation he had acquired for mercy, but to prove, by his present conduct, that he was indeed influenced by the true principles of Christianity. Under Providence, my application was again crowned with success, and with a few exceptions, all were liberated without ransom. “I listen to your words,” said His Majesty, as he issued the fiat of release, “in order that the name of Sáhela Selássie may not be broken.”
Sad indeed are the atrocities perpetrated by the undisciplined armies of Ethiopia, when disputing the abstruse mysteries of Abyssinian divinity, or seeking, in the relentless fury of religious hate, to exterminate a heathen and stranger nation by a series of crusades, undertaken as an acceptable vindication of the sacred symbol of Christianity.
“Her badge of mercy blazons half their shields;
Sword hilts are fashion’d as memorials of it:
This sign of man’s forgiveness leads to battle!
Whilst every tyrant hangs its ensign out,
In scorn of justice, from his battlements;
Mail’d prelates march before it to the field—
Priest fights with priest, and both sides under it!
This sign and pledge of mercy!”
The people of Shoa have fully adopted that spirit of merciless destruction which impelled the Israelites to destroy their enemies from the face of the earth. Considering themselves the lineal descendants of those heroes of ancient history who were arrayed against the enemies of the Lord, they are actuated by the same motives and feelings which led the bands of Judah to the massacre. The foe is a Pagan, who does not fast, nor kiss the church, nor wear a máteb. All feelings of humanity are thrown to the winds; and a high reward in heaven is believed to await the king and the blood-thirsty soldier for the burning of the hamlet, the capture of the property, and the murder of the accursed Gentile. The words of absolution from the mouth of the Father Confessor usher in the ruthless slaughter; and the name of the Most High is wantonly employed to consecrate the ensuing scenes of savage atrocity.
That the minds of the people should not be more disturbed and alienated from agricultural pursuits, by the continual military expeditions which they are thus called upon to make, cannot fail to appear extraordinary. Probably the selfishness of the despot, in his appropriation of the lion’s share of the spoil, has exerted a salutary influence in checking innate restlessness; and the subject has been instructed in a rough school, that there is more profit to be derived from holding the plough than from wielding the sword: for it is certainly the fact, that when the foray is over, the war-horse is turned loose in the meadow, and the partisan willingly returns to his peaceful avocations in the field. But these campaigns bring annually a repetition of the most atrocious and monstrous barbarity, and none who have witnessed the unhallowed proceedings of the Amhára warrior, can fail to offer up a fervent prayer that the time may be hastened, when nations shall be knit together in the bonds of love, and when true Christianity shall reign paramount in every heart.
December had now commenced, but a dense gloomy mist still enveloped the hill of Anko, and torrents of rain continued to deluge the country, at a season when the smiling sun had been wont to shine over the land. The fair face of heaven was utterly obscured. The ripe crops lay rotting upon the ground; and as the inhabitants waded with difficulty through the deep mire which filled every street and lane of the capital, the exchange of mournful salutations was followed by a foreboding shake of the head at the daily increasing price of provisions. The season was unusually rigorous, and the soaked firewood sputtering upon the hearth, gave not out one atom of genial heat. On the bleak summit of the Abyssinian alps every thing was cold and clammy to the touch; and a searching wind, creeping up the damp sides of the hill, entered at each crevice in the mud wall, and rendered the situation of the inmates of the frail houses even more miserable than usual.
As the evening of the 6th of December closed in, not a single breath of air disturbed the thick fog which still brooded over the mountain. A sensible difference was perceptible in the atmosphere, but the rain again commenced to descend in a perfect deluge, and for hours pelted like the discharge of the bursting water-spout. Towards morning there came on a violent thunder-storm, and for some minutes the entire scene was fearfully illuminated by the dazzling fire of heaven; and every rock and cranny re-echoed from the succeeding crash of the hurtling thunder. Deep darkness again settled over the mountain. Suddenly the earth groaned and trembled to its very centre: the hill reeled and tottered like a drunken man; and a heavy rumbling noise, like the passage of artillery wheels, was followed by the shrill cry of mortal despair.
Dreadful indeed were the consequences of this shock. The earth, saturated with moisture, had slidden like an avalanche from the steep rugged slopes, and huge boulders, tilted from their muddy beds, were thrown into the glens below. Houses and cottages were buried in the dark débris, or shattered to fragments by these monstrous masses bounding on their course with terrific rapidity. Large trees were torn from their roots, and daylight presented to the eyes of the affrighted inhabitants a strange scene of ruin.
Perched upon the apex of the conical peak, the palace had, on the preceding evening, frowned over the capital in all the security of its numerous encircling palisades; but now, shorn of their bristling protection, those buildings that had not been overthrown, stood naked and exposed. Twenty open breaches, as though heavy batteries had been playing for a fortnight on the devoted hill, laid bare the approaches to the very porch of the banqueting-hall; and palings and palisades, forced from their deep foundations, lay broken and mingled together, strewed over the entire face of the eminence. The roads along the scarp were completely obliterated. Tall green shrubs reclined with their roots reversed among the wreck; and not one vestige of the fragile tenements could be discovered in the bare earthy tracts which disfigured the mountain-side, and marked the disastrous course of the treacherous slip.
The more vigilant inmates had, with the loss of all their little property, found barely time to rush from their houses, and huddled together in shivering groups totally denuded of clothing, had passed the remnant of the night in all the pangs of cold and terror; whilst in the market-place lay extended the stark discoloured bodies of numerous victims that had been already extricated from the slimy ruins, and were placed in the Aráda for recognition by surviving relatives, if any there were. The shrieks of the mourners added to the distress of the scene. The hymn of entreaty rose high in the mist from every church throughout the town; and bands of priests, carrying the holy cross, marched in solemn procession through the miry streets, beating their breasts and calling aloud upon Saint Michael the Archangel, and upon Mary the mother of the Messiah, to intercede for them in this the day of their affliction.
Sweeping desolation had spread for miles along the great range: houses with their inmates and household gear had been scattered in fragments over the mountain-side; and the voice of wailing from the green hill top and from the sheltered nook, announced the many victims that were thus immaturely buried in the dark bosom of the earth. The destruction varied considerably according to situation and locality. Some villages were entirely smothered under the descending tons of heavy wet soil, and the inhabitants of others grieved only for their cattle, their crops, and their farm-steading; but the loss of life and property was altogether immense; and although the tremulous shock had been before frequently experienced, a similar to the present calamity had not befallen the country within the memory of man.
For many nights afterwards, as the thick mist still continued to enfold the mountain in its dark shroud, and the sloppy rain plashed heavily over the denuded rocks, the air at the close of each dull evening was filled with the plaintive sounds of hymn and prayer. The deep voice of the priesthood pealed incessantly from the churches; and groups of bewildered females, collected in every corner of the streets, bowed themselves to the ground, whilst calling in strangely wild cadence upon the Virgin, who is the Mediator, and upon all the saints and guardian angels, to preserve the believers in Christ from impending ruin—for the wise men who deal in sorcery had proclaimed that the present throe was only the harbinger of the wrath of Heaven, which would one day sweep the high mountain of Anko with all her inhabitants utterly from the face of the earth.
Volume Three—Chapter Forty Five.
Liberation of the Princes of the Blood-Royal of Shoa.
Humanity to his own subjects must be considered a distinguishing feature in the character of the reigning despot. He is ignorant, but not stupid—to his foes fierce, but not implacable; and although his manifold good qualities are sullied by the part he sustains in the odious traffic in his fellow-men—a moral plague which has by its baneful influence contaminated the whole of this quarter of the globe—he had, on more occasions than one, evinced an unlooked-for readiness to open his eyes to his errors. Possessed of faults inseparable from the absolute semi-barbarian, he had, nevertheless, been found mild, just, clement, and almost patriarchal in his government:—he is a monarch whom experience has proved worthy to reign over a better people, and to be possessed of an understanding and of latent virtues requiring nought save cultivation to place him, in a moral and intellectual point of view, immeasurably in advance of other African potentates.
Whilst indulging in the agreeable conviction that the endeavours of the British Embassy had been successful in arousing a monarch, who exercises so wide an influence over the destinies of surrounding millions, to a sense of the wickedness and degradation attaching in civilised lands to barter in the flesh and blood of our fellow-men, it occurred to me that he might be exhorted, with the best prospect of success, to break through the barbarous precautionary policy under which those members of the royal house who possess a contingent claim to the crown, and in other Christian realms would hold the highest offices and honours within its gift, had, through every generation since the days of the son of David, been doomed to chains in a living grave. And from the fortunate fact of the issue male of the present reign being limited to two, I derived the pleasant hope, that if a statute so jealously guarded during nearly three thousand years, could now for once be infringed, it would not, in all probability, be revived on the monarch’s demise.
Entertaining the liveliest fears of death, his manifold superstitions were ever the most easily awakened during sickness, when the actions of his past life crowded up in judgment before him. It was on these occasions that, in order to quiet his conscience, he made the most liberal votive offerings to the church and to the monastery, and that he gained the greatest victories over his deep-rooted avarice; and it was on these occasions, therefore, that the chord of his latent good feeling might obviously be touched with the happiest result to the cause of humanity.
That singular blending of debauchery and devotion which marks the royal vigils, has seriously impaired a constitution naturally good. During a long succession of years the Psalms of David and the strongest cholera mixture have equally shared the midnight hours of the king; and although scarcely past the meridian of life, he is subject to sudden spasmodic attacks of an alarming character. In one of these his restoration had been despaired of both by the priests and the physicians; and the voice of wailing and lamentation already filled the precincts of the palace.
Scarcely was it light ere a page came to my tent with an urgent summons to the sick chamber. We found the despot pale and emaciated, with fevered lip and bloodshot eye, reclining upon a couch in a dark corner of the closed veranda, his head swathed in white cloth, and his trembling arms supported by bolsters and cushions. Abba Raguel, the dwarf Father Confessor, with eyes swollen from watching, was rocking to and fro, whilst he drowsily scanned an illuminated Ethiopic volume, containing the lives of the martyrs; and in deep conversation with the sick monarch was a favourite monk, habited like an Arab Bedouin in a black goat’s hair cameline and a yellow cowl, but displaying the sacred cross in his right hand. The loud voice of the priesthood arose in boisterous song from the adjacent apartment: strings of red worsted had been tied round the monarch’s thumbs and great toes; and the threshold of the outer chamber was bedewed with the still moist blood of a black bullock, which, when the taper of life was believed to be flickering in the socket, had been thrice led round the royal couch, and, with its head turned towards the East, was then slaughtered at the door, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
“My children,” said His Majesty in a sepulchral voice, as he extended his burning hand towards us—“behold, I am sore stricken. Last night they believed me dead, and the voice of mourning had arisen within the palace walls, but God hath spared me until now. Tell me the medicine for this disease.”
A febrifuge having been prepared, we attempted to follow the etiquette of the Abyssinian court, by tasting the draught prescribed; but the king, again extending his parched hand, protested against this necessity. “What need is there now of this?” he exclaimed reproachfully: “do not I know that you would administer to Sáhela Selássie nothing that could do him mischief? My people are bad; and if God had not mercy on me to restore me, they would deal evil with you—and to strip you of your property would even take away your lives.”
I had oftentimes complimented the king upon the mildness and equity of his rule, and upon the readiness with which he gave ear to intercession on behalf of the slave. The implicit confidence which had supplanted all fear and suspicion in the breast of His Majesty, now favoured a still stronger appeal to his humanity, to his magnanimity, and to his piety. I urged him to take into favourable consideration the abject condition of his royal brothers—victims to a tyrannical and unnatural statute, the legacy of a barbarous age, which for centuries had resulted in such incalculable misery and mischief. I reminded him that it belongs unto those who wield the sceptre to triumph over prejudices; and that by the liberation of many innocent captives, of whom, though possessing the strongest claim that blood can give, he had perhaps scarcely even thought during his long and prosperous reign, he would perform an act alike acceptable to Heaven, and calculated to secure to himself on earth an imperishable name.
“And I will release them,” returned the monarch, after a moment’s debate within himself. “By the holy Eucharist I swear, and by the church of the Holy Trinity in Koora Gádel, that if Sáhela Selássie arise from this bed of sickness, all of whom you speak shall be restored to the enjoyment of liberty.”
The sun was shining brighter than usual, through a cloudless azure sky, when we all received a welcome summons to witness the redemption of this solemn pledge. The balcony of Justice was tricked out in its gala suit; and priests, governors, sycophants, and courtiers, crowded the yard, as the despot, restored to health, in the highest spirits and good humour, took his accustomed seat upon the velvet cushions. The mandate had gone forth for the liberation of his brothers and his blood relatives, and it had been published abroad, that the royal kith and kindred were to pass the residue of their days free and unfettered near the person of the king, instead of in the dark cells of Góncho.
There were not wanting certain sapient sages who gravely shook the head of disapproval at this fresh proof of foreign influence and ascendency, and who could in nowise comprehend how the venerable custom of ages could be thus suddenly violated. The introduction of great guns, and muskets, and rockets, had not been objected to, although, as a matter of course, the spear of their forefathers was esteemed an infinitely superior weapon. Musical clocks and boxes had been listened to and despised, as vastly inferior to the jingling notes of their own vile instruments; and the Gothic cottage, with its painted trellises, its pictures, and its gay curtains, although pronounced entirely unsuited to Abyssinian habits, had been partially forgiven on the grounds of its beauty.
But this last innovation was beyond all understanding; and many a stupid pate was racked in fruitless endeavours to extract consolation in so momentous a difficulty. The more liberal party were loud in their praises of the king and of his generous intentions; and the royal gaze was with the rest strained wistfully towards the wicket, where he should behold once again the child of his mother, whom he had not seen since his accession, and should make the first acquaintance with his uncles, the brothers of his warrior sire, who had been incarcerated ere he himself had seen the light.
Stern traces had been left by the constraint of one-third of a century upon the seven unfortunate descendants of a royal race, who were shortly ushered into the court by the state-gaoler. Leaning heavily on each other’s shoulders, and linked together by chains, bright and shining with the friction of years, the captives shuffled onward with cramped steps, rather as malefactors proceeding to the gallows-tree, than as innocent and abused princes, regaining the natural rights of man. Tottering to the foot of the throne, they fell as they had been instructed by their burly conductor, prostrate on their faces before their more fortunate but despotic relative, whom they had known heretofore only through his connection with their own misfortunes, and whose voice was yet a stranger to their ears.
Rising with difficulty at the bidding of the monarch, they remained standing in front of the balcony, gazing in stupid wonder at the novelties of the scene, with eyes unaccustomed to meet the broad glare of day. At first they were fixed upon the author of their weary captivity, and upon the white men by his side who had been the instruments of its termination—but the dull, leaden gaze soon wandered in search of other objects; and the approach of freedom appeared to be received with the utmost apathy and indifference. Immured since earliest infancy, they were totally insensible to the blessings of liberty. Their feelings and their habits had become those of the fetter and of the dark dungeon. The iron had rusted into their very souls; and, whilst they with difficulty maintained an erect position, pain and withering despondency were indelibly marked in every line of their vacant and care-furrowed features.
In the damp vaults of Góncho, where heavy manacles on the wrists had been linked to the ankles of the prisoners by a chain so short as to admit only of a bent and stooping posture, the weary hours of the princes had for thirty long years been passed in the fabrication of harps and combs; and of these relics of monotonous existence, elaborately carved in wood and ivory, a large offering was now timidly presented to the king. The first glimpse of his wretched relatives had already dissipated a slight shade of mistrust which had hitherto clouded the royal brow. Nothing that might endanger the security of his reign could be traced in the crippled frames and blighted faculties of the seven miserable objects that cowered before him; and, after directing their chains to be unriveted, he announced to all that they were Free, and to pass the residue of their existence near his own person. Again the joke and the merry laugh passed quickly in the balcony—the court fool resumed his wonted avocations; and, as the monarch himself struck the chords of the gaily-ornamented harp presented by his bloated brother Amnon, the buffoon burst into a high and deserved panegyric upon the royal mercy and generosity.
“My children,” exclaimed His Majesty, turning towards ourselves, after the completion of this tardy act of justice to those whose only crime was their consanguinity to himself—an act to which he had been prompted less by superstition than by a desire to rescue his own offspring from a dungeon, and to secure a high place in the opinion of the civilised world—“My children, you will write all that you have now seen to your country, and will say to the British Queen, that, although far behind the nations of the white men, from whom Ethiopia first received her religion, there yet remains a spark of Christian love in the breast of the king of Shoa.”