Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

The delay of remittances from Europe rendering it probable that Mr Parkyns would be detained for some time in Abyssinia, he resolved completely to domesticate himself with the natives, as the best way of studying their habits and mode of life. This he seems to us to have done from the very commencement; for, as he justly observes, “there is nothing like a civil tongue, and quiet unpretending manners, to get one on in those countries;” so, upon principle, he always showed himself ready to answer questions, and to do the amiable, and even to put up with savage familiarities and intrusions, which he would gladly have dispensed with: as, for instance, during his stay at Addaro, a village of Addy Abo, formerly an important market, but now decayed and almost deserted. It was there that he first saw the snake-killing secretary bird, called Farras Seytan, or the Devil’s Horse, from the astonishing swiftness with which it runs. He was the first white man who had ever entered the place, with the exception of two French medical men, who had passed through some years previously on their way to the Mareb, and one of whom was carried off by fever, and the other by a crocodile, “picked out by the voracious animal from the colour of his skin, whilst swimming between two guides.” So a white skin was a great curiosity in Addaro; and here we come to a plate representing Mr Parkyns reclining on a settle, receiving perpetual visitors, whilst he jots down in his journal the following memoranda:—“Blessed with a swarm of bees that have lodged in the house. They have stung me several times; but I can bear that, especially as they have also stung some of my importunate visitors, who, by this means, are kept away. In fact, the only method I have to rid myself of my friends is to stir up the bees—to rid myself of the bees, I am obliged to stir up the fire, which is kept burning all day for the cooking; but, by the time the bees are gone, the hut is intolerable. Fancy a roaring fire, and lots of smoke, at noon in one of the hottest places in Abyssinia.” His visitors were of a mixed description, and not all of agreeable aspect; and, upon the whole, they bothered him no little with their interminable questionings, attempts to extort presents, and squabbles amongst themselves; but it would have been impolitic to turn them out, except by the indirect agency of the bees; and, moreover, he seems to possess one of those even, _insouciant_ tempers, hard to ruffle, which we take to be a prime requisite for a man who sojourns amongst savages, and without which he certainly would not have been able to say, at the end of his second volume, that, during nine years’ travel, he never met with a companion, of whatsoever colour, station, or religion, who gave him a moment’s cause to quarrel with him, or from whom he parted otherwise than with regret. Far be it from us to doubt the word of Mr Parkyns; but we would ask him if he really grieved at relinquishing the society of an elderly warrior—his “friend,” he calls him—who sat close to him at Addaro, looking over him as he wrote, and begging to be set down in his book? “His name is Welda Georgis. He is naturally very ugly; nor is his appearance at all improved by the want of his nose, which he says he lost in battle. He cannot speak at all without stopping the holes with his fingers; hence his voice, especially when he speaks loud, is, as may be judged, not the most harmonious; and just now he is raising it to a considerable pitch, being excited to wrath by one of his companions insinuating that he was never but in one battle, and that then he ran away before a blow had been struck.” An imputation not to be borne; and, accordingly, in the plate we see Welda Georgis and the other gentleman engaged in single combat upon the floor. Presently Mr Parkyns is disturbed in his writing by a bang, by a scream from a woman who is boiling a pot (a child in a bag on her back), and by a “Wa!” from Welda Georgis, who, ignorant of the dangers of a little knowledge, has been retailing to his friends instructions he had received the day before in the art of cocking double-barrelled pistols. He had cocked both barrels, but had pulled the left trigger whilst holding the right hammer. A gourdful of capsicum paste and a corn-jar were mortally wounded, but no other damage was done. Welda laid down the weapon, which he evidently suspected of foul play, looked gravely at it, and apostrophised it as “a naughty devil!” Easy-going Mr Parkyns took all these trifles with an excellent grace, as became a man of strong nerves, who had gone out to rough it, and who had no desire to leave his bones in Abyssinia, or to have his physical integrity in any way deteriorated. He smilingly put up with intruders, and even with spies. He could not go out for a walk without being followed. There is a notion abroad in those parts that Europeans _make_ money. This was confirmed, in the case of Mr Parkyns, by his happening to have a great many new dollars. When he put one in circulation, the receiver would exclaim, “Wa! this is only just made; see how it shines!” So somebody always accompanied him, when he strolled out with his gun, under pretence of showing him game, but in reality to watch his motions, thinking to catch him in the very act of coining. It does not appear that these scouts took much by their curiosity. “I often retire to the neighbouring hills” (thus runs one of the brief verbatim quotations from his journal, occasionally given by Mr Parkyns) “when about to take an observation, or for some other reason wishing to be undisturbed, and seek out some snug little nook or corner amongst the rocks. Scarcely, however, have I time to make my preliminary arrangements, when, looking up, I find two or three heads curiously peering into my retreat, fully persuaded that they are about to behold the entire process of extracting dollars from the earth, ready stamped with the august head of her Imperial Majesty. Sometimes they were most laughably disappointed in their expectations.” All this was at an early period of Mr Parkyns’ abode in the country; the natives had not got used to him, and he had not yet become a complete Abyssinian; and, as we have already seen, Addaro is an out-of-the-way place, where whites are rare. To see him to advantage, we must accompany him to Adoua, notwithstanding that he tells us he was less happy there, and exerted himself less to write down what he observed, than “in the more genial solitude of the backwoods;” the reason being, that “Adoua is a capital (!), though a small one; and in all capitals, whether great or small, I feel out of my element, losing at once my health, spirits, and energy and disposition for work.” The force of imagination, the magic of a name, can hardly farther go. Let us see what were the employments and pursuits of this wild man of the woods in the village metropolis of Tigrè, in which the houses of the wealthy are square and flat-roofed, whilst those of the poorer classes have a conical thatch of straw. They seem to have consisted in noting native peculiarities, in taking part in native banquets and merry-makings, and in setting the fashion to Young Abyssinia. It is time, by the by, that we should say a word of his intimate friend, Shetou, a fine fellow and daring soldier, but no favourite with his father, Oubi, who took every opportunity of snubbing him, and showed a marked preference for his puny elder brother, Lemma. “Shetou has rather a slang way of dressing, which greatly offends his father. Sometimes he comes in with one leg of his trousers drawn up in the proper manner above his calf, and the other dangling down about his ankle. On such an occasion, it would not be at all extraordinary should Oubi, after looking at him fixedly, and in his usual quiet smiling manner, begin, in the presence of all assembled, ‘Well done, son of a Mahommedan mother! Pretty way of wearing your breeches, isn’t it? Some new fashion of your own, eh?’ And, turning to the _agafari_ (doorkeepers), ‘Turn him out! turn him out!’ The poor lad is put out in the most neck-and-crop manner, and, returning to his tent, he broods over this treatment, and vows vengeance on his brother, Lemma, who, from being the favourite, is partly the cause of it.” A prince of the blood-royal must naturally feel incensed at being ignominiously ejected from the court of his despotic dad, for no greater offence than the fanciful sit of his breeks. But whose fault is it? No one’s, if not that of Mr Parkyns, the Brummel of that foreign court, the promoter of all manner of sartorial extravagances and innovations. “This” (a particular cut of trouser) “was considered so very ultra-fashionable that, except Dejatch Shetou, myself, and one or two others, few dared attempt it. It was I and my friend Shetou who first introduced the habit of allowing the sword to swing perpendicularly from the side, instead of its sticking out horizontally, like a dog’s tail; as well as of wearing the belt over the hips, instead of round the waist, and up to the armpits, as it was worn when I first arrived. These, with the increased length of trousers, reaching, as we wore them, nearly to the ankle, and so tight below that it took an hour to draw them over the heel, gave a very ‘fast’ look.” Mr Parkyns has immortalised his name in Tigrè, and will be spoken of with admiration by future generations, to whom his fame will be handed down by the dandies to whom he set so bright an example. The incompatibility of cleanliness and elegance in Abyssinia rather shocks our European prejudices. The great “go,” we are told, amongst the dandies in those parts, is “to appear in the morning with a huge pot of butter (about two ounces) placed on the top of the head, which, as it gradually melts in the sun, runs over the hair, down the neck, over the forehead, and often into the eyes, thereby causing much smarting.” The grease is wiped from the brow and eyes with _the quarry_ or cloth, a garment compared by Mr Parkyns to the Roman toga, and which it is the fashion to wear dirty, a clean one being considered “slow.” But the town life of the young fashionables of rank in the chief cities of Abyssinia, may best be summed up and exhibited in an extract from Mr Parkyns’ thirty-eighth chapter, where he shows himself to us in all his glory as the D’Orsay of Adoua.

“I was leading,” he says, “the life of an Abyssinian gentleman ‘about
town,’ my hair well tressed, my pantaloons always of the newest,
frequently of an original cut; in dull weather setting fashions,
disputing and deciding on the merits and demerits of shields and
spears; in fine weather swelling about the town with a quarter of a
pound of butter melting on my head, face, neck, and clothes, and with
a tail of half a dozen well-got-up and equally greasy soldiers at my
heels; doing the great man, with my garment well over my nose, at
every festival and funeral worth attending; ‘hanging out’ extensively
when I had a few shillings to spend; sponging on my neighbours when,
as was oftener the case, I had nothing;—in fact, living a most
agreeable life on a very limited income. I cannot deny that I look
back to those times with a certain feeling of regret. It was the only
period of my life in which I ever felt myself a really great man. I
‘cry very small’ in England, with a much greater expenditure. The men
will not look after me with admiration, nor the girls make songs about
me here.”

Poor Parkyns! fallen from your high estate, dwindled from an African savage into an English gentleman! We wretched, civilised Europeans are rather in the _nil admirari_ vein, but we will answer for your being “looked after” with curiosity and wonderment, by all who have read your book, if you will but adopt some distinguishing mark by which you may be recognised when you walk abroad. As to the songs, whose absence you deplore, we can only say that if you are not taken for the subject of romantic ditties by the poetesses of England, as you were by those of Tigrè, it will certainly not be because the theme is unsuggestive. Innumerable incidents in your Abyssinian career deserve to be commemorated in flowing metre, and sung by Ethiopian serenaders to banjo accompaniment, and to the ancient and pathetic melody of “The King of the Cannibal Islands.” And this reminds us to accompany you to one of the festivals you above allude to—a dinner party at Adoua—first advising ladies to have their salts at hand, and permitting squeamish readers to pass over a page if it so please them. Here are a score of Abyssinian gentlemen squatted, sword in hand, on cut grass round a low table. It is perhaps unnecessary to mention that the tablecloth has been forgotten, and that napkins are absent, their place being supplied by cakes of bread, on which the guests wipe their fingers after dipping them in the dish or smearing them with the blood of the raw meat. The cooked dishes are first brought in and their contents distributed by waiters, who cut the meat or tear it with their fingers into pieces of a convenient size. They also take a piece of bread from before each person, sop it in the sauce, and return it to him. “The guests take their bread and sauce and mix them together into a sort of paste, of which they make balls, long and rounded like small black puddings (black enough, we doubt not); these they consider it polite to poke into their neighbours’ mouths; so that, if you happen to be a distinguished character, or a stranger to whom they wish to pay attention, which was often my case, you are in a very disagreeable position; for your two neighbours, one on each side, cram into your mouth these large and peppery proofs of their esteem so quickly, one after the other, that, long before you can chew and swallow the one, you are obliged to make room for the next.” Surely these can hardly be included amongst the “happy moments” Mr Parkyns so pathetically regrets, when recording, towards the close of his work, his tearful parting from his Adoua friends—the first time, he says, since his arrival in the country, that he felt the want of a pocket-handkerchief. Let us, however, proceed with our repast, after a glance at the accompanying plate of the “Dinner Party,” where a favoured guest, with distended jaws, is undergoing the cramming process. This first course, of cooked dishes, is usually mutton; whilst it is being gobbled up, a cow is killed and flayed outside, and as soon as the first course is removed, in comes the raw meat—the _broundo_, as it is called—brought in by servants in quivering lumps.

“There is usually a piece of meat to every five or six persons, among
whom arises some show of ceremony as to which of them shall first help
himself; this being at length decided, the person chosen takes hold of
the meat with his left hand, and with his sword or knife cuts a strip
a foot or fifteen inches long from the part which appears the nicest
and tenderest. The others then help themselves in like manner. If I
should fail in describing properly the scene which now follows, I must
request the aid of the reader’s imagination. Let him picture to
himself thirty or forty Abyssinians, stripped to their waists,
squatting round the low tables, each with his sword or knife or
‘shotel’ in his hand, some eating, some helping themselves, some
waiting their turn, but all bearing in their features the expression
of that fierce gluttony which one attributes more to the lion or
leopard than to the race of Adam. The imagination may be much assisted
by the idea of the lumps of raw pink-and-blue flesh they are gloating
over.”

Some still more full-flavoured details follow, which we abstain from extracting, thinking we can fill up the space remaining to us better than by their transcription, and referring those curious in such matters to chapter xxvii., “Manners and Customs,” where they will see how the pepperballs already spoken of are got rid of by those into whose mouths they are thrust, how boys lie under the table and act as scavengers, and how Mr Parkyns expresses his belief that raw meat, eaten whilst yet warm, would be preferred to cooked meat by any man who from childhood had been accustomed to it. In the chapter headed “Religion, &c.,” which “&c.” comprises a variety of strange things, we are told of “a small entertainment” he gave to a select party of friends on the occasion of the great festival of Mascal or the Cross, a season celebrated, like Christmas in England, by hospitality and good cheer. He sent out his cards for an early hour, knowing that his guests would have several other feeds to attend in the course of the day. But when he had done this, his conscience smote him, for he reflected that, with half a dozen other breakfasts and dinners in view, his friends would but take the sharp edge off their appetites in his wigwam, and husband their masticatory and digestive powers for the subsequent banquets. “My rather savage feelings of hospitality,” he says, “were piqued at the idea of their leaving me without being well filled. But truly I was agreeably disappointed; for a fine fat cow, two large sheep, and many gallons of mead, with a proportionate quantity of bread, disappeared like smoke before the twelve or fourteen guests, leaving only a few pickings for the servants.” Mr Parkyns met several of these hungry gentlemen at other dinners in the course of the same day, and was utterly confounded to observe that most of them played as good a knife and fork (we mean sabre and fingers) at every ensuing repast as they had done at his. The capacity of an Abyssinian stomach is evidently incalculable.

The 19th and 37th chapters of Mr Parkyns’ work are amongst those that please us best. In the earlier of the two he is on his way from Axum to Addàro, across a vast open plain, embellished with a great variety of flowers; amongst them a kind of scarlet aloe, met with in most parts of Tigrè, and flowering at all seasons, and countless mimosas, pink, yellow, and white, some of them so fragrant as to scent the whole neighbourhood, adding their perfume to that of a profusion of jessamine. “There is also a beautiful parasitical creeper, growing, like the mistletoe, from the bark of other trees. It has a bright dark-green fleshy leaf, with brilliant scarlet flowers.” But Mr Parkyns is not much of a botanist; zoology, and especially ornithology, are his favourite pursuits, and, a capital shot, he bagged as many specimens as he chose. “Rifle-shooting,” he modestly says, “was about the only thing in the world I could do well.” The _was_ is to be deplored. It is thus accounted for. Near Addàro, a hunter, either accidentally or mischievously, set fire to the jungle. Mr Parkyns was then staying in a hamlet, situated on a small hill. It consisted but of three compounds, one of which he and his servants occupied; another was inhabited by a farmer named Aito Hablo, with his wife and family; and in the third dwelt a cast-off wife and children of the same Aito. Divorces are not difficult to obtain in that country. One morning, all hands were roused by the crackling of flames close at hand. The hillock was surrounded by fire, gradually creeping up the slope. The huts were roofed with sticks and straw, and the ground was covered with long dry grass. There was no time to lose. Tearing down green boughs from the trees, the men, whilst the women and children lit counterfires upon the plan usually adopted in such cases, “made rushes at the flames, whenever a lull of the wind allowed them to approach them, and, by beating them with the boughs, in some measure impeded their progress till the space was cleared and the huts were out of danger. I and one of my servants happened to rush at the fire at an unlucky moment; for a breeze rising drove the flames towards us just as we got near them, and we were badly scorched.” Besides other injuries, the optic nerve of Mr Parkyns’ right eye was damaged, and this spoiled his rifle-shooting. “Formerly,” he says, “I managed occasionally to shoot from my left shoulder—a habit which I found useful in stalking, as in some positions you must necessarily expose yourself before you can bring your right shoulder forward. Now that I am obliged to trust to my left alone, I find it a very poor substitute for the right.” Even after this unlucky accident, however, we find Mr Parkyns very dexterously picking off bird and beast, to supply his table or enrich his collection. He tells some capital sporting anecdotes, and others, equally good, of his queer pets, and of his experience amongst the monkeys. About half-way across the mimosa-scented plain, he came to a well-wooded ravine, the trees in which swarmed with the “tota” or “waag,” a beautiful little greenish-grey monkey, with black face and white whiskers, which allows men to approach very near to it. But the cleverest of this class of animals met with in Abyssinia is the Cynocephalus, or Dog-faced Baboon, a formidable animal, of extraordinary sagacity, to which it is really difficult to refuse the possession of reasoning powers. Mr Parkyns sketches these creatures on a foray. “Arrived at the corn-fields, the scouts took their position on the eminences all around, whilst the remainder of the tribe collect provisions with the utmost expedition, filling their cheek-pouches as full as they can hold, and then tucking the heads of corn under their armpits. Now, unless there be a partition of the collected spoil, how do the scouts feed? for I have watched them several times, and never observed them to quit for a moment their post of duty till it was time for the tribe to return, or till some indication of danger induced them to take to flight.” Outlying one night on the frontier, Mr Parkyns was roused by most awful noises, and started up in alarm, thinking the Barea were upon him. It was but the baboons. A leopard had got amongst them. They habitually dwell in lofty clefts of the rock, whither few animals can follow them; but the leopard is a good climber, and sometimes attacks them. The Abyssinians say that he seldom ventures to attack a full-grown ape—and, judging from the formidable canine teeth displayed in the skull sketched by Mr Parkyns, the leopard is in the right. Driven to stand at bay, these baboons are dangerous opponents, but they have not sufficient courage to act on the offensive. “Were their combativeness proportioned to their physical powers, coming as they do in bodies of two or three hundred, it would be impossible for the natives to go out of the village except in parties, and armed; and, instead of little boys, regiments of armed men would be required to guard the corn-fields. I have, however, frequently seen them turn on dogs, and have heard of their attacking women whom they have accidentally met alone in the roads or woods. On one occasion I was told of a woman who was so grievously maltreated by them, that, although she was succoured by the opportune arrival of some passers-by, she died a few days after, from the fright and ill-treatment she had endured.” We are reminded of Sealsfield’s striking Mexican sketch of the _zambos_. Mr Parkyns had a female dog-face as a pet. She was young when he got her; and, from the first, her affection for him was ludicrously annoying. As she grew older she was less dependent, and cared less about being left alone. The master of a German brig who went up the country for a cargo of animals, gave Mr Parkyns a copy of “Peter Simple.” Besides the Bible and the “Nautical Almanack,” this, he says, was the first English book he had seen for two years, and he sat down greedily to devour it. “‘Lemdy’ was as usual seated beside me, at times looking quietly at me, occasionally catching a fly, or jumping on my shoulder, endeavouring to pick out the blue marks tattooed there.” The group is suggestive for a sculptor; a thousand pities no Abyssinian Canova was at hand to model it. Mr Parkyns went to light his pipe, imprudently leaving the book and the monkey together. On his return he found the latter seated in his place, and gravely turning over the leaves of Marryat’s novel; but, not understanding English, she turned them too quickly, and had torn out half the volume. “During my momentary absences she would take up my pipe and hold it to her mouth till I came back, when she would restore it with the utmost politeness.” At Khartoum, some time after the termination of his Abyssinian wanderings, Mr Parkyns became very intimate with three large monkeys of this intelligent species, and with their showman—“so much so, that I travelled with them for some days, acting as his assistant, my duty being to keep the ring, which I did by gracefully swinging round me two wooden balls covered with red cloth, and fastened, one at each end, to a rope similarly ornamented—and occasionally to assist the monkeys in collecting coppers. I passed a very agreeable time with him, and he told me many anecdotes of monkeys, as well as the usual tales of ghouls, fire-worshippers, &c., for which all Egyptians, especially of his erratic habits, are celebrated.” If this be not a joke—and there is no reason to take it for one, since Mr Parkyns, who is a sort of African Gil Blas (only more scrupulous in certain respects than his Spanish prototype), was evidently, at that time of his life, eccentric and adventurous enough to adopt on the instant any wild freak that entered his head—we hope to have a more detailed account of his association with the showman when he favours us with the narrative of his post-Abyssinian travels, not forgetting the anecdotes of monkeys (he tells two or three very good ones), and the traditions of ghouls and fire-worshippers. We are sure that he must there have materials for at least one long chapter; and we feel particular curiosity about the traditions, because the supernatural seems to partake, in tropical Africa, of the strange, fantastical, exaggerated character of the animal and vegetable productions of the country. Extraordinary stories are there current of tribes of monsters, semi-human, dwelling in the unexplored parts of the country—such as the Beni-Kelb or Dog-men (mentioned by Werne), “whose males are dogs, and females beautiful women; and the Beni-Temsah (sons of the crocodile), who have human bodies, but heads like those of their ancestor’s family. I have heard of the former of these nations in almost every country I have visited in Africa, from Egypt to the White Nile, including Kordofan and Abyssinia, and even in Arabia, whither their fame has been carried, doubtless, by pilgrims. They are, by most, believed to exist near the Fertit country (south of Darfour), where there are copper-mines, and the people of which file their teeth to points, saw-fashion.... There is no tribe in this part of Africa, indeed scarcely an individual, but believes in the existence of a race of men with tails. For my own part, I have heard so much of them that I can scarcely help fancying there must be some foundation for such very general belief.” Great diversity of opinion exists as to the whereabouts of these tail-bearers, some placing them to the north, others to the south of Bàza, and others in the centre of Africa—convenient, because unexplored. A black Fàky or priest, a speculative genius, whose acquaintance Mr Parkyns made in Abyssinia, gave him some information about his future route across Africa, and warned him against certain cannibal tribes south of Darfour, by whom white meat, being a rarity, is much esteemed, as having a fat delicate look. “He told me that a brown man, a Mahommedan priest, who went there from his country, in the hope of converting the people to Islamism, was—though protected from actual danger by his sanctity—a very tempting object among them, so much so, that whenever he went out the little children came about him, poking him with their fingers in the ribs, feeling his arms and legs, and muttering to one another, ‘Wa-wa, wa-wa!’ (meat, meat), with their mouths watering, and their features expressive of the greatest possible inclination to taste him.” We will back Mr Parkyns against the field for the humorous dressing-up of extravagant stories of this kind, and for an occasional dash of dry comical exaggeration, too obvious to mislead. His choice of pet animals was rather of the strangest. For some time he kept a “tokla” (_Canis venaticus_), which was as nearly tame as its wild vicious nature admitted.

“In appearance Tokla was more curious than beautiful. He had a little
lean body, which no feeding could fatten, covered with a darkish
brindly-spotted coat not unlike a hyena’s, and supported by legs as
unlike those of any other animal as possible, being in colour white,
with dark leopard spots, the hind-legs remarkably long, and so doubled
under him that when walking, or rather prowling about, it was doubtful
if he touched the ground oftenest with his feet or _elbows_.... To
account for his perpetual thinness, it only requires to state his mode
of feeding. He would take a huge piece of meat or offal, and put it
into his stomach at once, seemingly entire, for he never appeared
aware that his wonderfully muscular jaws and double row of teeth were
at all available for mastication. Having thus bolted his dinner, his
belly became distended till it nearly touched the ground; then he
would go and lie down for twenty-four hours or more, according to the
quantity he had eaten; after which he would return to be fed, as empty
and starved-looking as ever.”

A useful, profitable, and agreeable inmate must the said Tokla have been. Mr Parkyns’ regard for him seems to have arisen from a sort of sympathetic feeling for the unflinching pluck and endurance displayed on various occasions by the ill-conditioned little brute. A friend of his, knowing his partiality to pet animals, made him a present of a young jackal, which he had knocked over with a stick, when it was labouring under the effects of a surfeit of locusts. Jackal was hospitably received, and a bed of cotton wool made up for him.

“Rising early one morning, I found that he and Tokla had entered into
an alliance most offensive to the fowls, one of whom they had caught,
and were dragging about the yard—the one holding by a foot, the other
by a wing. The moment I appeared, Cobero (the jackal) let go the fowl
and limped back to his corner. Tokla, more determined, I had to beat
off, which I did with great difficulty, and not until the poor fowl
was so lacerated that I was constrained to kill it. Excited by its
death-struggles, he again laid hold; so I held up the fowl with him
dangling to its wing until I was tired, and then swung him round and
round, over and over, in hopes of his jaws tiring; but in this I was
disappointed, for he held on till the wing breaking off threw him
heavily on his back to a distance of several yards. Even in his fall
he was great, for he neither uttered a sound of pain nor loosened his
hold, but, getting up, stalked away quite proudly with the wing in his
mouth. I was so much pleased with him that I gave him the body and
all. In this, perhaps, I acted wrong, for we afterwards found that if
we didn’t kill all the poultry he would, and so I gave up ever keeping
any more. Poor little Tokla! I grew very fond of him, for, though
rough and ugly, he had such pretty winning ways—he seemed always
hungry, and would often bite people’s legs, occasionally my own, not
at all from vice, but sheer appetite.”

Upon the whole, life in Abyssinia bears much resemblance to life in a menagerie, so familiar and intrusive are the wild beasts of the field. Hyenas prowl about the villages, and enter houses in quest of a supper. They are far from dainty in their diet, and will eat leathern bags and wearing apparel. “It once occurred to me,” says Mr Parkyns, “as it has often to people I have known, to be awakened by one of them endeavouring to steal my leathern bed from under me.” They are too cowardly to attack anything capable of defence, but occasionally they take a bite out of a sleeper and run away—first scratching him with their paw (so the Abyssinians assert) to be sure that he sleeps soundly, and then snatching their mouthful. As for lions, they frequently prowled around Mr Parkyns’ bivouacs, but were not aggressive, and it was not even necessary to light fires to keep them off. The buffalo-hunters of Rohabaita used, upon the contrary, to light their camp-fires in holes, and conceal their glare with branches of trees, that the blaze might neither scare the buffalo nor bring down the Barea.

“I never killed a lion during all my stay in Africa,” says Mr Parkyns,
with meritorious candour—seeing that he might, without fear of
contradiction, have set down to his own rifle any number of the kings
of the forest. “I perhaps should have done so, had I known what a fuss
is made about it at home; but in Abyssinia it is not an easy thing to
accomplish.... At night I have often watched for them, but generally
without success; and when they did come, it was next to impossible to
shoot them. Besides, it is an awkward thing for a man, armed only with
a single rifle of light calibre, to take a flying shot at a lion in
the dark, especially when he has no one to back him on whose courage
or shooting he can rely. You hear a lion roar in the distance;
presently a little nearer; then you start up at hearing a short bark
close by; and if there be a fire or moonlight, perhaps you may see a
light-coloured object gliding quickly past from one bush to another.
Before you are sure whether or no you saw anything, it is gone. You
sit watching for a moment, rifle in hand, expecting him to appear
again, when (how he got there you know not) his roar is heard at a
considerable distance off in an opposite direction; and thus you go on
for an hour or two, when, getting sleepy, you politely request him to
take himself off to a certain warm place, and, returning your rifle
between your legs, roll over and go to sleep.”

Long habit and strong reliance on the mansuetude of the Abyssinian lions must, we should think, be indispensable to slumber under such circumstances. We can hardly fancy a man’s being lulled to rest by a lion’s roar, and sinking into one of the deep and heavy sleeps common in that country, with the consciousness that when he awakes he may possibly behold a hyena gallopping off with his cheek in its mouth,[2] or find a few scorpions walking over his body, leisurely stinging him. “Scorpions are abundant everywhere in the hot districts; no house but is full of them. I have been stung several times by them, but without any serious consequences, though I have heard of many instances which have ended fatally.” Mr Parkyns, we presume, at once applied the keen blade and actual cautery recommended in his Introduction. What with incidental scars of this kind, his tattoo decorations, and the scars he voluntarily made upon his arm by an Abyssinian process similar to the moxa of European surgery, and which is done by those people partly as ornamental and partly to show their fortitude under pain, his epidermis must have rather a remarkable appearance when exposed by the scantiness of costume in which he informs us that he sometimes travelled—_en cueros_, namely, when on solitary roads, and with a piece of rag or hide round the loins when in populous districts. We certainly never met with or heard of any traveller who embraced savagery with such earnestness and hearty goodwill as Mr Parkyns; and we sincerely congratulate him upon his escape with trifling detriment from the perils and exposure he not only encountered but enthusiastically sought.

Tigrè is rich in reptiles. Of the extent of this undesirable wealth, a few lines, culled here and there from the chapter on Natural History, will give a vivid idea. “The crocodile is plentiful in every brook or hole where there is water enough to conceal him.” A poor German, who attached himself for a time to Mr Parkyns, and tended him carefully when he was laid up with a terrible attack of ophthalmia, imprudently walked into a river to cool himself, and suddenly disappeared, either sucked in by a whirlpool or carried off by a crocodile—the latter, Mr Parkyns thought, most probably the case; notwithstanding which, we come, a few pages afterwards, to a plate of the bold traveller crossing the same rapid and dangerous stream, aided by half a dozen swimming blacks, and apparently heedless of the fact that crocodiles, like the cannibals south of Darfour, show a decided preference for white meat. “There are many snakes, centipedes, and large venomous spiders, of the tarantula kind, in the hot low districts. There is a great variety in the smaller sort of snakes: the cerastes or horned viper, asp, a species of cobra, the puff adder, and many others of all sizes and colours, from a pale pink to the brightest emerald green, are met with in Abyssinia and the adjacent countries. I was told of a horned serpent that was killed some years ago, which appears to have been a monstrosity, either in reality or in the imagination of my informants. They describe it as about seven feet long, nearly two feet in circumference, with scarcely any diminution towards the tail, and wearing a pair of horns three inches in length. It is commonly reported that dragons, or rather flying lizards of very venomous nature, are to be met with in Walkait.” A pleasant country for pic-nics in the woods. Going one day to shoot at a mark in a long narrow gully close to Rohabaita, where the village wells were, Mr Parkyns had just paced off the distance, and was building a rough target of stones, when his servant started back, and pulled him with him, calling out, “Temen, temen!” (snake). There was a rustling in the jungle that rose abruptly on either side of the watercourse, which was only a few feet wide. Not knowing what _temen_ meant, but supposing it was some wild animal, Mr Parkyns called loudly to his second attendant to bring the gun. “All this passed in a moment’s time; and although only one hundred and fifty yards off, long before the gun arrived I had seen two magnificent boa-constrictors, one about ten yards from the other, quietly leave their places, without attempting to molest us, and ascend the hill, till they were lost in jungle, whither I never cared to pursue them. The first thing I saw after the rustle was a head, which appeared for a moment above the canes, then a body, nearly as thick as my thigh, and then they disappeared, the movement of the canes alone marking the direction they had taken.” What Mr Parkyns says he himself saw we duly credit, whilst fully sharing his intimated incredulity with respect to the winged dragons, and the apocryphal horned monster. Before believing in them, we should like to see them—not, by any means, roaming at large in the state of vigour promoted by their own burning climate, but properly stuffed, or carefully wrapped in flannel and securely caged, in the gardens of the Zoological Society.

Although it may with perfect truth be said that no chapter of Mr Parkyns’ book is devoid of strong interest of one kind or other, all are not equally attractive; and we have preferred dwelling at some length upon the section of natural history to extracting any of the horrible stories of Abyssinian cruelty which he relates under the head of “Anecdotes of Character.” He himself seems to doubt whether they might not have been as well omitted, but perhaps he was right in deciding to give them, in order to supply data for a fair estimate of the national character of that singular people, which he might otherwise have been suspected of placing in too favourable a light. Persons to whom narratives of murder, torture, barbarous mutilation, and savage cruelty are odious and intolerable, have only to treat the pages 187 to 222 of the second volume as the monkey treated those of “Peter Simple”—turn without reading them, although we warn them that by so doing they will miss some very characteristic and curious matter. Portions of the chapter devoted to “Physical Constitution, Diseases, &c.,” may be trying to delicate stomachs, but for such Mr Parkyns has not written—as may be judged from one or two extracts already given. Amongst the traits of character, &c., we find some remarkable anecdotes of Arab swordsmanship. An Abyssinian having treacherously murdered one of the Arab allies of the Tigrè chiefs (merely for the sake of gratifying the exorbitant vanity inherent in all those people, by displaying the barbarous trophies taken from his victim), the murdered man’s friends claimed the assassin’s blood.

“The crime being proved against him, Oubi gave him over to their
tender mercies. His punishment was most summary. Before they had left
the presence of the prince, one of the relations of the deceased,
drawing his heavy two-edged broadsword, cut the culprit through with
one blow; and, turning to Oubi, said, in Arabic: ‘May God lengthen
your life, oh my master!’—just as he would have done had he received a
present from his hands; and then, picking up a wisp of grass from the
floor, walked away, wiping his blade with as much _sangfroid_ as if
nothing had occurred. Oubi is said to have expressed much admiration
at the manly off-hand way in which this was done, as well as at the
wonderful display of swordsmanship. I know, from very good authority,
that the facts of the Arab being murdered, and the subsequent
execution of the criminal, are true, though I was not present when it
occurred. I do not dispute the fact; I do not wish any of my readers,
who think such a feat impossible, to believe it in the present
instance. I have known for certain of the same feat being performed by
Turks with their crooked sabres, but never by an Arab with his
straight sword.”

Mr Parkyns subjoins a note relating to the campaign in Taka in which Werne shared.[3] Some of the prisoners then made were, as recorded by Werne, treated with great barbarity. We do not remember his mentioning the exact circumstances now recorded; but he separated from the Egyptian army before its return to Khartoum, in order to join the expedition up the White Nile. Certain chiefs, Mr Parkyns tells us, being marched off to be made examples of on the marketplace of Khartoum, paused on the road and refused to proceed. “Suliman Cushif, who commanded the escort, having orders that all such should be put to death on the spot, is said to have practised his swordsmanship on them by cutting them through at the waist as they stood. My friend, Moussa Bey, in the same expedition, unintentionally cut a horse’s head clean off.... Seeing one of his men turn his horse’s head and make for the jungle, he determined to check so dangerous an example by summary means, and so gave chase to the fugitive. Being better mounted, he soon came up with him; but the Arab, not liking his appearance as he stood up in his stirrups with his nasty little crooked olive-brown blade, ready for a back-stroke, threw his horse suddenly back on his haunches, and dropped off; the horse’s head went up just in time to receive the blow aimed at his master”—and dropped off too, it would appear. Mr Parkyns knows, he says, plenty more such anecdotes—and indeed such anecdotes are plentiful enough in other countries than Africa—but nothing is more difficult than to sift the inventions from the verities. Haydon the artist, who seems to have been partial to such tales, and ready enough to credit them, relates some astounding exploits collected from his model life-guardsmen—amongst others a story of a cut received by a French dragoon at Waterloo, which went through helmet and head, so that the severed portion dropped on the shoulder like a slice of apple. We have not the volume at hand to refer to, but this is the substance of the incident, told nearly in the same words. Such cuts as that—like the flying dragons of Abyssinia—we must see before believing in them. At the same time, a swordsman’s power depends so much more upon the mode in which his cuts are delivered than upon mere brute strength—upon skill than upon violence—that it becomes difficult to assign exact limits to the possible effect of a good blade in adroit and practised hands. The cutting through, at the waist, of a slender Oriental, will hardly appear an impossibility to those who have seen the now commonplace feat of severing a leg of mutton at a blow. Moussa Bey’s “nasty little crooked olive-brown blade” must unquestionably have been dexterously wielded to decapitate, at a single blow, his fugitive follower’s charger, allowing even that the latter was the slenderest and most ewe-necked of its race. Oubi’s admiration of the sweeping blow of his Arab auxiliary was not surprising, since his own subjects have difficulty in inflicting a serious wound with their clumsy sickle-shaped falchions, of great length of blade, and with hilts of such awkward and inconvenient construction as to paralyse the play of the swordsman’s arm. These hilts are cut out of solid pieces of rhinoceros horn, at great waste of material, and a handsome one costs as much as £2 sterling. The sword is worn on the right side, that the Abyssinian warrior may not, when he has thrown his lance, have to disturb the position of his shield, and so uncover himself, whilst drawing his weapon across his body. Such, at least, is the explanation Mr Parkyns gives. But the whole military equipment of the Abyssinians is far from formidable. They are tolerably expert in throwing the javelin, but with firearms they are extremely clumsy; and, notwithstanding their large buffalo-hide shields, a European, who has any knowledge of the sword, is more than a match for the best of them.

“It was my original intention” (we revert to Mr Parkyns’ Introduction) “to write solely on the habits of the people, without bringing myself into notice in any part of the story; but from this I was dissuaded by being told that, without a little personal narrative, the book would be unreadable. I have, therefore, divided the subject into two parts—Travel, and Manners and Customs.” Your dissuasive friends, Mr Parkyns, were in the right, and you showed your good sense by taking their advice—in _form_ as regards the first volume, in _fact_ as regards also the greater part of the second. Personal narrative is evidently your forte; a humorous, rollicking, letter-writing style, the one you have most at your command. The “exuberant animal spirits, not dependent on temporary excitement, but the offspring of abstemious habits, combined with plenty of air and exercise—the feeling which inspires a calf to cock his tail, shake his head, kick and gallop about—which swells a pigmy into a Hercules, and causes a young hippopotamus to think of adopting the ballet as his profession,”—which you declare to be the reason of your addiction to savage life, and which you so enjoyed in Abyssinia, had evidently not abandoned you when dressing up your journal for the press within the civilised precincts of the Nottinghamshire County-hall, whence you date your dedication to Lord Palmerston. Your style, of which you unnecessarily deprecate criticism, is spirited, racy, and abundantly good for the subject. When the mass of your book is so highly interesting, it may seem unkind to mention that a few of your jokes are a little the worse for wear, and remind us too strongly of the departed Miller to add much to the originality of your otherwise extremely original and capital volumes; and if we touch on that point, it is merely in the hope that you will take the hint in a kindly spirit, and profit by it when preparing for the press the “ponderous heap of papers” you inform us you accumulated during four and a half years’ travel in Nubia, Kordofan, and Egypt. Prepare them by all means, at your leisure, and with care, and let us have them in type at the earliest convenience of yourself and publisher. After your present work, we shall expect much from them, and do not fear being disappointed. As to attacking your statements, in the way of impugning your veracity, such temerity would never enter our minds. We will not say that we have not at times been startled, almost staggered, as we read with foot on fender, and much enjoyment, the narrative of your strange experience; but, as you justly observe, stay-at-home critics sometimes get hold of the wrong end of the stick, and sneer at truth whilst swallowing exaggerations. We beg, then, to assure you that, until we ourselves have passed a season in Abyssinia, with butter on our hair, and nothing on our feet—until we have dined upon raw beefsteaks, with fingers for forks, and a curved sabre for a carving-knife—we shall never venture to question the strict correctness and fidelity of any portion of your singular narrative—an assurance you may safely accept as a guarantee of impunity at our hands, even though you should draw a far longer bow than we believe you to have done in the case of the country of which you have so pleasantly written. Of one thing we are convinced, and that is, that few who take up _Life in Abyssinia_ will lay it down without reading it through, and without exclaiming, when they come to the end, “What an amusing book this is, and what an agreeable savage is Mansfield Parkyns!”

THE QUIET HEART.