Chapter XX: Book IV (5)

The greatest part of the loss fell upon the common men of Gojam, of the clans Elmana and Densa. No man of note among them was lost; only Amda Sion, who fell at their head in the beginning of the engagement, fighting with all the bravery that could be expected from a man in his circumstances. The rebel army was entirely dispersed. On the king’s side no man of consideration was slain, but Anastè, son of Ozoro Sabel Wenghel.

After having reinforced Dermin, the first thing the king did was to send three of his brothers, David, Hannes, and Jonathan, to be imprisoned on the mountain of Wechné. He then marched with his army from Gondar; and, being ignorant of what had happened, he dispatched his master of the horse, by way of Dingleber, to join Kasmati Dermin, in case he had not still been strong enough to fight the rebels. With his main army he took the road to Tedda, intending to proceed to Gojam; but, by the way, was informed that Dermin had defeated and slain his rival Amda Sion: and he had scarce crossed the Nile at Dara, when another messenger arrived with news that Dermin had also come up with Kasmati Honorius and his army on the banks of the Nile, at Goutto, had entirely defeated and slain him, together with his principal officers, and dispersed the whole army. Upon this the king marched towards Ibaba, and was there joined by Dermin, when great rejoicing and feasting ensued for several days.

On this occasion the king crowned his mother Malacotawit, conferring upon her the dignity and title of Iteghè; the consequence of which station I have often described. Having now no longer enemies to fear, he was persuaded, by some of his favourites, first to dismiss Dermin and his army, then all the troops that had joined him, and go with a few of his attendants, or court, to hunt the buffalo in the neighbouring country, Idi; which council the young prince too rashly adopted, suspecting no treason.

While the hunting-match lasted, a conspiracy was formed by Gueber Mo, his two brothers, Palambaras, Hannes, and several others, old officers belonging to the late king Yasous, who saw that he intended, one by one, to weed them out of the way as soon as safely he could, and that the whole power and favour was at last to fall into the hands of the Iteghé, and her brothers Dermin and Paulus. Accordingly one morning, the conspirators having surrounded him while riding, one of them thrust him through the body with a sword, and threw him from his mule upon the earth. They then laid his body upon a horse, and, with all possible expedition, carried him to the house of Azena Michael, where he arrived yet alive, but died immediately upon being taken from the horse. Badjerund Oustas, and some others of his father’s old officers, who had attached themselves to him after his father’s death, took the body of the king and buried it in Quebran.

As soon as this assassination was known, the master of the horse, with the few troops that he could gather together, came to the palace, and took a young son of Tecla Haimanout, aged only four years, whom he proclaimed king, and the Iteghé, Malacotawit, regent of the kingdom. But Badjerund Oustas, and those who had not been concerned in the murder of either king, went straight to the mountain of Wechné, and brought thence Tisilis, that is Theophilus, son to Hannes, and brother to the late king Yasous, whom they crowned at Emfras, and called him, by his inauguration name, Atserar Segued.

TIFILIS.

From 1706 to 1709.

_Dissembles with his Brother’s Assassins--Execution of the Regicides--Rebellion and Death of Tigi._

Theophilus, a few days after his coronation, having called the whole court and clergy together, declared to them, that his faith upon the disputable point concerning our Saviour’s incarnation was different from that of his brother Yasous, or that of his nephew Tecla Haimanout, but in every respect conformable to that of the monks of Gojam, followers of Abba Eustathius, and that of the Iteghè, Malacotawit, Dermin, and Paulus. A violent clamour was instantly raised against the king by the priests of Debra Libanos, as having forsaken the religious principles of his predecessors. But the king was inflexible; and this ingratiated him more with the inhabitants of Gojam. Not many days after, the king arrested the master of the horse, Johannes Palambaras, the Betwudet Tigi, and several others, all supposed to be concerned in the murder of the late king, and confined them in several places and prisons.

This last action of the king entirely relieved the minds of all the friends of Tecla Haimanout from any further fear of being called to account for the murder of Yasous; and, in consequence of this, the queen Malocotawit, with her brothers Dermin and Paulus, and all the murderers of the late king Yasous, came to Gondar that same winter to do homage to Theophilus, whom they now thought their greatest protector.

But the wise and sagacious king had kept his secret in his own bosom. All his behaviour hitherto had been only dissimulation, to induce his brother’s murderers to come within his power. And no sooner did he see that he had succeeded in this, than the very first day, while they were yet at audience, he ordered an officer, in his own presence, to arrest first the queen, and then her two brothers Dermin and Paulus. He gave the same directions concerning the rest of the conspirators, who were all scattered about Gondar, eating, drinking, and fearing nothing, but rejoicing at the happy days they had promised themselves, and were now to see: he ordered the whole of them, amounting to 37 persons, many of these of the first rank, to be all executed that same forenoon.

He began with the queen, who was taken immediately from his presence and hanged by the common hangman on the tree before the palace gate; the first of her rank, it is believed, that ever died so vile a death, either in Abyssinia or any other country, the history of which has come down to our hands. Dermin and Paulus were first carried to the tree to see their sister’s execution; after which, one after the other, they were thrust through with swords, the weapon with which they had wounded the late king Yasous. But the two Mahometans were shot with muskets, it having been in that manner they had ended the late king’s life, after Dermin had wounded him with a sword. As they had committed high treason, none of the bodies of these traitors were allowed to be buried; they were hewn in small pieces with knives, and strewed about the streets, to be eat by the hyænas and dogs; a most barbarous and offensive custom, to which they strictly adhere to this very day.

After having thus taken ample vengeance for the murder of his brother Yasous, Theophilus did not stop here. Tecla Haimanout was, it is true, a parricide, but he was likewise a king, and his nephew; nor did it seem just to Theophilus that it should be left in the will of private subjects, after having acknowledged Tecla Haimanout as their sovereign, to choose a time afterwards, in which they were to cut him off for a crime which, however great, had not hindered them from swearing allegiance to him at his accession, and entering into his service at the time when it was recently committed. He, therefore, ordered all the regicides in custody to be put to death; and sent circular letters to the several governors, that they should observe the same rule as to all those directly concerned in the murder of his nephew Tecla Haimanout, who should be found in places under their command.

Tigi, formerly Betwudet, had been imprisoned in Hamazen, a small district near the Red Sea, under the government of Abba Saluce. This man, by birth a Galla, had escaped from Hamazen, and collected a considerable army of the different tribes of his nation, Liban, Kalkend, and Basso; and, having found one that pretended to be of the royal blood, he proclaimed him king, and put his army in motion.

Upon the first news of this revolt, the king, though attended with few troops, immediately left Gondar, ordering all those whose duty it was to join him at Ibaba. Having there collected a little army, he marched immediately for the country of the Basso, destroying every thing with fire and sword. Tigi, in the mean time, by forced marches came to Ibaba, where he committed all sorts of cruelties without distinction of age or sex. The cries of the sufferers reached the king, who turned immediately back to the relief of Ibaba; and, not discouraged by his enemy’s great superiority of number, offered battle to them as soon as he arrived. Nor did Tigi and his Galla refuse it; but, on the 28th day of March 1709, a very obstinate engagement ensued; where, though the king was inferior in forces, yet being himself warlike and active, he was so well seconded by his troops that Basso and Liban were almost entirely cut off.

In the field of battle there was a church, built by the late king Yasous after a victory gained there over the Pagans, whence it had the name it then bore, Debra Mawea, or the _Mountain of Victory_. A large body of these Galla, seeing that all went against them in the field, fled to the church for a sanctuary, trusting to be protected from the fury of the soldiers by the holiness of the place, and they so far judged well; for the king’s troops, though they surrounded the church on every side, did not offer to break into it, or molest the enemy that had sheltered themselves within. Theophilus, informed of this scruple of his soldiers, immediately rode up to them, crying out, “That the church was defiled by the entrance of so many Pagans, and no longer fit for Christian worship, that they should therefore immediately put fire to it, and he would build a nobler one in its place.” The soldiers obeyed without further hesitation; and, with cotton wads wrapt about the balls of their guns, they set fire to the thatch, with which every church in Abyssinia is covered. The whole was instantly consumed, and every creature within it perished. Many principal officers and men of the best families on the king’s side, Billetana Gueta, Sana Denghel, and Billetana Gueta Kirubel, Ayto Stephenous, son of Ozoro Salla of Nara, all men of great consideration, were slain that day. What came of the rebel prince was never known. Tigi, with his two sons, fled from the field; but they were met by a peasant, who took them prisoners first; and, after discovering who they were, put them all three to death, and brought their heads to the king.

After so severe a rebuke, the Galla, on both sides of the Nile, seemed disposed to be quiet, and the king thereupon returned to Gondar amidst the acclamations of his soldiers and subjects; but scarce had he arrived in the capital when he was taken ill of a fever, and died on the 2d of September, and was buried at Tedda, after a reign of three years and three months.

OUSTAS.

From 1709 to 1714.

_Usurps the Crown--Addicted to hunting--Account of the
Shangalla--Active and bloody Reign--Entertains Catholic Priests
privately--Falls sick and dies; but how, uncertain._

It has been already observed in the course of this history, that the Abyssinians, from a very ancient tradition, attribute the foundation of their monarchy to Menilek son of Solomon, by the queen of Saba, or Azab, rendered in the Vulgate, the Queen of the south. The annals of this country mention but two interruptions to have happened, in the lineal succession of the heirs-male of Solomon. The first about the year 960, in the reign of Del Naad, by Judith queen of the Falasha, of which revolution we have already spoken sufficiently. The second interruption happened at the period to which we have now arrived in this history, and owed its origin, not to any misfortune that befel the royal family as in the massacre of Judith, but seemed to be brought about by the peculiar circumstances of the times, from a well-founded attention to self-preservation.

Yasous the Great, after a long and glorious reign, had been murdered by his son Tecla Haimanout. Two years after, this parricide fell in the same manner. The assassination of two princes, so nearly related, and in so short a time, had involved, from different motives, the greatest part of the noble families of the kingdom, either in the crime itself, or in the suspicion of aiding and abetting it.

Upon the death of Tecla Haimanout, Tifilis, or Theophilus, brother of Yasous, had been brought from the mountain, and placed on the throne as successor to his nephew; this prince was scarcely crowned when he made some very severe examples of the murderers of his brother, and he seemed privately taking informations that would have reached the whole of them, had not death put an end to his inquiries and to his justice.

The family of king Yasous was very numerous on the mountain. It was the favourite store whence both the soldiery and the citizens chose to bring their princes. There were, at the very instant, many of his sons princes of great hopes and of proper ages. Nothing then was more probable than that the prince, now to succeed, would be of that family, and, as such, interested in pursuing the same measures of vengeance on the murderers of his father and of his brother as the late king Theophilus had done; and how far, or to whom this might extend, was neither certain nor safe to trust to.

The time was now past when the nobles vied with each other who should be the first to steal away privately, or go with open force, to take the new king from the mountain, and bring him to Gondar, his capital: A backwardness was visible in the behaviour of each of them, because in each one’s breast the fear was the same.

In so uncommon a conjuncture and disposition of men’s minds, a subject had the ambition and boldness to offer himself for king, and he was accordingly elected. This was Oustas[80], son of Delba Yasous, by a daughter of the late king of that name; and Abyssinia now saw, for the second time, a stranger seated on the throne of Solomon. Oustas was a man of undisputed merit, and had filled the greatest offices in the state. He had been Badjerund, or master of the household, to the late king Yasous. Tecla Haimanout, who succeeded, had made him governor of Samen; and though, in the next reign, he had fallen into disgrace with Theophilus, this served but to aggrandize him more, as he was very soon after restored to favour, and by this very prince raised to the dignity of Ras, the first place under the king, and invested at once with the government of two provinces, Samen and Tigré. He was, at the death of Theophilus, the greatest subject in Abyssinia; one step higher set him on the throne, and the circumstances of the time invited him to take it. He had every quality of body and mind requisite for a king; but the constitution of his country had made it unlawful for him to reign. He took, upon his inauguration, the name of Tzai Segued.

Oustas, though a new king, followed the customs of the ancient monarchs of Abyssinia; for that very reason was unwilling to add novelty to novelty, and it has been a constant practice with these to make a public hunting-match the first expedition of their reign. On these occasions the king, attended by all the great officers of state, whose merit and capacity are already acknowledged, reviews his young nobility, who all appear to the best advantage as to arms, horses, and equipage, with the greatest number of servants and attendants. The scene of this hunting is always in the Kolla, crowded with an immense number of the largest and fiercest wild beasts, elephants, rhinoceros, lions, leopards, panthers, and buffaloes fiercer than them all, wild boars, wild asses, and many varieties of the deer kind.

As soon as the game is roused, and forced out of the wood by the footmen and dogs, they all singly, or several together, according to the size of the beast, or as strength and ability in managing their horses admit, attack the animal upon the plain with long pikes or spears, or two javelins in their hands. The king, unless very young, sits on horseback on a rising ground, surrounded by the graver sort, who point out to him the names of those of the nobility that are happy enough to distinguish themselves in his sight. The merit of others is known by report.

Each young man brings before the king’s tent, as a trophy, a part of the beast he has slain; the head and skin of a lion or leopard; the scalp or horns of a deer; the private parts of an elephant; the tail of a buffalo, or the horn of a rhinoceros. The great trouble, force, and time necessary to take out the teeth of the elephant, seldom make them ready to be presented with the rest of the spoils; fire, too, is necessary for loosing them from the jaw. The head of a boar is brought stuck upon a lance; but is not touched, as being unclean.

The elephant’s teeth are the king’s perquisites. Of these round ivory rings are turned for bracelets, and a quantity of them always brought by him to be distributed among the most deserving in the field, and kept ever after as certificates of gallant behaviour. Nor is this mark attended with honour alone. Any man who shall from the king, queen-regent, or governor of a province, receive so many of these rings as shall cover his arm down to his wrist, appears before the twelve judges on a certain day, and there, laying down his arm with these rings upon it, the king’s cook breaks every one in its turn with a kind of kitchen-cleaver, whereupon the judges give him a certificate, which proves that he is entitled to a territory, whose revenue must exceed 20 ounces of gold, and this is never either refused or delayed. All the different species of game, however, are not equally rated. He that slays a Galla, or Shangalla, man to man, is entitled to two rings; he that slays an elephant to two; a rhinoceros, two; a giraffa, on account of its speed, and to encourage horsemanship, two; a buffalo, two; a lion, two; a leopard, one; two boars, whose tusks are grown, one; and one for every four of the deer kind.

Great disputes constantly arise about the killing of these beasts; to determine which, and prevent feuds and quarrels, a council sits every evening, in which is an officer called _Dimshasha_, or _Red Cap_, from a piece of red silk he wears upon his forehead, leaving the top of his head bare, for no person is allowed to cover his head entirely except the king, the twelve judges, and dignified priests. This officer regulates the precedence of one nobleman over another, and is possessed of the history of all pedigrees, the noblest of which are always accounted those nearest to the king reigning.

Every man pleads his own cause before the council, and receives immediate sentence. It is a settled rule, that those who strike the animal first, if the lance remain upright, or in the same direction in which it enters the beast, are understood to be the slayers of the beast, whatever number combat with him afterwards. There is one exception, however, that if the beast, after receiving the first wound, tho’ the lance is in him, should lay hold of a horse or man, so that it is evident he would prevail against them; a buffalo, for example, that should toss a man with his horns, or an elephant that should take a horse with his trunk, the man who shall then slay the beast, and prevent or revenge the death of the man or horse attacked, shall be accounted the slayer of the beast, and entitled to the premium.

This was the ancient employment of these councils. In my time they kept up this custom in point of form; the council sat late upon most serious affairs of the nation; and the death, banishment, and degradation of the first men in the kingdom were agitated and determined here under the pretence of sitting to judge the prizes of pastimes. This hunting is seldom prolonged beyond a fortnight.

The king, from ocular inspection, is presumed to be able to choose among the young nobility those that are ready for taking the necessary charges in the army; and it is from his judgment in this that the priests foretel whether his reign is to be a successful one, or to end in misfortune and disappointment.

Oustas, having taken a view of his nobility, and attached such to him as were most necessary for his support, set out for this hunting with great preparations. The high country of Abyssinia is destitute of wood; the whole lower part of the mountains is sown with different sorts of grain; the upper part perfectly covered with grass and all sorts of verdure. There are no plains, or very small ones. Such a country, therefore, is unfit for hunting, as it is incapable of either sheltering or nourishing any number of wild beasts.

The lower country, however, called Kolla, is full of wood, consequently thinly inhabited. The mountains, not joined in chains or ridges, run in one upon the other, but, standing each upon its particular base, are accessible all round, and interspersed with plains. Great rivers falling from the high country with prodigious violence, during the tropical rains, have in the plains washed away the soil down to the solid rock, and formed large basons of great capacity, where, though the water becomes stagnant in pools when the currents fail above, yet, from their great depth and quantity, they resist being consumed by evaporation, being also thick covered with large shady trees whose leaves never fall. These large trees, which, in their growth, and vegetation of their branches, exceed any thing that our imagination can figure, are as necessary for food, as the pools of water are for cisterns to contain drink for those monstrous beasts, such as the elephant and rhinoceros, who there make their constant residence, and who would die with hunger and with thirst unless they were thus copiously supplied both with food and water.

This country, flat as the deserts on which it borders, has fat black earth for its soil. It is generally about 40 miles broad, though in many places broader and narrower. It reaches from the mountains of the Habab, or Bagla, which run in a ridge, as I have already said, from the south of Abyssinia[81] north down into Egypt, parallel to the Red Sea, dividing the rainy seasons, and it stretches like a belt from east to west to the banks of the Nile, encircling all the mountainous, or high land part of Abyssinia; which latter country is, at all times, temperate, and often cold, while the other is unwholesome, hazy, close, and intolerably hot.

Many nations of perfect blacks inhabit this low country, all Pagans, and mortal enemies to the Abyssinian government. Hunting these miserable wretches is the next expedition undertaken by a new king. The season of this is just before the rains, while the poor savage is yet lodged under the trees preparing his food for the approaching winter, before he retires into his caves in the mountain, where he passes that inclement season in constant confinement, but as constant security; for these nations are all Troglodytes, and by the Abyssinians are called Shangalla.

However Oustas succeeded in attaching to him those of the nobility that partook of his sports, his good fortune in the capital was not equal to it. A dangerous conspiracy was already forming at Gondar by those very people who had persuaded him to mount the throne, and whom he had left at home, from a persuasion that they only were to be trusted with the support of his interest and the government in his absence.

Upon the first intelligence, the king, with a chosen body of troops, entered Gondar in the night, and surprised the conspirators while actually sitting in council. Ras Hezekias, his prime minister, and Heraclides, master of his household, and five others of the principal confederates, lost their ears and noses, and were thrown into prison in such circumstances that they could not live. Benaia Basilé, one of the principal traitors, and the most obnoxious to the king, escaped for a time, having had already intelligence of Oustas’s coming.

The king having quieted every thing at Gondar, being at peace with all his neighbours, and having no other way to amuse his troops and keep them employed, set out to join the remainder of his young nobility whom he had left in the Kolla to attack the Shangalla.

The Shangalla were formerly a very numerous people, divided into distinct tribes, or, as it is called, different nations, living each separately in distinct territories, each under the government of the chief of its own name, and each family of that name under the jurisdiction of its own chief, or head.

These Shangalla, during the fair half of the year, live under the shade of trees, the lowest branches of which they cut near the stem on the upper part, and then bend, or break them down, planting the ends of the branches in the earth. These branches they cover with the skins of wild beasts. After this they cut away all the small or superfluous branches in the inside, and so form a spacious pavilion, which at a distance appears like a tent, the tree serving for the pole in the middle of it, and the large top overshadowing it so as to make a very picturesque appearance.

Every tree then is a house, under which live a multitude of black inhabitants until the tropical rains begin. It is then they hunt the elephant, which they kill by many various devices, as they do the rhinoceros and the other large creatures. Those who reside where water abounds, with the same industry kill the hippopotami, or river-horses, which are exceedingly numerous in the pools of the stagnant rivers. Where this flat belt, or country, is broadest, the trees thickest, and the water in the largest pools, there the most powerful nations live, who have often defeated the royal army of Abyssinia, and constantly laid waste, and sometimes nearly conquered, the provinces of Tigré and Siré, the most warlike and most populous part in Abyssinia.

The most considerable settlement of this nation is at Amba Tzaada, between the Mareb and Tacazzé, but nearer by one-third to the Mareb, and almost N. W. from Dobarwa. These people, who have a variety of venison, kill it in the fair months, and hang it up, cut into thongs as thick as a man’s thumb, like so many ropes, on the trees around them. The sun dries and hardens it to a consistence almost like leather, or the hardest fish sent from Newfoundland. This is their provision for the winter months: They first beat it with a wooden mallet, then boil it, after which they roast it upon the embers; and it is hard enough after it has undergone all those operations.

The Dobenah, the most powerful of all the Shangalla, who have a species of supremacy or command over all the rest of the nations, live altogether upon the elephant or rhinoceros. In other countries, where there is less water, fewer trees, and more grass, the Shangalla feed chiefly upon more promiscuous kinds of food, as buffaloes, deer, boars, lions, and serpents. These are the nations nearer the Tacazzé, Ras el Feel, and the plains of Siré in Abyssinia, the chief of which nations is called Baasa. And still farther west of the Tacazzé, and the valley of Waldubba, is a tribe of these, who live chiefly upon the crocodile, hippopotamus, and other fish; and, in the summer, upon locusts, which they boil first, and afterwards keep dry in baskets, most curiously made with split branches of trees, so closely woven together as to contain water almost as well as a wooden vessel.

This nation borders nearly upon the Abyssinian hunting-ground; but, not venturing to extend themselves in the chace of wild beasts, they are confined to the neighbourhood of the Tacazzé, and rivers falling into it, where they fish in safety: the banks of that river are deep, interrupted by steep precipices inaccessible to cavalry, and, from the thickness of the woods, full of thorny trees of innumerable species, almost as impervious to foot. These streams, possessed only by themselves, afford the Baasa the most excellent kinds of fish in the most prodigious plenty.

In that part of the Shangalla country more to the eastward, about N. N. E. of Amba Tzaada, in the northern extremities of the woody part, where the river Mareb, leaving Dobarwa, flows through thick bushes till it loses itself in the sands, there is a nation of these blacks, who being near the country of the Baharnagash, an officer whose province produces a number of horse, dare not, for that reason, venture to make an extensive use of the variety of wild beasts which throng in the woods to the southward, for fear of being intercepted by their enemy, constantly upon the watch for them, part of his tribute being paid in black slaves. These, therefore, confine themselves to the southern part of their territory, near the Barabra.

The extraordinary course of this river under the sand, allures to it multitudes of ostriches, which, too, are the food of the Shangalla, as is a beautiful lizard, never, that I know, yet described. These are the food of the eastern Shangalla; and I must here observe, that this country and people were much better known to the ancients than to us. The Egyptians traded with them, and caravans of these people were constantly in Alexandria in the reigns of the first Ptolemies. Most of the productions of these parts, and the people themselves, are mentioned in the remarkable procession made by Ptolemy Philadelphus on his accession to the throne of Egypt, as already observed, though a confusion often arises therein by this country being called by the name of India.

Ptolemy, the geographer, classes these people exactly enough, and distinguishes them very accurately by their particular food, or dietetique regimen, though he errs, indeed, a little in the particular situation he gives to the different nations. His Rhizophagi, Elephantophagi, Acridophagi, Struthiophagi, and Agriophagi, are all the clans I have just described, existing under the same habits to this day.

This soil, called by the Abyssinians _Mazaga_, when wet by the tropical rains, and dissolving into mire, forces these savages to seek for winter-quarters. Their tents under the trees being no longer tenable, they retire with their respective foods, all dried in the sun, into caves dug into the heart of the mountains, which are not in this country basaltes, marble, or alabaster, as is all that ridge which runs down into Egypt along the side of the Red Sea, but are of a soft, gritty, sandy stone, easily excavated and formed into different apartments. Into these, made generally in the steepest part of the mountain, do these savages retire to shun the rains, living upon the flesh they have already prepared in the fair weather.

I cannot give over the account of the Shangalla without delivering them again out of their caves, because this return includes the history of an operation never heard of perhaps in Europe, and by which considerable light is thrown upon ancient history. No sooner does the sun pass the zenith, going southward, than the rains instantly cease; and the thick canopy of clouds, which had obscured the sky during their continuance, being removed, the sun appears in a beautiful sky of pale blue, dappled with small thin clouds, which soon after disappear, and leave the heavens of a most beautiful azure. A very few days of the intense heat then dries the ground so perfectly, that it gapes in chasms; the grass, struck at the roots by the rays, supports itself no more, but droops and becomes parched. To clear this away, the Shangalla set fire to it, which runs with incredible violence the whole breadth of Africa, passing under the trees, and following the dry grass among the branches with such velocity as not to hurt the trees, but to occasion every leaf to fall.

A proper distance is preserved between each habitation, and round the principal watering-places; and here the Shangalla again fix their tents in the manner before described. Nothing can be more beautiful than these shady habitations; but they have this fatal effect, that they are discernible from the high grounds, and guide their enemies to the places inhabited.

The country now cleared, the hunting begins, and, with the hunting, the danger of the Shangalla. All the governors bordering upon the country, from the Baharnagash to the Nile on the west, are obliged to pay a certain number of slaves. Ras el Feel (my government) was alone excepted, for a reason which, had I staid much longer in the country, would probably have been found more advantageous to Abyssinia than all the slaves they procure by the barbarous and prodigal effusion of the blood of these unhappy savages; for, when a settlement of these is surprised, the men are all slaughtered; the women, also, are many of them slain, many throw themselves down precipices, run mad, hang themselves, or starve, obstinately refusing food.

The boys and girls under 17 and 18 years of age, (the younger the better) are taken and educated by the king, and are servants in all the great houses of Abyssinia. They are instructed early in the Christian religion, and the tallest, handsomest, and best inclined, are the only servants that attend the royal person in his palace. The number of the men was 300 that had horses in my time. They were once 280, and, before my time, less than 200. These are all cloathed in coats of mail, and mounted on black horses; always commanded by foreigners devoted entirely to the king’s will. By strict attention to their morals, removing all bad examples from among them, giving premiums to those that read most and best, (for they had all time enough upon their hands, especially in winter) and, above all, by the great delight and pleasure the king used to take in conversing with them while alone, countenancing and rewarding them in the line he knew I followed, this body became, as to firmness and coolness in action, equal perhaps to any of the same number in the world; and the greatest difficulty was keeping them together, for all the great men used to wish one of them for the charge of his door, which is a very great trust among the Abyssinians. The king’s easiness was constantly prevailed upon to promise such, and great inconvenience always followed this, till Ras Michael discharged this practice by proclamation, and set the example, by returning four that he himself had kept for the purpose before mentioned.

While what I have said is still in memory, I must apply a part of it to explain a passage in Hanno’s Periplus. We saw, says that bold navigator, when rowing close along the coast of Africa, rivers of fire, which ran down from the highest mountains, and poured themselves into the sea; this alarmed him so much, that he ordered his gallies to keep a considerable offing.

After the fire has consumed all the dry grass on the plain, and, from it, done the same up to the top of the highest mountain, the large ravines, or gullies, made by the torrents falling from the higher ground, being shaded by their depth, and their being in possession of the last water that runs, are the latest to take fire, though full of every sort of herbage. The large bamboos, hollow canes, and such like plants, growing as thick as they can stand, retain their greenness, and are not dried enough for burning till the fire has cleared the grass from all the rest of the country. At last, when no other fuel remains, the herdsmen on the top of the mountains set fire to these, and the fire runs down in the very path in which, some months before, the water ran, filling the whole gully with flame, which does not end till it is checked by the ocean below where the torrent of water entered, and where the fuel of course ceases. This I have often seen myself, and been often nearly inclosed in it, and can bear witness, that, at a distance, and by a stranger ignorant of the cause, it would very hardly be distinguished from a river of fire.

The Shangalla go all naked; they have several wives, and these very prolific. They bring forth children with the utmost ease, and never rest or confine themselves after delivery, but washing themselves and the child with cold water, they wrap it up in a soft cloth made of the bark of trees, and hang it upon a branch, that the large ants, with which they are infested, and the serpents, may not devour it. After a few days, when it has gathered strength, the mother carries it in the same cloth upon her back, and gives it suck with the breast, which she throws over her shoulder, this part being of such a length as, in some, to reach almost to their knees.

The Shangalla have but one language, and of a very guttural pronunciation. They worship various trees, serpents, the moon, planets, and stars in certain positions, which I never could so perfectly understand as to give any account of them. A star passing near the horns of the moon denotes the coming of an enemy. They have priests, or rather diviners; but it should seem that these were looked upon as servants of the evil-being, rather than of the good. They prophecy bad events, and think they can afflict their enemies with sickness, even at a distance. They generally wear copper bracelets upon their wrists and arms.

I have said the Shangalla have each several wives. This, however, is not owing to any inordinate propensity of the men to this gratification, but to a much nobler cause, which should make European writers, who object this to them, ashamed at the injustice they do the savage, who all his life, quite the reverse of what is supposed, shews an example of continence and chastity, which the purest and most refined European, with all the advantages of education, cannot pretend to imitate.

It is not the men that seek to avail themselves of the liberty they have by their usages of marrying as often and as many wives as they please. Hemmed in on every side by active and powerful enemies, who consider them as a species of wild beasts, and hunt them precisely as they do the elephant and rhinoceros, placed in a small territory, where they never are removed above 20 miles from these powerful invaders furnished with horses and fire-arms, to both of which they are strangers, they live for part of the fair season in continual apprehension. The other part of the season, when the Abyssinian armies are all collected and abroad with the king, these unhappy savages are constantly employed in a most laborious hunting of large animals, such as the rhinoceros, the elephant, and giraffa; and afterwards, in the no less laborious preparation of the flesh of these quadrupeds, which is to serve them for food during the six months rains, when each family retires to its separate cave in the mountain, and has no intercourse with any of its neighbours, but leaves the country below immersed in a continual deluge of rain. In none of these circumstances, one should imagine, the savage, full of apprehension and care, could have much desire to multiply a race of such wretched beings as he feels himself to be. It is the wife, not the man, that is the cause of this polygamy; and this is surely a strong presumption against what is commonly said of the violence of their inclinations.

Although the Shangalla live in separate tribes, or nations, yet these nations are again subdivided into families, who are governed by their own head, or chief, and of a number of these the nation is composed, who concur in all that regards the measures of defence and offence against their common enemy the Abyssinian and Arab. Whenever an expedition is undertaken by a nation of Shangalla, either against their enemies, the Arabs on the north, or those who are equally their enemies, the Abyssinians on the south, suppose the nation or tribe to be the Baasa, each family attacks and defends by itself, and theirs is the spoil or plunder who take it.

The mothers, sensible of the disadvantage of a small family, therefore seek to multiply and increase it by the only means in their power; and it is by their importunity that the husband suffers himself to be overcome. A second wife is courted for him by the first, in nearly the same manner as among the Galla.

I will not fear to aver, as far as concerns these Shangalla, or negroes, of Abyssinia, (and, I believe, most others of the same complexion, though of different nations), that the various accounts we have of them are very unfairly stated. To describe them justly, we should see them in their native purity of manners, among their native woods, living on the produce of their own daily labours, without other liquor than that of their own pools and springs, the drinking of which is followed by no intoxication or other pleasure than that of assuaging thirst. After having been torn from their own country and connections, reduced to the condition of brutes, to labour for a being they never before knew; after lying, stealing, and all the long list of European crimes, have been made, as it were, necessary to them, and the delusion occasioned by drinking spirits is found, however short, to be the only remedy that relieves them from reflecting on their present wretched situation, to which, for that reason, they most naturally attach themselves; then, after we have made them monsters, we describe them as such, forgetful that they are now not as their Maker created them, but such as, by teaching them our vices, we have transformed them into, for ends which, I fear, one day will not be found a sufficient excuse for the enormities they have occasioned.

I would not, by any means, have my readers so far mistake what I have now said as to think it contains either censure upon, or disapprobation of, the slave-trade. I would be understood to mean just the contrary; that the abuses and neglect of manners, so frequent in our plantations, is what the legislature should direct their coercion against, not against the trade in general, which last measure, executed so suddenly, cannot but contain a degree of injustice towards individuals. It is a shame for any government to say, that enormous cruelties towards any set of men are so evident, and have arrived to such excess, without once having been under consideration of the legislature to correct them. It is a greater shame still for that government to say, that these crimes and abuses are now grown to such a height that wholesome severity cannot eradicate them; and it cannot be any thing but an indication of effeminacy and weakness at once to fall to the destruction of an object of that importance, without having first tried a reformation of those abuses which alone, in the minds of sober men, can make the trade exceptionable.

The incontinence of these people has been a favourite topic with which blacks have been branded; but, throughout the whole of this history, I have set down only what I have observed, without consulting or troubling myself with the systems or authorities of others, only so far, as having these relations in my recollection, I have compared them with the fact, and found them erroneous. As late as two centuries ago, Christian priests were the only historians of heathen manners.

In the number of these Shangalla, or negroes, of which every department of Gondar was full, I never saw any proof of unbridled desires in either sex, but very much the contrary; and I must remark, that every reason in physics strongly militates against the presumption.

The Shangalla of both sexes, while single, go entirely naked: the married men, indeed, have a very slender covering about their waist, and married women the same. Young men and young women, till long past the age of puberty, are totally uncovered, and in constant conversation and habits with each other, in woods and solitudes, free from constraint, and without any punishment annexed to the transgression. Yet criminal commerce is much less frequent among them than in the same number chosen among Christian nations, where the powerful prejudices of education give great advantage to one sex in subduing their passions, and where the consequences of gratification, which always involve some kind of punishment, keep within bounds the desires of the other.

No one can doubt, but that the constant habit of seeing people of all ages naked at all times, in the ordinary transactions and necessities of life, must greatly check unchaste propensities. But there are still further reasons why, in the nature of things an extraordinary vehemence of passion should not fall to be a distinguishing characteristic among the Shangalla. Fahrenheit’s thermometer rises there beyond 100°. A violent relaxation from profuse perspiration must greatly debilitate the savage. In Arabia and Turkey, where the whole business of man’s life is the devoting himself to domestic pleasure, men remain constantly in a sedentary life, eat heartily, avoiding every manner of exercise, or expence of animal spirits by sweats. Their countries, too, are colder than that of the Shangalla, who, living sparingly under a burning sun, and obliged to procure food by laborious hunting, of consequence deprive themselves of that quantity of animal spirits necessary to lead them to any extreme of voluptuousness. And that this is the case is seen in the constitution of the Shangalla women, even though they are without fatigue.

A woman, upon bearing a child or two, at 10 or 11 years old, sees her breast fall immediately down to near her knees[82]. Her common manner of suckling her children is by carrying them upon her back, as our beggars do, and giving the infant the breast over her shoulders. They rarely are mothers after 22, or begin child-bearing before they are 10; so that the time of child-bearing is but 12 years. In Europe, very many examples there are of women bearing children at 14, the civil law fixes puberty at 12, but by an inuendo[83] seems to allow it may be something earlier. Women sometimes in Europe bear children at 50. The scale of years of child-bearing between the savage and the European is, therefore, as 12 is to 38. There can be little doubt but their desires are equal to their strength and constitution; but a Shangalla at 22 is more wrinkled and deformed, apparently by old age, than is a European woman of 60.

To come still nearer; it is a fact known to naturalists, and which the application of the thermometer sufficiently indicates, that there is a great and sensible difference in the degree of animal heat in both sexes of different nations at the same ages or time of life. The voluptuous Turk estranges himself from the fairest and finest of his Circassian and Georgian women in his seraglio, and, during the warm months in summer, addicts himself only to negro slaves brought from the very latitudes we are now speaking of; the sensible difference of the coolness of their skins leading him to give them the preference at that season. On the other hand, one brown Abyssinian girl, a companion for the winter months, is sold at ten times the price of the fairest Georgian or Circassian beauty, for opposite reasons.

The very great regard I shall constantly pay my fair readers has made me, as they may perceive, enter as tenderly as possible into these discussions, which, as a philosopher and a historian, I could not, however, wholly omit: the most useful study of mankind is man; and not the least interesting view of him is when, stripped of his vain-glory and the pageantry of palaces, he wanders naked and uncorrupted among his native woods and rivers.

I must mention, greatly to the credit of two of the first geniuses of this age, M. de Buffon and Lord Kaimes, that they were both so convinced by the arguments above mentioned, stated in greater detail and with more freedom, that they immediately ordered their bookseller to strike out from the subsequent editions of their work all that had been advanced against the negroes on this head, which they had before drawn from the herd of prejudiced and ignorant compilers, strangers to the manners and language of the people they were dishonouring by their descriptions, after having before abused them by their tyranny.

The Shangalla have no bread: No grain or pulse will grow in the country. Some of the Arabs, settled at Ras el Feel, have attempted to make bread of the feed of the Guinea grass; but it is very tasteless and bad, of the colour of cow-dung, and quickly producing worms.

They are all archers from their infancy. Their bows are all made of wild fennel, thicker than the common proportion, and about seven feet long, and very elastic. The children use the same bow in their infancy that they do when grown up; and are, by reason of its length, for the first years, obliged to hold it parallel, instead of perpendicular to the horizon. Their arrows are full a yard and a half long, with large heads of very bad iron rudely shaped. They are, indeed, the only savages I ever knew that take no pains in the make or ornament of this weapon. A branch of a palm, stript from the tree and made straight, becomes an arrow; and none of them have wings to them. They have this remarkable custom, which is a religious one, that they fix upon their bows a ring, or thong, of the skin of every beast slain by it, while it is yet raw, from the lizard and serpent up to the elephant. This gradually stiffens the bow, till, being all covered over, it can be no longer bent even by its master. That bow is then hung upon a tree, and a new one is made in its place, till the same circumstance again happens; and one of these bows, that which its master liked best, is buried with him in the hopes of its rising again materially with his body, when he shall be endowed with a greater degree of strength, without fear of death, or being subjected to pain, with a capacity to enjoy in excess every human pleasure. There is nothing, however, spiritual in this resurrection, nor what concerns the soul, but it is wholly corporeal and material; although some writers have plumed themselves upon their fancied discovery of what they call the savages belief of the immortality of the soul.

Before I take leave of this subject, I must again explain, from what I have already said, a difficult passage in classical history. Herodotus[84] says, that, in the country we have been just now describing, there was a nation called Macrobii, which was certainly not the real name of the Shangalla, but one the Greeks had given them, from a supposed circumstance of their being remarkable long livers, as that name imports. These were the western Shangalla, situated below Guba and Nuba, the gold country, on both sides of the Nile north of Fazuclo.

The Guba and the Nuba, and various black nations that inhabits the foot of that large chain of mountains called Dyre and Tegla[85], are those in whose countries the finest gold is found, which is washed from the mountains in the time of violent rains, and lodged in holes, and roots of trees and grass, by the torrents, and there picked up by the natives; it is called Tibbar, or, corruptly, gold-dust. The greatest part finds its way to Sennaar by the different merchants, Pagan and Mahometan, from Fazuclo and Sudan. The Agows and Gibbertis also bring a small quantity of it to Gondar, mostly debased by alloy; but there is no gold in Abyssinia, nor even in Nubia, west of Tchelga, among the Shangalla themselves.