Chapter XII: Book V (10)

Thus, in Persia, we read that Ahasuerus loved Esther[52], who had found grace in his sight more than the other virgins, and he had placed a golden crown upon her head. And Josephus[53] informs us, that, when Esther[54] was brought before the king, he was exceedingly delighted with her, and made her his lawful wife, and when she came into the palace he put a crown upon her head: whether placing the crown upon the queen’s head had any civil effect as to regency in Persia as it had in Abyssinia, is what history does not inform us.

I have already observed, that there is an officer called Serach Massery, who watches before the king’s gate all night, and at the dawn of day cracks a whip to chace the wild beasts out of the town. This, too, is the signal for the king to rise, and sit down in his judgment-seat. The same custom was observed in Persia. Early in the morning an officer entered the king’s chamber, and said to him “Arise, O king! and take charge of those matters which Oromasdes has appointed you to the care of.”

The king of Abyssinia never is seen to walk, nor to set his foot upon the ground, out of his palace; and when he would dismount from the horse or mule on which he rides, he has a servant with a stool, who places it properly for him for that purpose. He rides into the anti-chamber to the foot of his throne, or to the stool placed in the alcove of his tent. We are told by Athenaeus[55], such was the practice in Persia, whose king never set his foot upon the ground out of his palace.

The king of Abyssinia very often judges capital crimes himself. It is reckoned a favourable judicature, such as, Claudian says, that of a king in person should be, “_Piger ad pœnas, ad præmia velox_.” No man is condemned by the king in person to die for the first fault, unless the crime be of a horrid nature, such as parricide or sacrilege. And, in general, the life and merits of the prisoner are weighed against his immediate guilt; so that if his first behaviour has had more merit towards the state than his present delinquency is thought to have injured it, the one is placed fairly against the other, and the accused is generally absolved when the sovereign judges alone.

Herodotus[56] praises this as a maxim of the kings of Persia in capital judgments, almost in the very words that I have just now used; and he gives an instance of it:--Darius had condemned Sandoces, one of the king’s judges, to be crucified for corruption, that is, for having given false judgment for a bribe. The man was already hung up on the cross, when the king, considering with himself how many good services he had done, previous to this, the only offence which he had committed, ordered him to be pardoned.

The Persian king, in all expeditions, was attended by judges. We find in Herodotus[57], that, in the expedition of Cambyses, ten of the principal Egyptians were condemned to die by these judges for every Persian that had been slain by the people of Memphis. Six judges always attend the king of Abyssinia to the camp, and, before them, rebels taken on the field are tried and punished on the spot.

People that the king distinguished by favour, or for any public action, were in both kingdoms presented with gold chains, swords, and bracelets[58]. These in Abyssinia are understood to be chiefly rewards of military service; yet Poncet received a gold chain from Yasous the Great. The day before the battle of Serbraxos, Ayto Engedan received a silver bridle and saddle, covered with silver plates, from Ras Michael; and the night after that battle I was myself honoured with a gold chain from the king upon my reconciliation with Guebra Mascal, who, for his behaviour that day, had a large revenue most deservedly assigned to him, and a considerable territory, consisting of a number of rich villages, a present known to be more agreeable to him than a mere mark of honour.

A stranger of fashion, particularly recommended as I was, not needy in point of money, nor depending from day to day upon government for subsistence, is generally provided with one or more villages to furnish him with what articles he may need, without being obliged to have recourse to the king or his ministers for every necessary. Amha Yasous, prince of Shoa, had a large and a royal village, Emfras, given him to supply him with food for his table; he had another village in Karoota for wine; a village in Dembea, the king’s own province, for his wheat; and another in Begemder for cotton cloths for his servants; and so of the rest. After I was in the king’s service I had the villages that belonged to the posts I occupied; and one called Geesh, in which arises the sources of the Nile, a village of about 18 houses, given me by the king at my own request; for I might have had a better to furnish me with honey, and confirmed to me by the rebel Waragna Fasil, who never suffered me to grow rich by my rents, having never allowed me to receive but two large jars, so bitter with lupines that they were of no sort of use to me. I was a gentle master, nor ever likely to be opulent from the revenues of that country; and more especially so, as I had under me, as my lieutenant[59], an officer commanding the horse, whose thoughts were much more upon Jerusalem and the holy sepulchre than any gains he could get in Abyssinia by his employments.

Thucydides[60] informs us, that Themistocles had received great gifts from Artaxerxes king of Persia, when settled at Magnesia; the king had given him that city for bread, Lampsacus for wine, and Myuns to furnish him with victuals. To these Athenaeus adds two more, Palæscepsis and Percope, to yield him clothing and furniture. This precisely, to this day, is the Abyssinian idea, when they conceive they are entertaining men of rank; for strangers, that come naked and vagabond among them, without name and character, or means of subsistence, such as the Greeks in Abyssinia, are always received as beggars, and neglected as such, till hunger sets their wits to work to provide for the present exigency, and low intrigues and practices are employed afterwards to maintain them in the little advancements which they have acquired, but no honour or confidence follows, or very rarely.

In Abyssinia, when the prisoner is condemned in capital cases, he is not again remitted to prison, which is thought cruel, but he is immediately carried away, and the sentence executed upon him. I have given several instances of this in the annals of the country. Abba Salama, the Acab Saat, was condemned by the king the morning he entered Gondar, on his return from Tigré, and immediately hanged, in the garment of a priest, on a tree at the door of the king’s palace. Chremation, brother to the usurper Socinios, was executed that same morning; Guebra Denghel, Ras Michael’s son-in-law, was likewise executed that same day, immediately after judgment; and so were several others. The same was the practice in Persia, as we learn from Xenophon[61], and more plainly from Diodorus[62].

The capital punishments in Abyssinia are the cross. Socinios[63] first ordered Arzo, his competitor, who had fled for assistance and refuge to Phineas king of the Falasha, to be crucified without the camp. We find the same punishment inflicted by Artaxerxes upon Haman[64], who was ordered to be affixed to the cross till he died. And Polycrates of Samos, Cicero tells us[65], was crucified by order of Orætis, prætor of Darius.

The next capital punishment is flaying alive. That this barbarous execution still prevails in Abyssinia is already proved by the fate of the unfortunate Woosheka, taken prisoner in the campaign of 1769 while I was in Abyssinia; a sacrifice made to the vengeance of the beautiful Ozoro Esther, who, kind and humane as she was in other respects, could receive no atonement for the death of her husband. Socrates[66] says, that Manes the heretic was flayed alive by order of the king of Persia, and his skin made into a bottle. And Procopius[67] informs us, that Pacurius ordered Basicius to be flayed alive, and his skin made into a bottle and hung upon a high tree. And Agathias[68] mentions, that the same punishment was inflicted upon Nachorages _more majorum_, according to ancient custom.

Lapidation, or stoning to death, is the next capital punishment in Abyssinia. This is chiefly inflicted upon strangers called _Franks_, for religious causes. The Catholic priests in Abyssinia that have been detected there, in these latter days, have been stoned to death, and their bodies lie still in the streets of Gondar, in the squares or waste-places, covered with the heaps of stones which occasioned their death by being thrown at them. There are three of these heaps at the church of Abbo, all covering Franciscan friars; and, besides them, a small pyramid over a boy who was stoned to death with them, about the first year of the reign of David the IV.[69] This boy was one of four sons that one of the Franciscan friars had had by an Abyssinian woman in the reign of Oustas. In Persia we find, that Pagorasus (according to Ctesias[70]) was stoned to death by the order of the king; and the same author says, that Pharnacyas, one of the murderers of Xerxes, was stoned to death likewise.

Among capital punishments may be reckoned likewise the plucking out of the eyes, a cruelty which I have but too often seen committed in the short stay that I made in Abyssinia. This is generally inflicted upon rebels. I have already mentioned, that, after the slaughter of the battle of Fagitta, twelve chiefs of the Pagan Galla, taken prisoners by Ras Michael, had their eyes torn out, and were afterwards abandoned to starve in the valleys below the town. Several prisoners of another rank, noblemen of Tigré, underwent the same misfortune; and, what is wonderful, not one of them died in the operation, nor its consequences, though performed in the coarsest manner with an iron forceps, or pincers. Xenophon[71] tells us, that this was one of the punishments used by Cyrus. And Ammianus Marcellinus[72] mentions, that Sapor king of Persia banished Arsaces, whom he had taken prisoner to a certain castle, after having pulled out his eyes.

The dead bodies of criminals slain for treason, murder, and violence, on the high-way at certain times, are seldom buried in Abyssinia. The streets of Gondar are strewed with pieces of their carcases, which bring the wild beasts in multitudes into the city as soon as it becomes dark, so that it is scarcely possible for any to walk in the night. Too many instances of this kind will be found throughout my narrative. The dogs used to bring pieces of human bodies into the house, and court-yard, to eat them in greater security. This was most disgustful to me, but so often repeated, that I was obliged to leave them in possession of such fragments. We learn from Quintus Curtius[73], that Darius having ordered Charidamus to be put to death, and finding afterwards that he was innocent, endeavoured to stop the executioner, though it was too late, as they had already cut his throat; but, in token of repentance, the king allowed him the liberty of burial.

I have taken notice, up and down throughout my history, that the Abyssinians never fight in the night. This too was a rule among the Persians[74].

Notwithstanding the Abyssinians were so anciently and nearly connected with Egypt, they never seem to have made use of paper, or papyrus, but imitated the practice of the Persians, who wrote upon skins, and they do so this day. This arises from their having early been Jews. In Parthia, likewise, Pliny[75] informs us, the use of papyrus was absolutely unknown; and though it was discovered that papyrus grew in the Euphrates, near Babylon, of which they could make paper, they obstinately rather chose to adhere to their ancient custom of weaving their letters on cloth of which they made their garments. The Persians, moreover, made use of parchment for their records[76], to which all their remarkable transactions were trusted; and to this it is probably owing we have so many of their customs preserved to this day. Diodorus Siculus[77], speaking of Ctesias, says, he verified every thing from the royal parchments themselves, which, in obedience to a certain law, are all placed in order, and afterwards were communicated to the Greeks.

From this great resemblance in customs between the Persians and Abyssinians following the fashionable way of judging about the origin of nations, I should boldly conclude that the Abyssinians were a colony of Persians, but this is very well known to be without foundation. The customs, mentioned as only peculiar to Persia, were common to all the east; and they were lost when those countries were over-run and conquered by those who introduced barbarous customs of their own. The reason why we have so much left of the Persian customs is, that they were written, and so not liable to alteration; and, being on parchment, did also contribute to their preservation. The history which treats of those ancient and polished nations has preserved few fragments of their manners entire from the ruins of time; while Abyssinia, at war with nobody, or at war with itself only, has preserved the ancient customs which it enjoyed in common with all the east, and which were only lost in other kingdoms by the invasion of strangers, a misfortune Abyssinia has never suffered since the introduction of letters.

Before I finish what I have to say upon the manners of this nation, having shewn that they are the same people with the ancient Egyptians, I would inquire, whether there is the same conformity of rules in the dietetique regimen, between them and Egypt, that we should expect to find from such relation? This is a much surer way of judging than by resemblance of external customs.

The old Egyptians, as we are told by sacred scripture, did not eat with strangers; but I believe the observation is extended farther than ever scripture meant. The instance given of Joseph’s brethren not being allowed to eat with the Egyptians was, because Joseph had told Pharaoh that his brethren[78], and Jacob his father, were shepherds, that he might get from the Egyptians the land of Goshen, a land, as the name imports, of pasturage and grass, which the Nile never overflowed, and it was therefore in possession of the shepherds. Now the shepherds, we are told, were the direct natural enemies of the Egyptians who lived in towns. The shepherds also sacrificed the god whom the Egyptians worshipped. We cannot (says Moses[79]) sacrifice in this land the abomination of the Egyptians, lest they stone us. If the Egyptians did not eat with them, so neither would they with the Egyptians; but it is a mistake that the Egyptians did not eat flesh as well as the shepherds, it was only the flesh of certain animals they differed on, and did not eat.

The Egyptians worshipped the cow[80], and the shepherds lived upon her flesh, which made them a separate people, that could not eat nor communicate together; and the very knowledge of this was, as we are informed by scripture, the reason why Joseph told Pharaoh, when he asked him what profession his brethren were of, “Your servants, says Joseph, are shepherds, and their employment the feeding of cattle;” and this was given out, that the land of Goshen might be allotted to them, and so they and their descendents be kept separate from the Egyptians, and not exposed to mingle in their abominations. Or, though they had abstained from these abominations, they could not kill cattle for sacrifice or for food. They would have raised ill-will against themselves, and, as Moses says, would have been stoned, and so the end of bringing them to Goshen would have been frustrated, which was to nurse them in a plentiful land, in peace and security, till they should attain to be a mighty people, capable of subduing and filling the land to which, at the end of their captivity, God was to lead them.

The Abyssinians neither eat nor drink with strangers, though they have no reason for this; and it is now a mere prejudice, because the old occasion for this regulation is lost. They break, or purify, however, every vessel a stranger of any kind shall have ate or drank in. The custom then is copied from the Egyptians, and they have preserved it, tho’ the Egyptian reason does no longer hold.

Some historians say, the Egyptian women anciently enjoyed a full liberty of intercourse with the males, which was not the case in the generality of eastern nations; and we must, therefore, think it was derived from Abyssinia; for there the women live, as it were, in common, and their enjoyments and gratification have no other bounds but their own will. They, however, pretend to have a principle, that, if they marry, they should be wives of one husband; and yet this principle does not bind, but, like most of the other duties, serves to reason upon, and to laugh at, in conversation. Herodotus tells it was the same with the Egyptians[81].

The Egyptians made no account of the mother what her state was; if the father was free, the child followed the condition of the father. This is strictly so in Abyssinia. The king’s child by a negro-slave, bought with money, or taken in war, is as near in succeeding to the crown, as any one of twenty children that he has older than that one, and born of the noblest women of the country.

The men in Egypt[82] did neither buy nor sell; the same is the case in Abyssinia at this day. It is infamy for a man to go to market to buy any thing. He cannot carry water or bake bread; but he must wash the cloaths belonging to both sexes, and, in this function, the women cannot help him. In Abyssinia the men carried their burdens on their heads, the women on their shoulders, and this difference, we are told, obtained in Egypt[83]. It is plain, that this buying, in the public market, by women, must have ended whenever jealousy or sequestration of that sex began; for this reason it ended early in Egypt, but, for the opposite reason, it subsists in Abyssinia to this day.

It was a sort of impiety in Egypt to eat a calf; and the reason was plain, they worshipped the cow. In Abyssinia, to this day, no man eats veal, although every one very willingly eats a cow. The Egyptian[84] reason no longer subsists as in the former case, but the prejudice remains, though they have forgot the reason.

The Abyssinians eat no wild or water-fowl, not even the goose, which was a great delicacy in Egypt. The reason of this is, that, upon their conversion to Judaism, they were forced to relinquish their ancient municipal customs, as far as they were contrary to the Mosaical law; and the animals, in their country, not corresponding in form, kind, nor name, with those mentioned in the Septuagint, or original Hebrew, it has followed, that there are many of each class that know not whether they are clean or not; and a wonderful confusion and uncertainty has followed through ignorance or mistake, being unwilling to violate the law in any one instance through not understanding it.

The abhorrence of the old Egyptians for the bean is well known, and many silly reasons have been assigned for it; but that which has most met the approbation of the most learned men is, in my humble opinion, the weakest of them all. They say, the aversion to the bean arose from its resembling the phallus; but the crux ansata, or the cross with the handle to it, which is put in the hand of every Egyptian hieroglyphic of Isis, Osiris, or whatever the priests have called them, is likewise agreed by the learned to represent the phallus; and the figure of these nudities, without vail or concealment, is plain in all their statues. Now, I would ask, What is the reason why they abhor a bean because it represents these parts which, at the same time, by their own option or choice, are exposed in the hand or person of every figure which they exhibit to public view? The bean, however, is not cultivated in Abyssinia, neither is it in Egypt; lupines grow up in both, and lupines in both are eradicated like a weed, and lupines were what is called _faba Ægyptiaca_.

Though I cannot pretend to know the true reason of this, yet I will venture to give a guess:--The origin of great part of religious observances of Egypt began with the worship of the Nile, and probably at the head of it. The country of the Agows, as well where the Nile rises as in parts more distant, is all a honey country; not only their whole sustenance, but their trade, their tribute to the king, and the maintenance of a great part of the capital, depends upon honey and butter, the common food of the better sort of people when they do not eat flesh; it composes their drink also in mead or hydromel. Now, this country, when uncultivated, naturally produces lupines, and the blossoms of these becoming food for the bees, gives the honey such a bitterness that no person will eat it, or use it any way in food or for drink.--After the king had bestowed the village of Geesh upon me, though with the consent of Fasil its governor, that egregious shuffler, to make the present of no use to me, sent me, indeed, the tribute of the honey in very large jars, but it all tasted so much of the lupines that it was of no earthly use whatever. Their constant attention is to weed out this bitter plant; and, when any of those countries are desolated by war, we may expect a large crop of lupines immediately to follow, and, for a time, plenty of bad honey in consequence. It is, then, this destructive bean that Pythagoras, who, it is said, ate no flesh, regarded as an object of detestation; it was equally so among the Abyssinians and Egyptians for the same reason. Both nations, moreover, have an aversion to hogs flesh, and both avoid the touch of dogs.

It is here I propose to take notice of an unnatural custom which prevails universally in Abyssinia, and which in early ages seems to have been common to the whole world. I did not think that any person of moderate knowledge in profane learning could have been ignorant of this remarkable custom among the nations of the east. But what still more surprised me, and is the least pardonable part of the whole, was the ignorance of part of the law of God, the earliest that was given to man, the most frequently noted, insisted upon, and prohibited. I have said, in the course of the narrative of my journey from Masuah, that, a small distance from Axum, I overtook on the way three travellers, who seemed to be soldiers, driving a cow before them. They halted at a brook, threw down the beast, and one of them cut a pretty large collop of flesh from its buttocks, after which they drove the cow gently on as before. A violent outcry was raised in England at hearing this circumstance, which they did not hesitate to pronounce _impossible_, when the manners and customs of Abyssinia were to them utterly unknown. The Jesuits, established in Abyssinia for above a hundred years, had told them of that people eating, what they call raw meat, in every page, and yet they were ignorant of this. Poncet, too, had done the same, but Poncet they had not read; and if any writer upon Ethiopia had omitted to mention it, it was because it was one of those facts too notorious to be repeated to swell a volume.

It must be from prejudice alone we condemn the eating of raw flesh; no precept, divine or human, that I know, forbids it; and if it is true, as later travellers have discovered, that there are nations ignorant of the use of fire, any law against eating raw flesh could never have been intended by God as obligatory upon mankind in general. At any rate, it is certainly not clearly known, whether the eating raw flesh was not an earlier and more general practice than by preparing it with fire; I think it was.

Many wise and learned men have doubted whether it was at first permitted to man to eat animal food at all. I do not pretend to give any opinion upon the subject, but many topics have been maintained successfully upon much more slender grounds. God, the author of life, and the best judge of what was proper to maintain it, gave this regimen to our first parents--“Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be for meat[85].” And though, immediately after, he mentions both beasts and fowls, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, he does not say that he has designed any of these as meat for man. On the contrary, he seems to have intended the vegetable creation as food for both man and beast--“And to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein _there is life_, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so[86].” After the flood, when mankind began to repossess the earth, God gave Noah a much more extensive permission--“Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things[87].”

As the criterion of judging of their aptitude for food was declared to be their _moving_ and having _life_, a danger appeared of misinterpretation, and that these creatures should be used living; a thing which God by no means intended, and therefore, immediately after, it is said, “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat[88];” or, as it is rendered by the best interpreters, ‘Flesh, or members, torn from living animals having the blood in them, thou shalt not eat.’ We see then, by this prohibition, that this abuse of eating living meat, or part of animals while yet alive, was known in the days of Noah, and forbidden after being so known, and it is precisely what is practised in Abyssinia to this day. This law, then, was prior to that of Moses, but it came from the same legislator. It was given to Noah, and consequently obligatory upon the whole world. Moses, however, insists upon it throughout his whole law; which not only shews that this abuse was common, but that it was deeply rooted in, and interwoven with, the manners of the Hebrews. He positively prohibits it four times in one chapter in Deuteronomy[89], and thrice in one of the chapters of Leviticus[90]--“Thou shalt not eat the blood, for the blood is the life; thou shalt pour it upon the earth like water.”

Although the many instances of God’s tenderness to the brute creation, that constantly occur in the Mosaical precepts, and are a very beautiful part of them, and tho’ the barbarity of the custom itself might reasonably lead us to think that humanity alone was a sufficient motive for the prohibition of eating animals alive, yet nothing can be more certain, than that greater consequences were annexed to the indulging in this crime than what was apprehended from a mere depravity of manners. One[91] of the most learned and sensible men that ever wrote upon the sacred scriptures observes, that God, in forbidding this practice, uses more severe certification, and more threatening language, than against any other sin, excepting idolatry, with which it is constantly joined. God declares, “I will set my face against him that eateth blood, in the same manner as I will against him that sacrificeth his son to Moloch; I will set my face against him that eateth flesh with blood, till I cut him off from the people.”

We have an instance in the life of Saul[92] that shews the propensity of the Israelites to this crime. Saul’s army, after a battle, _flew_, that is, fell voraciously upon the cattle they had taken, and threw them upon the ground to cut off their flesh, and eat them raw, so that the army was defiled by eating blood, or living animals. To prevent this, Saul caused roll to him a great stone, and ordered those that killed their oxen to cut their throats upon that stone. This was the only lawful way of killing animals for food; the tying of the ox and throwing it upon the ground was not permitted as equivalent. The Israelites did probably in that case as the Abyssinians do at this day; they cut a part of its throat, so that blood might be seen upon the ground, but nothing mortal to the animal followed from that wound. But, after laying his head upon a large stone, and cutting his throat, the blood fell from on high, or was poured on the ground like water, and sufficient evidence appeared the creature was dead before it was attempted to eat it. We have seen that the Abyssinians came from Palestine a very few years after this; and we are not to doubt that they then carried with them this, with many other Jewish customs, which they have continued to this day.

The author I last quoted says, that it is plain, from all the books of the eastern nations, that their motive for eating flesh with the life, or limbs of living animals cut off with the blood, was from motives of religion, and for the purposes of idolatry, and so it probably had been among the Jews; for one of the reasons given in Leviticus for the prohibition of eating blood, or living flesh, is, that the people may no longer offer sacrifices to devils, after whom they have gone a-whoring[93]. If the reader chooses to be further informed how very common this practice was, he need only read the Halacoth Gedaloth, or its translation, where the whole chapter is taken up with instances of this kind.

That this practice likewise prevailed in Europe, as well as in Asia and Africa, may be collected from various authors. The Greeks had their bloody feasts and sacrifices where they ate living flesh; these were called Omophagia. Arnobius[94] says, “Let us pass over the horrid scenes presented at the Bacchanalian feast, wherein, with a counterfeited fury, though with a truly depraved heart, you twine a number of serpents around you, and, pretending to be possessed with some god, or spirit, you tear to pieces, with bloody mouths, the bowels of living goats, which cry all the time from the torture they suffer.” From all this it appears, that the practice of the Abyssinians eating live animals at this day, was very far from being new, or, what was nonsensically said, _impossible_. And I shall only further observe, that those of my readers that wish to indulge a spirit of criticism upon the great variety of customs, men and manners, related in this history, or have those criticisms attended to, should furnish themselves with a more decent stock of reading than, in this instance, they seem to have possessed; or, when another example occurs of that kind, which they call _impossible_, that they would take the truth of it upon my word, and believe what they are not sufficiently qualified to investigate.

Consistent with the plan of this work, which is to describe the manners of the several nations through which I passed, good and bad, as I observed them, I cannot avoid giving some account of this Polyphemus banquet, as far as decency will permit me; it is part of the history of a barbarous people; whatever I might wish, I cannot decline it.

In the capital, where one is safe from surprise at all times, or in the country or villages, when the rains have become so constant that the valleys will not bear a horse to pass them, or that men cannot venture far from home through fear of being surrounded and swept away by temporary torrents, occasioned by sudden showers on the mountains; in a word, when a man can say he is safe at home, and the spear and shield is hung up in the hall, a number of people of the best fashion in the villages, of both sexes, courtiers in the palace, or citizens in the town, meet together to dine between twelve and one o’clock.

A long table is set in the middle of a large room, and benches beside it for a number of guests who are invited. Tables and benches the Portugueze introduced amongst them; but bull hides, spread upon the ground, served them before, as they do in the camp and country now. A cow or bull, one or more, as the company is numerous, is brought close to the door, and his feet strongly tied. The skin that hangs down under his chin and throat, which I think we call the dew-lap in England, is cut only so deep as to arrive at the fat, of which it totally consists, and, by the separation of a few small blood-vessels, six or seven drops of blood only fall upon the ground. They have no stone, bench, nor altar upon which these cruel assassins lay the animal’s head in this operation. I should beg his pardon indeed for calling him an assassin, as he is not so merciful as to aim at the life, but, on the contrary, to keep the beast alive till he be totally eat up. Having satisfied the Mosaical law, according to his conception, by pouring these six or seven drops upon the ground, two or more of them fall to work; on the back of the beast, and on each side of the spine they cut skin-deep; then putting their fingers between the flesh and the skin, they begin to strip the hide of the animal half way down his ribs, and so on to the buttock, cutting the skin wherever it hinders them commodiously to strip the poor animal bare. All the flesh on the buttocks is cut off then, and in solid, square pieces, without bones, or much effusion of blood; and the prodigious noise the animal makes is a signal for the company to sit down to table.

There are then laid before every guest, instead of plates, round cakes, if I may so call them, about twice as big as a pan-cake, and something thicker and tougher. It is unleavened bread of a sourish taste, far from being disagreeable, and very easily digested, made of a grain called teff. It is of different colours, from black to the colour of the whitest wheat-bread. Three or four of these cakes are generally put uppermost, for the food of the person opposite to whose seat they are placed. Beneath these are four or five of ordinary bread, and of a blackish kind. These serve the master to wipe his fingers upon; and afterwards the servant, for bread to his dinner.

Two or three servants then come, each with a square piece of beef in their bare hands, laying it upon the cakes of teff, placed like dishes down the table, without cloth or any thing else beneath them. By this time all the guests have knives in their hands, and their men have the large crooked ones, which they put to all sorts of uses during the time of war. The women have small clasped knives, such as the worst of the kind made at Birmingham, sold for a penny each.

The company are so ranged that one man sits between two women; the man with his long knife cuts a thin piece, which would be thought a good beef-steak in England, while you see the motion of the fibres yet perfectly distinct, and alive in the flesh. No man in Abyssinia, of any fashion whatever, feeds himself, or touches his own meat. The women take the steak and cut it length-ways like strings, about the thickness of your little finger, then crossways into square pieces, something smaller than dice. This they lay upon a piece of the teff bread, strongly powdered with black pepper, or Cayenne pepper, and fossile-salt, they then wrap it up in the teff bread like a cartridge.

In the mean time, the man having put up his knife, with each hand resting upon his neighbour’s knee, his body stooping, his head low and forward, and mouth open very like an idiot, turns to the one whose cartridge is first ready, who stuffs the whole of it into his mouth, which is so full that he is in constant danger of being choked. This is a mark of grandeur. The greater the man would seem to be, the larger piece he takes in his mouth; and the more noise he makes in chewing it, the more polite he is thought to be. They have, indeed, a proverb that says, “Beggars and thieves only eat small pieces, or without making a noise.” Having dispatched this morsel, which he does very expeditiously, his next female neighbour holds forth another cartridge, which goes the same way, and so on till he is satisfied. He never drinks till he has finished eating; and, before he begins, in gratitude to the fair ones that fed him, he makes up two small rolls of the same kind and form; each of his neighbours open their mouths at the same time, while with each hand he puts their portion into their mouths. He then falls to drinking out of a large handsome horn; the ladies eat till they are satisfied, and then all drink together, “Vive la Joye et la Jeunesse!” A great deal of mirth and joke goes round, very seldom with any mixture of acrimony or ill-humour.

All this time, the unfortunate victim at the door is bleeding indeed, but bleeding little. As long as they can cut off the flesh from his bones, they do not meddle with the thighs, or the parts where the great arteries are. At last they fall upon the thighs likewise; and soon after the animal, bleeding to death, becomes so tough that the canibals, who have the rest of it to eat, find very hard work to separate the flesh from the bones with their teeth like dogs.

In the mean time, those within are very much elevated; love lights all its fires, and every thing is permitted with absolute freedom. There is no coyness, no delays, no need of appointments or retirement to gratify their wishes; there are no rooms but one, in which they sacrifice both to Bacchus and to Venus[95]. The two men nearest the vacuum a pair have made on the bench by leaving their seats, hold their upper garment like a skreen before the two that have left the bench; and, if we may judge by sound, they seem to think it as great a shame to make love in silence as to eat.--Replaced in their seats again, the company drink the happy couple’s health; and their example is followed at different ends of the table, as each couple is disposed. All this passes without remark or scandal, not a licentious word is uttered, nor the most distant joke upon the transaction.

These ladies are, for the most part, women of family and character, and they and their gallants are reciprocally distinguished by the name _Woodage_, which answers to what in Italy they call Cicisbey; and, indeed, I believe that the name itself, as well as the practice, is Hebrew; _schus chis beiim_, signifies _attendants_ or _companions of the bride_, or _bride’s man_, as we call it in England. The only difference is, that in Europe the intimacy and attendance continues during the marriage, while, among the Jews, it was permitted only the few days of the marriage ceremony. The aversion to Judaism, in the ladies of Europe, has probably led them to the _prolongation_ of the term.

It was a custom of the ancient Egyptians to purge themselves monthly for three days; and the same is still in practice in Abyssinia. We shall speak more of the reason of this practice in the botanical part of our work, where a drawing of a most beautiful tree[96], used for this purpose, is given.

Although we read from the Jesuits a great deal about marriage and polygamy, yet there is nothing which may be averred more truly than that there is no such thing as marriage in Abyssinia, unless that which is contracted by mutual consent, without other form, subsisting only till dissolved by dissent of one or other, and to be renewed or repeated as often as it is agreeable to both parties, who, when they please, cohabit together again as man and wife, after having been divorced, had children by others, or whether they have been married, or had children with others or not. I remember to have once been at Koscam in presence of the Iteghè, when, in the circle, there was a woman of great quality, and seven men who had all been her husbands, none of whom was the happy spouse at that time.

Upon separation they divide the children. The eldest son falls to the mother’s first choice, and the eldest daughter to the father. If there is but one daughter, and all the rest sons, she is assigned to the father. If there is but one son, and all the rest daughters, he is the right of the mother. If the numbers are unequal after the first election, the rest are divided by lot. There is no such distinction as legitimate and illegitimate children from the king to the beggar; for supposing any one of their marriages valid, all the issue of the rest must be adulterous bastards.

One day Ras Michael asked me, before Abba Salama, (the Acab Saat) Whether such things as these promiscuous marriages and divorces were permitted and practised in my country? I excused myself till I was no longer able; and, upon his insisting, I was obliged to answer, That even if scripture had not forbid to us as Christians, as Englishmen the law restrained us from such practices, by declaring polygamy felony, or punishable by death.

The king in his marriage uses no other ceremony than this:--He sends an Azage to the house where the lady lives, where the officer announces to her, It is the king’s pleasure that she should remove instantly to the palace. She then dresses herself in the best manner, and immediately obeys. Thenceforward he assigns her an apartment in the palace, and gives her a house elsewhere in any part she chuses. Then when he makes her Iteghé, it seems to be the nearest resemblance to marriage; for, whether in the court or the camp, he orders one of the judges to pronounce in his presence, That he, the king, has chosen his hand-maid, naming her for his queen; upon which the crown is put upon her head, but she is not anointed.

The crown being hereditary in one family, but elective in the person, and polygamy being permitted, must have multiplied these heirs very much, and produced constant disputes, so that it was found necessary to provide a remedy for the anarchy and effusion of royal blood, which was otherwise inevitably to follow. The remedy was a humane and gentle one, they were confined in a good climate upon a high mountain, and maintained there at the public expence. They are there taught to read and write, but nothing else; 750 cloths for wrapping round them, 3000 ounces of gold, which is 30,000 dollars, or crowns, are allowed by the state for their maintenance. These princes are hardly used, and, in troublesome times, often put to death upon the smallest misinformation. While I was in Abyssinia their revenue was so grossly misapplied, that some of them were said to have died with hunger and of cold by the avarice and hard-heartedness of Michael neglecting to furnish them necessaries. Nor had the king, as far as ever I could discern, that fellow-feeling one would have expected from a prince rescued from that very situation himself; perhaps this was owing to his fear of Ras Michael.

However that be, and however distressing the situation of those princes, we cannot but be satisfied with it when we look to the neighbouring kingdom of Sennaar, or Nubia. There no mountain is trusted with the confinement of their princes, but, as soon as the father dies, the throats of all the collaterals, and all their descendents that can be laid hold of, are cut; and this is the case with all the black states in the desert west of Sennaar, Dar Fowr, Selé, and Bagirma.

Great exaggerations have been used in speaking of the military force of this kingdom. The largest army that ever was in the field (as far as I could be informed from the oldest officers) was that in the rebellion before the battle of Serbraxos. I believe, when they first encamped upon the lake Tzana, the rebel army altogether might amount to about 50,000 men. In about a fortnight afterwards, many had deserted; and I do not think (I only speak by hearsay) that, when the king marched out of Gondar, they were then above 30,000. I believe when Gojam joined, and it was known that Michael and his army were to be made prisoners, that the rebel army increased to above 60,000 men; cowards and brave, old and young, veteran soldiers and blackguards, all came to be spectators of that desirable event, which many of the wisest had despaired of living to see. I believe the king’s army never amounted to 26,000 men; and, by desertion and other causes, when we retreated to Gondar, I do not suppose the army was 16,000, mostly from the province of Tigré. Fasil, indeed, had not joined; and putting his army of 12,000 men, (I make no account of the wild Galla beyond the Nile) I do not imagine that any king of Abyssinia ever commanded 40,000 effective men at any time, or upon any cause whatever, exclusive of his household troops.

Their standards are large staves, surmounted at the top with a hollow ball; below this is a tube in which the staff is fixed; and immediately below the ball, a narrow stripe of silk made forked, or swallow-tailed, like a vane, and seldom much broader. In the war of Begemder we first saw colours like a flag hoisted for king Theodorus. They were red, about eight feet long and near three feet broad; but they never appeared but two days; and the success that attended their first appearance was such that did not bid fair to bring them into fashion.

The standards of the infantry have their flags painted two colours crossways--yellow, white, red, or green. The horse have all a lion upon their flag[97], some a red, some a green, and some a white lion. The black horse have a yellow lion, and over it a white star upon a red flag, alluding to two prophecies, the one, “Judah is a young lion,” and the other, “There shall come a star out of Judah.” This had been discontinued for want of cloth till the war of Begemder, when a large piece was found in Joas’s wardrobe, and was thought a certain omen of his victory, and of a long and vigorous reign. This piece of cloth was said to have been brought from Cairo by Yasous II. for the campaign of Sennaar, and, with the other standards and colours, was surrendered to the rebels when the king was made prisoner.

The king’s household troops should consist of about 8000 infantry, 2000 of which carry firelocks, and supply the place of archers; bows have been laid aside for near a hundred years, and are only now used by the Waito Shangalla, and some other barbarous inconsiderable nations.

These troops are divided into four companies, each under an officer called Shalaka, which answers to our colonel. Every twenty men have an officer, every fifty a second, and every hundred a third; that is, every twenty have one officer who commands them, but is commanded likewise by an officer who commands the fifty; so that there are three officers who command fifty men, six command a hundred, and thirty command five hundred, over whom is the Shalaka; and this body they call Bet, which signifies a _house_, or _apartment_, because each of them goes by the name of one of the king’s apartments. For example, there is an apartment called Anbasa Bet, or the _lion’s house_, and a regiment carrying that name has the charge of it, and their duty is at that apartment, or that part of the palace where it is; there is another called Jan Bet, or the _elephant’s house_, that gives the name to another regiment; another called Werk Sacala, or the _gold house_, which gives its name to another corps; and so on with the rest; as for the horse, I have spoken of them already.

There are four regiments, that seldom, if ever, amounted to 1600 men, which depend alone upon the king, and are all foreigners, at least the officers; these have the charge of his person while in the field. In times when the king is out of leading-strings, they amount to four or five thousand, and then oppress the country, for they have great privileges. At times when the king’s hands are weak, they are kept incomplete out of fear and jealousy, which was the case in my time;--these have been already sufficiently described.

Three proclamations are made before the king marches. The first is, “Buy your mules, get ready your provision, and pay your servants, for, after such a day, they that seek me here shall not find me.” The second is about a week after, or according as the exigency is pressing; this is, “Cut down the kantuffa in the four quarters of the world, for I do not know where I am going.” This kantuffa is a terrible thorn which very much molests the king and nobility in their march, by taking hold of their long hair, and the cotton cloth they are wrapped in. The third and last proclamation is, “I am encamped upon the Angrab, or Kahha; he that does not join me there, I will chastise him for seven years.” I was long in doubt what this term of seven years meant, till I recollected the jubilee-year of the Jews, with whom seven years was a prescription of offences, debts, and all trespasses.

The rains generally cease the eighth of September; a sickly season follows till they begin again about the 20th of October; they then continue pretty constant, but moderate in quantity, till Hedar St Michael, the eighth of November. All epidemic diseases cease with the end of these rains, and it is then the armies begin to march.

CHAP. XII.

_State of Religion--Circumcision, Excision, &c._

There is no country in the world where there are so many churches as in Abyssinia. Though the country is very mountainous, and consequently the view much obstructed, it is very seldom you see less than five or six churches, and, if you are on a commanding ground, five times that number. Every great man that dies thinks he has atoned for all his wickedness if he leaves a fund to build a church, or has built one in his lifetime. The king builds many. Wherever a victory is gained, there a church is erected in the very field stinking with the putrid bodies of the slain. Formerly this was only the case when the enemy was Pagan or Infidel; now the same is observed when the victories are over Christians.

The situation of a church is always chosen near running water, for the convenience of their purifications and ablutions, in which they observe strictly the Levitical law. They are always placed upon the top of some beautiful, round hill, which is surrounded entirely with rows of the oxy-cedrus, or Virginia cedar, which grows here in great beauty and perfection, and is called Arz[98]. There is nothing adds so much to the beauty of the country as these churches and the plantations about them.

In the middle of this plantation of cedars is interspersed, at proper distances, a number of those beautiful trees called Cusso, which grow very high, and are all extremely picturesque.