Volume Two—Chapter Twelve.

Chasm of the Chácha.

The King had oftentimes vaunted the extraordinary natural fortification of Angollála by the river Chácha, which for two days’ journey to the north-westward rolls through a deep precipitous valley, opposing an impassable barrier; and being then joined by the Beréza and by numerous other streams, skirts the celebrated sanctuary of Sena Márkos, whence the combined waters, taking the title of Jumma, roll on into the Nile. Setting out one morning at sunrise through the “sirkosh ber,” (i.e. The secret gate or wicket) he sent a page to conduct us to the junction of the tributary Fácha, which tumbles its torrent over a perpendicular wall seven hundred feet in height; and here His Majesty, surrounded by a crowd of noisy applicants for justice, already occupied his favourite seat on the brink of the giddy chasm.

A cloud had overcast the despot’s brow, for “Boro Winkee,” his favourite war-steed, had that morning fallen down dead whilst exercising in the meadow. Taken in battle from a potent Galla chieftain, whose name it inherited, the steed had long enjoyed a stall within the royal bedchamber, and strong fears indeed were entertained for the effeminate little page Kátama, who had been the luckless jockey. But no punishment followed the catastrophe. The boy was a court favourite, and Antonistye, his father, by far the most renowned warrior in Shoa, was mayor of the corporation of king’s herdsmen, who take the field in independent bodies, and under the title of Abelám (derived from the Amháric word “abélla,” “he may eat up”) form a distinct class, mingling with no other portion of the population.

“What think you of my Galla ditch?” inquired the monarch. “Have you any such in your country?”

There could be but one opinion regarding the yawning gulf, which extends a full mile in breadth, and has been rent by some violent convulsion in the bowels of the earth. Fifteen hundred feet below the otherwise uninterrupted plain, the mingled waters flow on like a silver cord, fed at intervals by foaming cascades, which raise a shower of white spray in their headlong descent: whilst frowning basaltic cliffs cast a deep gloom over wild steppes and terraces, whose lone hamlets and cottages are scarcely to be distinguished from the fallen masses of rock. Vast colonies of pig-faced baboons, the principal inhabitants, sally forth morning and evening from their strong city, to devastate the surrounding crops, in defiance of incessant war waged against them by the peasantry, armed with sticks and stones; but outcasts, and criminals too, find a safe asylum among the almost inaccessible crannies of the perpendicular scarps, where they hide amidst masses of foliage, unthought of, and unmolested.

Deep buried in the bosom of this stupendous chasm, and immediately below the roaring cataract, stands the little hamlet of Guréyo, the seat of the royal iron-works, and thither, after the sylvan court had closed, the king descended, leaning on the arm of the chief smith, great master of the Tabiban, or mechanics, and royal physician in ordinary. The process of smelting and refining pursued in Abyssinia has been common to almost every age and country from the earliest antiquity. Broken into small fragments and coarsely pulverised, the ore is mixed with a large proportion of charcoal, and placed in a clay furnace resembling the smith’s hearth, but furnished with a sloping cavity considerably depressed below the level of the blast pipes. The non-metallic particles being brought to a state of fusion by the constant action of four pair of hand-worked bellows, the iron with the scoria sinks to the bottom. This is again broken, and re-fused, when the dross flowing off, the pure metal is discharged in pigs, which, by a repetition of heating and welding, are wrought into bars; but owing to the very rude and primitive apparatus employed, the unceasing toil of ten hours is indispensable to the realisation of two pounds’ weight of very inferior iron, which after all, in private works, is liable to a heavy tax to the crown.

Embowered in a dark grove of junipers on the opposite brink of the Chácha rises the silent village of Chérkos, rendered famous a few years since through the massacre of one thousand of its Christian inhabitants by Medóko (his gazelle), a celebrated rebel. His proceedings occupy one of the most conspicuous pages in the chronicles of Shoa. Exalted by rare military talents and undaunted intrepidity to the highest pinnacle of royal favour, he became elated by the distinctions conferred, and being suspected of aiming at even greater dominion, was suddenly hurled into the deepest disgrace, and bereft in the same moment of property and power. Burning with revenge, the warrior crossed the border to the subjugated, though disaffected Galla, whom he had so lately held in check, and who now with open arms received him as their leader in revolt.

At the head of a vast horde of wild cavalry, reinforced by a number of matchlock-men, who had deserted their allegiance, the rebel marched upon Angollála. But he was frustrated in his designs by finding the only assailable point fortified by staked pits and ditches—the deep rugged channel of the Chácha opposing, as he well knew, an insurmountable barrier in every other direction. Desertion soon spread among the undisciplined rabble, and after several skirmishes with the royal troops, the offender sought an asylum at Zalla Dingai. Through the powerful mediation of Zenama Work, the Queen-dowager, he was suffered to throw himself at the feet of his despotic master, and not only obtained pardon, but from motives of policy was eventually restored to all his former dignities.

Medóko’s second rebellion and tragic death, embodied from the authentic details of eye-witnesses, will form the subject of the six succeeding chapters. They are designed to throw upon the character of the monarch, and upon the customs of his court, a light which could scarcely have been admitted through any other lattice. The standard of revolt long waved over the heathen frontier, and when the storm which for months threatened the subversion of the empire had at length been quelled by the extinction of the fiery and turbulent spirit that had raised it, large offerings were made by His Majesty to all the churches and monasteries throughout the realm, in return for their prayers; and solemn processions and thanksgivings were attended by the exercise of every sort of work of charity and devotion.

Among the royal retinue this day seated before the village of Chérkos, was a young man of haughty and daring exterior, whose flowing black mantle covered a breast that must have been often agitated by strange emotions. It was Chára, the son of the rebel, one of the only two members of the disgraced family to whom Sáhela Selássie has become reconciled, and a youth who is said to resemble his sire, not less in appearance than in gallant bearing. Prior to the breaking out of the insurrection, he had urged the arrest of his father; but no attention being paid in the proper quarter, he subsequently enlisted under his banner, and carried arms against the crown until the fall of the traitor, when, from his previous well-timed, though disregarded disclosure, he received full pardon for the past.

Ayto Tunkaiye, a gigantic warrior, greatly distinguished for his valour, who enacted a prominent part in Medóko’s execution, was also of the cortège; and beside him stood Hailoo, younger brother of the rebel noble, who purchased restoration to royal favour at the expense of a deed of the blackest treachery. This he recounted not only without a blush, but with extraordinary satisfaction at his fancied heroism. Apprehending a similar fate with him whose cause he had espoused, he fled across the border, and found a safe asylum with Wodáge Girmee, a powerful Galla chieftain, long in open revolt, and one of the bitterest enemies of the monarch. Basely assassinating his benefactor, whilst seated unsuspectingly in the open field, he sprang upon his horse, and casting the head of his victim at the royal footstool in token of his villainy, was rewarded by advancement to the government of Mésar Médur, a post of high honour, which he enjoys to the present day, and which occupies the frontier of the Galla dependencies.