Volume Two—Chapter Twenty Nine.

Proceedings at Angollála.

Certain Abyssinian potentates of old are recorded by their biographers to have bestowed in religious charity all their worldly substance, saving the crown upon their heads. But such will never be said of Sáhela Selássie, whose endowments, although frequent, are invariably regulated by prudence. Avarice stigmatises his every gift, and even adulterates the incense of his sacrifice. The countless droves of sturdy beeves which now ranged over the royal meadows were daily inspected with evident signs of satisfaction; but whilst the sleekest were distributed over the various pasture-lands, the leanest kine were despatched to the several churches and monasteries, as offerings after the successful campaign.

At this season of rejoicing and festivity, the host of loathsome objects that habitually infest the outer court, or crawl in quest of alms around the precincts of the palace, had increased to a surprising extent, in order to share the royal bounty. Swarms of itinerant paupers, who bivouacked under the old Galla wall, sang psalms and hymns in the streets during the entire night; and long before dawn the clamour commenced around the tents of a throng of mendicants, resembling the inmates of a lazar-house, who, with insolent importunity, reiterated their adjurations for relief by Georgis, Miriam, Michael, and every other saint in the Abyssinian calendar. Many petty pilferings were of course committed by this ragged congregation; and a deputation of the inhabitants of Angollála soon presented a petition to the throne, praying for the dismissal of the vagrants, who had become an intolerable public nuisance.

On the festival of Tekla Ha?manót we received an invitation to witness the distribution of royal alms, which was to be followed by a beggars’ feast. The wonted inmates of the palisaded enclosure were no longer there, but their place was occupied by a shoal of even more wretched beings, just imported with a caravan from Guráguê. Upwards of six hundred slaves, of every age, from childhood to maturity, and most of them in a state of perfect nudity, who had been snatched by the hand of avarice from the fair land of their birth, were here huddled together under the eye of the rover for inspection by the officers of the crown, preparatory to being driven to market; and the forlorn and destitute appearance both of old and young, stamped them objects but too well fitted for participation in the charity of a Christian monarch.

Immediately on our arrival within the court-yard of the palace, we were conducted by the king to the royal bedchamber—a gloomy apartment, lighted chiefly by the blaze of an iron chafing-dish, and shared not only by a Moolo Fálada cat, with a large family of kittens, but by three favourite war-steeds, whose mangers were in close proximity to the well-screened couch. Cleanliness did not characterise the warm curtains; and although cotton cloth had been pasted round the mud walls for the better exclusion of the wind, an air of peculiar discomfort was present. A rickety alga in one corner, a few hassocks covered with black leather, an Ethiopic version of the Psalms of David, and a carpet consisting of withered rushes, were the only furniture; and the dismal aspect of the room was further heightened by the massive doors and treble palisades which protect the slumbers of the suspicious despot. The mystery of our introduction into the precincts of the harem, was presently explained by the appearance of one of the young princes of the blood royal, who had arrived in the course of the morning, and, with eyes veiled, was now led in by a withered eunuch, in order that he might receive medical assistance.

Saifa Selássie, “the sword of the Trinity,” is an extremely aristocratic and fine-looking youth, about twelve years of age, possessing the noble features of his sire, with the advantage of a very fair instead of a swarthy complexion. Beneath a red chintz vest of Arabian manufacture, he wore a striped cotton robe, which fell in graceful folds from the girdle, and from the crown of the head a tassel of minutely-braided locks streamed to the middle of his back. “This is the light of mine eyes, and dearer to me than life itself,” exclaimed the king, withdrawing the bandage, and caressing the boy with the utmost fondness—“Give him the medicine that removes ophthalmia, or he, too, will be blind like his father.”

I assured His Majesty that no alarm need be entertained; and that although the cause was to be regretted, the day which had brought us the honour of an interview with the young prince could not but be deemed one of the highest good fortune. Much affected by this intimation, he laid his hand upon my arm, and replied, “We do not yet know each other as we ought, but we shall daily become better and better acquainted.”

“Whence comes this máskal?” resumed the inquisitive monarch, raising a Catholic cross devoutly to his lips, as the royal scion was reconducted by the shrivelled attendant towards the apartments of the queen—“to what nation does it belong?”

“It is the emblem of those who, in their attempts to propagate the Romish religion in Ethiopia, caused rivers of blood to flow,” was the reply. “No matter,” exclaimed His Majesty, in rebuke to the Mohammadan dragoman who would fain have assisted in the restoration of the paper envelope— “How dost thou dare to profane the holy cross? These are Christians, and may touch it, but thou art an unbeliever.”

The votaries of Saint Giles had, meanwhile, been ushered through a private wicket, and in the adjacent enclosure offered a most revolting spectacle. The palsied, the leprous, the scrofulous, and those in the most inveterate stages of dropsy and elephantiasis, were mingled with mutilated wretches who had been bereft of hands, feet, eyes, and tongue, by the sanguinary tyrants of Northern Abyssinia, and who bore with them the severed portions, in order that their bodies might be perfect at the Day of Resurrection. The old, the halt, the deaf, the noseless, and the dumb, the living dead in every shape and form, were still streaming through the narrow door; limbless trunks were borne onwards upon the spectres of mules, asses, and horses, and the blind, in long Indian file, rolling their ghastly eyeballs, and touching each the shoulder of his sightless neighbour, groped their way towards the hum of voices, to add new horrors to the appalling picture.

An annual muster-roll being kept as a check, all who were ascertained to have been participators in the distribution of the preceding year were unceremoniously ejected by the myrmidons of the purveyor-general, who has ever the interests of the state revenues warmly at heart. The mendicants were next classed in squads according to their diseases, and the dwarf father confessor, by no means the least frightful object in the assembly, proceeded, in capacity of king’s almoner, to dispense the royal bounty. Sheep, clothes, and money, were distributed with a judicious hand, each donation made being carefully registered by the scribes in attendance; and half-baked bread, raw beef, and sour beer, in quantities sufficient to satisfy every monk and beggar in the realm, having been heaped outside the palace gate, all ate their fill, and dispersed. Next to the merciful disposition of Sáhela Selássie, his munificence to the indigent may be ranked among his most prominent virtues. Whilst the needy never retire empty-handed from his door, no criminal ever suffers under the barbarous mutilation, so many distressing monuments of which had this day shared his liberality. Blood flowing from the veins of a subject finds no pleasure in the eyes of the ruler of Shoa. Under his sway the use of the searing iron has become obsolete, and the sickening sentence is unknown which in the northern states condemns the culprit to the wrenching off of hands and feet, whereof the teguments have previously been severed with a razor at the wrist and ankle. But widely opposed are the views of humanity entertained in different climes; and the scene that awaited our return from the banquet, although in strict accordance with retributive justice, was in appalling contrast with the more merciful fiat of civilised jurisprudence.

A warrior had been convicted upon undeniable evidence of the murder of his comrade in arms, with whom he had lived for years on terms of the closest intimacy. During the recent campaign, he had gone with this companion into the wood, and taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by hostilities with the Galla, had felled the unsuspecting man to the earth with a blow of his sword. Fame, such as is only to be acquired by the slaughter of the foe, prompted the dastardly outrage; and the treacherous assassin who had embrued his hands in the blood of his dearest friend, now placed the green trophy of valour triumphantly on his guilty head. “Where is thy brother?” was the question that awaited his return to the camp; but, like Cain of old, he denied all knowledge of what had befallen the absentee; and it was not until the body had been discovered, that suspicion fell heavily upon himself.

Mourning relatives threw themselves in sackcloth at the imperial footstool, and cried aloud for the blood of the prisoner. Arraigned before the monarch, the investigation had been patiently conducted during the beggars feast, and the “Fétha Negést” having been duly consulted, the sentence proceeded from the royal lips—“Take him hence, and deal with him as you will.”

The last sun that was to shine upon the malefactor was sinking fast towards the western horizon, when, with hands bound behind his back, he was hurried from the presence for instant execution. Its rising rays had seen him seated at the door of the hut, whilst his young wife adorned his locks with the newly-plucked branch of asparagus, that was the record of his infamy, but the meridian beam had witnessed his arrest. The relatives of the murdered, and a band of the king’s headsmen, each armed with shield and broad-headed spear, now formed a close phalanx round him as he proceeded with the stoicism of the savage to meet his well-merited doom; and an infuriated mob followed, to heap taunts and ignominy upon his numbered moments.

Impatient of delay, the friends of the deceased were about to immolate their victim on the meadow close to the encampment of the Embassy; but adjured by the life of the monarch, they urged the culprit over the rocky mound adjoining the Galla wall, which was already crowded with a vast concourse of spectators, burning for the consummation of the last sentence of the law. Scarcely had the unresisting criminal passed the summit, than an eager hand stripped the garment from his shoulder, and twenty bright spears being poised at the moment, he turned his head to the one side, to receive a deep stab on the other. Whilst still reeling, a dozen blades were sheathed in his heart, and a hundred more transfixed the prostrate body. Swords flashed from the crooked scabbard—the quivering corse was mutilated in an instant, and on the next the exulting executioners took their way from the gore-stained ground, bearing the trophy aloft, as they howled with truly savage satisfaction the Christian chorus of death!

Mother, sisters, and wives, now flocked around the lifeless clay, rending the air with their piercing shrieks.—“Alas! the brave have fallen, the spirit of the bold has fled.”

“Waiye, waiye—woe unto us, we have lost the son of our declining years”—“our brother and our husband is gone for ever!” Bared breasts were beaten and scarified, and temples were torn with the nails until the evening closed, and it was dark when the mourners ceased their shrill lamentation. But the turbaned priest was not there; no absolution had been given, nor had the last sacrament been partaken; and the unhallowed remains of the murderer would have found a tomb in the maw of the hyena and the vulture, had not a charitable hand enclosed them under a cairn of stones by the highway side, where many a grass-grown mound marks the fate of the cowardly assassin, who had destroyed his brother in the wood, and whose memory is coupled with dishonour.