Volume Two—Chapter Forty Five.

Conclusion of a Treaty of Commerce.

Angollála continued bitterly cold throughout the month of December; and fires, although not quite indispensable, were always found pleasant enough. A dry cutting wind from the eastward blew throughout the day; but the clouds, which often gathered over the surrounding mountains, occasionally disturbed the serenity of the afternoon with a squall of hail. Snipe abounded among the serpentine streams which intersected the environs of the palace-hill; and the hero who possessed courage to cast off the blankets before the sun rose, invariably saw the hoar-frost lying white over the faded meadows. Dogs continued to howl in packs, and mendicants to importune as of yore. Dirty pages and troublesome idlers still infested my tent; and the approaches were choked by numerous bands of Yedjow Galla, who were begging their way to the country of Dedjasmach Paris. Day and night their monotonous voices arose from every quarter of the town, and Christian adjurations by “Miriam” and “Kedoos Michael” were often nearly drowned by the choral hymn uplifted to Allah and the false prophet.

A new invoice of beads, cutlery, trinkets, ghemdjia, and other “pleasing things,” had been received from the coast; and visits were therefore unusually frequent on the part of all who loved to be decorated. Abba Mooálle, surnamed “the Great Beggar in the West,” with his adopted brother, appeared to hold the lease of the tent in perpetuity; and in return for amber necklaces and gay chintz vestments, hourly volunteered some promise, simply, it would seem, that they might afterwards enjoy the pleasure of forfeiting a gratuitous oath. If solemn asseverations by highly respectable saints and martyrs, were to be received with credit, messengers were almost daily despatched, and on fleet horses too, for the purpose of bringing from the Galla dependencies on the Nile, amongst other treasures, the spoils of the gássela, a black leopard, elsewhere not procurable, and “worn only by the governors of provinces.” But by some unaccountable fatality, not one of these fleet couriers ever found his way back to the English camp at Angollála; and the cry meanwhile continued, without intermission,—“Show me pleasing things; give me delighting things; adorn me from head to foot.”

Nor were there wanting other standing dishes of an equally rapacious and insatiable character, and scarcely more addicted to veracity. Gádeloo, “the hen-pecked,” was punctual in his attendance, by order of the Emabiet of Mahhfood, who had always a new want to be supplied. “May they buy,” with an unsound steed for sale at an unconscionable price, brought daily an urgent request of some sort from his spouse. Neither did any morning pass without a protracted visit from Shunkoor, “Sugar,” own brother to the queen, escorted by Ayto Dedjen, “Doors,” his shadow and boon companion, and grand-nephew to the monarch himself. But the attachment subsisting between these inseparable allies was one day suddenly dissolved over a decanter of unusually potent hydromel, and a sabre-cut on the head of either, demonstrated, alas! the fleeting and unstable nature of all sublunary friendship.

As each evening closed, the nobility were to be seen streaming towards our tents from the royal banquet, supported upon their ambling mules by a host of armed and not very sober retainers; and a tribe of ragged pages bringing messages from the palace, accidentally entered at the same time to report the substance of the conversation, although many of the illustrious visitors were absolutely inarticulate. Lances were hurled at a target to the imminent peril of all spectators; and the neck of the vanquished having been duly trampled under foot, according to the ancient Oriental form of military triumph, all who anticipated any difficulty in reaching their own abodes, staggered back to the Gyptzis to laugh at the mad pranks of Dághie, the obsequious court buffoon, and the flower of Abyssinian minstrelsy.

Decked by the favour of the monarch in a shining silver sword, this Merry Andrew, fiddle in hand, came scraping and chanting his way homeward, with eyes sufficiently inflamed to indicate where he had been dining. Kissing the earth as he took his seat in the tent, amid many antics, grimaces, and inquiries, he proceeded to elicit from his instrument imitations of the human voice under various intonations of joy, surprise, and sorrow; and a host of retainers, crowding round the doors with shoulders bared, next shouted their approval to some travestie of the wild Adel slogan, or joined their voices in full chorus to swell the Amhára death triumph, or this, the pibroch of the Nile:—

    “The sword is burning for the fight,
    And gleams like rays of living light;
    Let thoughts of fear inthral the slave—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.

    “Clustering they come, the Turkish rout
    Ring back on high the Amhára shout;
    For honour, home, or glorious grave—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.

    “The sword of Confu leads the war.
    And dastard spirits quail afar;
    None here to pity, none to save—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.

    “Our swords in tint shall soon outvie
    Yon scabbard of the crimson dye.
    And overhead shall ruddy wave—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.

    “Red as their belts their blood shall flow,
    Deep as the hue of sunset glow;
    Mercy to none who mercy crave—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.”

Pages and abigails were hourly in attendance, on the part of their royal master or mistress, with some rubbish from the palace, which was carefully removed from its red and yellow basket of Guráguê grass, divested of all its numerous wrappers, and confidentially exhibited with an inquiry, sotto voce, “whether more of the same description was not to be obtained?” The outcry raised for detonating caps was wearisome and incessant; for although it was notorious that the royal magazines boasted a hoard sufficient to answer the utmost demand of at least three generations, the king was ever apprehensive of bankruptcy, in event of a quarrel with the Ada?el, “because his own people knew not the road beyond the world of waters.” Thus it happened that Kidána Wold, “the long gunman,” who had charge of the royal armoury, received private instructions to look in at the Residency at least twice a week, with a mamálacha for fifty or a hundred tezábs, and regularly once a month averred that he had been so unfortunate as to drop from his girdle another box of His Majesty’s patent anticorrosives—a loss which, unless timely repaired, must inevitably result in the forfeiture of his liberty. “The Gaita has discovered my carelessness,” he would add, with tears in his eyes; “and, by Mary, if you don’t help me immediately, I shall be sent to Góncho.” Treble strong canister gunpowder was also in high demand, its superiority over the manufacture of Shoa being admitted even by the maker. But the sulphur monopoly remained as heretofore most jealously guarded. The ill-starred individual who had charge of the mines on the frontier, in an evil hour accepted silver for a lump of the purified commodity, which was required for the cure of applicants having the beggar’s disease; and spies reporting the peculation, the delinquent was condemned to perpetual labour in the hot valleys of Giddem.

This convict was accompanied in his exile by a shrewd lad, who had been detected at the Bool Worki market in giving circulation to two counterfeit dollars. Weeks of incessant toil had enabled him to produce out of a lump of pewter, very creditable imitations of the coinage of Maria Theresa. Every spot and letter had been most closely represented with a punch and file; and the ingenious artist, naturally enough, seemed vastly mortified at the untoward consequences of his labour. “Tell me,” inquired the king, as the culprit was being removed, “how is that machine made which in your country pours out the silver crowns like a shower of rain?”

Architecture now occupied a full share of the royal brain. The hand corn-mills presented by the British Government had been erected within the palace walls, and slaves were turning the wheels with unceasing diligence. “Demetrius the Armenian made a machine to grind corn,” exclaimed His Majesty, in a transport of delight, as the flour streamed upon the floor; “and although it cost my people a year of hard labour to construct, it was useless when finished, because the priests declared it to be the Devil’s work, and cursed the bread. But may Sáhela Selássie die! These engines are the invention of clever heads. Now I will build a bridge over the Beréza, and you shall give me your advice.”

Early the ensuing morning the chief smith was accordingly in attendance with hammer and tongs; and “when the sun said hot,” the pious monarch, having first paid his orisons in the church of the Trinity, proceeded, with all suitable cunning, to plan the projected edifice beneath a fortunate horoscope. Twelve waterways were traced with stones under his skilful superintendence on a site selected after infinite discussion; and in five minutes a train of slaves from the establishment at Debra Berhán were heaping together piles of loose boulders to serve as piers. Splinters of wood connected the roadway, and in three days the structure was complete, its appearance giving promise of what actually happened—demolition within as many short hours, on the very first violent fresh to which the river is subject during the annual rains.

But our predictions of this impending catastrophe were received with an incredulous shake of the head; and my advice that orders should be issued to the Governors on the Nile to keep a vigilant lookout for the upper timbers on their voyage down to Egypt, was followed by a good-humoured laugh and a playful tap on the shoulder of the audacious foreigner, who, to the horror and amazement of the obsequious courtiers, had thus ventured to speak his mind to the despot. In vain was it that I proposed to construct a bridge upon arches which might defy the impetuosity of the torrent. “All my subjects are asses,” retorted His Majesty: “they are idle and lazy, and devoid of understanding. There is not one that will consent to labour, no, not one; and if through your means they should be compelled to perform the task, they would weep, and invoke curses on the name of the Gyptzis. Your corn mills are approved, because they save the women trouble, but by the shades of my ancestors!—a bridge—” Here all sense of the decorum due to the sceptre was forgotten for the moment, and the monarch whistled aloud.

And the king was right. Weaving excepted, which in so cold a climate is an art indispensable to existence, the people of Shoa can hardly be said to practise any manufacture. The raw cotton, which is as cheap as it is excellent and abundant, is, by him who would be clad, handed over with a number of ámoles proportioned to the size of the cloth required. A common bow is used to spread the wool; and the spinning jenny being unknown, the thread is twisted by means of the ancient spindle, to which motion is imparted by a rapid pressure betwixt the left palm and the denuded thigh, whilst the right hand is simultaneously carried upwards for the purpose of “roving.” Time is here held of no account; and female labour having supplied the want of machinery in these preliminary operations, the twist is transferred to a rude locomotive loom, and a warm durable mantle is produced with the aid only of a simple shuttle.

British commerce has not only forced its way, but created markets and customers in many a wilder and more inaccessible portion of the globe than highland Abyssinia, and its operation promises to open the only means of improvement and civilisation. Even in the absence of water carriage, the experience of many years has proved that the living ship of the desert is a machine of transport adequate to the most important traffic; and, if once established, that traffic would in a few years doubtless bind both people and ruler in the strongest chains of personal interest. It would rapidly change the pursuits of the people—convert the rude hut into a comfortable dwelling—limit, if not extinguish, the slave trade with Arabia, and if not reform, at least enlighten, the clouded Christianity of Ethiopia.

A commercial convention betwixt Great Britain and Shoa was a subject that had been frequently adverted to; and His Majesty had shaken his head when first assured that five hundred pair of hands efficiently employed at the loom would bring into his country more permanent wealth than ten thousand warriors bearing spear and shield. But he had gradually begun to comprehend how commerce, equitably conducted, might prove a truer source of wealth than forays into the territories of the heathen. This conviction resulted in the expression of his desire that certain articles agreed upon might be drawn up on parchment, and presented for signature, which had accordingly been done; and the day fixed for the return of the embassy to Ankóber was appointed for the public ratification of the document by the annexure thereto of the royal hand and seal.

Nobles and captains thronged the court-yard of the palace at Angollála, and the king reclined on the throne in the attic chamber. A highly illuminated sheet, surmounted on the one side by the Holy Trinity—the device invariably employed as the arms of Shoa—and on the other by the Royal Achievement of England, was formally presented, and the sixteen articles of the convention in Amháric and English, read, commented upon, and fully approved. They involved the sacrifice of arbitrary appropriation by the crown of the property of foreigners dying in the country, the abrogation of the despotic interdiction which had from time immemorial precluded the purchase or display of costly goods by the subject, and the removal of penal restrictions upon voluntary movement within and beyond the kingdom, which formed a modification of the obsolete national maxim, “never to permit the stranger who had once entered, to depart from Abyssinia.” All these evils His Majesty unhesitatingly declared his determination to annul for the good of his people.

Tekla Mariam, the royal notary, kneeling, held the upper part of the unrolled scroll upon the state cushion, and the king, taking the proffered pen, inscribed after the words “Done and concluded at Angollála, the Galla capital of Shoa, in token whereof we have hereunto set our hand and seal,”—“Sáhela Selássie, who is the Negoos of Shoa, Efát, and the Galla.” The imperial signet, a cross encircled by the word “Jesus,” was then attached by the scribe in presence of the chief of the church, the Dedj Agafári, the Governor of Morát, and three other functionaries who were summoned into the alcove for the purpose.

“You have loaded me with costly presents,” exclaimed the monarch as he returned the deed: “the raiment that I wear, the throne whereon I sit, the various curiosities in my storehouses, and the muskets which hang around the great hall, are all from your country. What have I to give in return for such wealth? My kingdom is as nothing.”