Volume Three—Chapter Thirty Four.

Saint George’s Day.

At Kondie, in the church dedicated to the patron saint of England, lie interred the remains of Woosen Suggud, and thither, according to wont, the despot proceeded on Saint George’s day. The sepulchre of the departed monarch is screened from gaze amid a sombre grove of evergreen juniper, assuming the shapes, some of the cedar, others of the cypress and the yew:—

    “Dark trees still sad when others’ grief is fled,
    The only constant mourners o’er the dead.”

Kings alone are honoured with a coffin. Manufactured of sweet wood, and perforated with many apertures, it is placed on stone trestles amid clouds of frankincense, and after a season removed into the mausoleum; the walls of which are usually bedaubed with clumsy designs, intended to commemorate the exploits in the hunting field, the military actions, and the heroic achievements of the royal occupant. His Majesty’s orisons at the shrine of his father being concluded, he turned his steps to the palace, now fast falling to decay, which formed the scene of the assassination of the despotic tyrant. Surrounded by the former capital of Shoa, it occupies the bleak summit of one of the loftiest mountains in the range, and commands a magnificent prospect over the greater portion of Efát. Mamrat, now diminished from thirteen to one thousand feet, no longer loomed a giant. Through the clouds which flitted across its stern bosom lay revealed the only path by which the royal treasures are accessible; and the white peak of Wóti, rising from dense masses of timber, and terminating in a basaltic column, now formed the most conspicuous feature in the rugged landscape.

“You observe those woods,” inquired His Majesty, pointing after a long silence to the gloomy forests which stretched away towards the long white storehouses of Arámba: “they conceal a cavern into which no creature can enter and five. The man who should venture one step beyond the entrance would be seen no more. If a dog goes in, or a bird, or even a serpent, it will surely die. There is no bottom to that cave, and none can say whither it leads. Formerly people went to cut wood in the neighbourhood. A man lost his way, and was unheard of for months. His friends believed him dead. They mourned for him, and scratched their temples, and he was forgotten. Suddenly he re-appeared, reduced to a skeleton, and looking like a ghost. They brought him to me to know what should be done with him. He had lived like the guréza upon wild berries, and when I asked him what he had seen, he replied that he had seen the devil. Wóti is a bad place, and the forests take fire, and all my subjects fear to go thither.”

A catastrophe of this nature had recently taken place; and a quantity of fuel stored for the royal kitchen having been destroyed, it was the king’s present object to ascertain the extent of damage sustained. Ayto Wolda Hana exerted his cracked voice in loud complaints of others, and so that himself escaped the much-dreaded censure, the old man evidently cared not much who suffered. Herein he was so far successful, that the sub-governor of the district was fined in the amount of one hundred dollars, about ten times the value of property destroyed, and every male inhabitant of the neighbourhood received sentence of imprisonment.

The cold summit of Kondie is clothed with heather and with the jibera, a lofty species of lobelia, which attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet. As it is believed to exert a prejudicial effect upon the passer by, and often to cause death, the royal cortege waged active war against every plant by the way-side—His Majesty in person sustaining a part in hostilities designed to counteract the evil influence. Bands of warriors charging on horseback, delivered their spears simultaneously, and the doomed tree, if not cut over, was at least transfixed by a score of shafts. Excelling in skill, the monarch betted heavily upon every throw, and rarely did he lose. At forty yards the lance left his hand with unerring precision, and perforating the soft pulpy stem immediately below the bushy head, often passed quite through, to fall on the other side.

“Where did the commander learn to throw a spear?” he suddenly exclaimed in merry mood, elevating his voice, and looking round towards the spot on which I was taking share in the proceedings. “Now, Gaita,” he continued, as I approached, “I will give you a mule if you hit that tree, and if you do not, by the death of Woosen Suggud you shall forfeit your best rifle.” Frequent practice having rendered me tolerably expert, my first lance fortunately passed through the stem, and the second threw its crown upon the ground. His Majesty was obviously satisfied; but whilst the mule completely escaped his treacherous recollection, my “best rifle,” alas! had been already doomed to change hands. It remained but a brief period in those of the lawful proprietor, and Ayto Habti, the master armourer, was to be seen the very next morning engraving on the barrel with punch and hammer certain ominous Amháric characters, signifying, “Sáhela Selássie, who is the Negoos of Shoa, Efát, and the Galla.”

Hunting down the partridge with dogs occupied the residue of the day. Parties stationed themselves at intervals along the heather-grown slopes of the hills, where the bird abounds, and by dint of unceasing persecution kept the victim selected so perpetually on the wing, that after three or four long flights it was unable to rise again. Many were thus killed with sticks, or taken alive; but wherever His Majesty was forthcoming, he rested a long double-barrelled fowling piece over the shoulder of an attendant to insure steady aim—and the wearied quarry, believing itself safe in a bush, was suddenly blown to atoms.

Northern Abyssinia was now in a more disturbed state than ever; and numerous youths who had attempted to proceed to Gondar for the purpose of being ordained, had been compelled to abandon the journey, and return to Ankóber. They brought tidings of an engagement between Ras Ali and Dedjasmach Oubié (see Note 1), which had been fought at Salem Okko, in the vicinity of Debra Tabor. The Ras being personally opposed to his rebel vassal, was believed to have fallen early in the day. His rumoured death proving the signal for disorder and retreat, the camp was left in possession of the enemy, who consigned it to the flames, under the conviction that victory was theirs. But the leader had merely fled; and as the evening closed, his partisans, recovering from their panic, rallied, and fell with irresistible fury on the victors, who were little prepared for further hostilities, and the execrated tyrant Oubié, who carries with him the curses of his oppressed subjects, was, with his two sons, made prisoner.

Abba Salama, the Abuna, who is equally respected by all parties, was in the camp of the vanquished, but the holy man found an honourable asylum. The spiritual despotism exercised by the primate from the first moment of his arrival in Abyssinia calls vividly to mind the period when the mandates of the pope were as implicitly obeyed, and his ghostly influence similarly dreaded, by the potentates of Europe; and independently of his spiritual power, which exalts him greatly above the most potent of the rulers of the land, his holiness is far from being contemptible as a temporal prince. The hundred and eighth successor to Saint Mark the Evangelist, reclining in his humble divan within the Coptic quarters at Grand-Cairo, surrounded by the dignity of coffee and pipes, would ill recognise his juvenile delegate at Gondar, where both these luxuries are held in abomination, could he behold him in the enjoyment of revenues many times in excess of his own—ordaining a thousand priests in a single day—and receiving the homage of all the proud actors engaged in the troubled drama of Abyssinian politics.

War had not visited Shoa; but the peace of many a family was yet destined to be disturbed by an arbitrary proceeding on the part of the crown. As the period of the king’s departure from the capital drew nigh, many of the royal slaves who had voluntarily sold their liberty during the great famine of Saint Luke, (each year is in Abyssinia dedicated to one of the four Evangelists, according to the order of the Gospels,) casting themselves at the footstool of the throne, implored the restoration of their freedom in consideration of many long years of servitude. Enraged at what he termed the ingratitude of those whom he had fed when they must otherwise have starved, His Majesty, labouring under a strange infatuation, bade them “begone,” and, in utter defiance of all the existing laws of the realm, that day promulgated an edict through the royal herald, that from thenceforth the progeny of all his numerous slaves, whether the offspring of free fathers or of free mothers, should be accounted his sole property, and forthwith render themselves to be enrolled by his drivers, in order to have their daily task allotted.

The capital was in a state of wild confusion and consternation. Weeping and wailing resounded in every hut, and no Abyssinian possessed sufficient courage to oppose the dictates of the angry despot. The presence of the British Embassy now proved of that salutary and commanding influence which humanity and civilisation must ever exert over barbarity and savage ignorance. Deeming the opportunity imperative, and considering the chance of success to be well worth the risk of a misunderstanding with the court, I earnestly entreated His Majesty to reflect, “that the name of Sáhela Selássie, hitherto so beloved of all, would lose a portion of its lustre and brightness. That all men are mortal. That kings do not reign for ever; and that the groans of his unhappy subjects, the props of his power and kingdom, who had heretofore lived in the enjoyment of the liberty to which they were born, but were now pining heart-broken in the thraldom of slavery, would add little to the comfort of the close of his illustrious life.”

My petition was accompanied by the enquiry, “how I should be able to represent his proceedings to the Government by which I had been sent?” and it was attended with the most satisfactory results. The king, who had still the fear of God before his eyes, avowed, “that the act had proceeded in a hurried moment of wrath, and that his European children had made him thoroughly sensible of its injustice and cruelty.” The offensive proclamation was on the instant annulled; and four thousand seven hundred unfortunate victims to its promulgation, released from the house of bondage, and from the degrading shackles of slavery, after they had renounced all hope of redemption, returned to their homes and to their families, blessing as they went the name of “the white men.”

Note 1. Dedjasmach, often contracted to Dedjach, signifies “the warrior of the door,” and is the title of governors under the puppet emperor of Ethiopia. As in the Ottoman empire the Pacha is distinguished by the number of his tails, so is the Dedjasmach by the number of his kettle-drums. He is entitled to one for each province under his control, and loses no opportunity of finding his account in the troubled waters by asserting independence.