Having thus happily shaken the Adel dust from off the feet, and taken
affectionate leave of the greasy Danakil, it is not a little pleasant to
bid adieu also to their scorching plains of unblessed sterility. Every
change in the soil and climate of Africa is in extremes, and barrenness
and unbounded fertility border on each other with a suddenness whereof
the denizens of temperate climes can form no conception. As if by the
touch of the magician's wand, the scene now passes in an instant from
parched and arid wastes to the green and lovely highlands of Abyssinia,
presenting one sheet of rich and thriving cultivation. Each fertile
knoll is crowned with its peaceful hamlet--each rural vale traversed by
its crystal brook, and teeming with herds and flocks. The cool mountain
zephyr is redolent of eglantine and jasmine, and the soft green turf,
spangled with clover, daisies, and buttercups, yields at every step the
aromatic fragrance of the mint and thyme.
The baggage having at length been consigned to the shoulders of six
hundred grumbling Moslem porters, assembled by the royal fiat from the
adjacent villages, and who, now on the road, formed a line which
extended upwards of a mile, the Embassy, on the morning of the 17th,
commenced the ascent of the Abyssinian Alps. Hitherto every officious
attendant functionary had exerted himself to the utmost to promote
delay, confusion, and annoyance; and each now exhorted the respective
members of the party to urge their jaded beasts to increased speed, and
hasten onwards over a rugged path which, in the toil-worn condition of
the majority, was not to be ascended without considerable difficulty.
The king was waxing impatient to behold the delighting things that had
been imported, an account of which, so far as the prying eyes of his
servants had been able to discern, had been duly transmitted to the
palace; and in order to celebrate the arrival of so great an accession
of wealth. His Majesty's flutes once more poured out their melody, and
his warriors again chanted their wild notes among the hills, until far
out of hearing of the astonished population of Farri.
It was a cool and lovely morning, and a fresh invigorating breeze played
over the mountain side, on which, though less than ten degrees removed
from the equator, flourished the vegetation of northern climes. The
rough and stony road wound on by a steep ascent over hill and dale--now
skirting the extreme verge of a precipitous cliff--now dipping into the
basin of some verdant hollow, whence, after traversing the pebbly course
of a murmuring brook, it suddenly emerged into a succession of shady
lanes, bounded by flowering hedge-rows.
The wild rose, the fern, the lantana, and the honeysuckle, smiled around
a succession of highly cultivated terraces, into which the entire range
was broken by banks supporting the soil; and on every eminence stood a
cluster of conically-thatched houses, environed by green hedges, and
partially embowered amid dark trees. As the troop passed on, the
peasant abandoned his occupation in the field to gaze at the novel
procession; whilst merry groups of hooded women, decked in scarlet and
crimson, summoned by the renewal of martial strains, left their
avocations in the hut to welcome the king's guests with a shrill
_ziroleet_, which rang from every hamlet. The leather petticoat of the
wandering shepherdess was no longer to be seen. Birds warbled among the
leafy groves, and throughout the rich landscape reigned an air of peace
and plenty that could not fail to prove highly delightful after the
recent weary pilgrimage across the hot desert.
At various turns of the road the prospect was rugged, wild, and
beautiful. Aigibbi, the first Christian village of Efat, was soon
revealed on the summit of a height, where, within an enclosure of
thorns, rest the remains of a traveller, who not long before had closed
his eyes on the threshold of the kingdom, a victim to the pestilential
sky of the lowlands. Three principal ranges were next crossed in
succession, severally intersected by rivulets which are all tributary to
the Hawash, although the waters are for the most part absorbed before
they reach that stream. Lastly, the view opened upon the wooded site of
Ankober, occupying a central position in a horse-shoe crescent of
mountains, still high above, which enclose a magnificent amphitheatre of
ten miles in diameter. This is clothed throughout with a splendidly
varied and vigorous vegetation, and choked by minor abutments,
converging towards its gorge on the confines of the Adel plains.
Here the journey was for the present to terminate, and, thanks to
Abyssinian jealousy and suspicion, many days were yet to elapse ere the
remaining height should be climbed to the capital of Shoa, now distant
two hours' walk. Three thousand feet above the level of Farri stands
the market-town of Alio Amba, upon the crest of a scarped prong formed
by the confluence of two mountain streams. A Mohammadan population, not
exceeding one thousand souls, the inmates of two hundred and fifty
straggling houses, is chiefly composed of Adaiel, Argobba, and merchants
from Aussa and Hurrur; and among this motley community it had been
ordained that the Embassy should halt that night.
Ascending by a steep stony path to an open spot, on which the weekly
market is held, the escort fired a desultory salute; and whilst crowds
of both sexes flocked to behold the white strangers, forming a double
line, they indulged in the performance of the war-dance. Relieved
occasionally by some of the younger braves who had earned distinctions
during the last campaign, a veteran capered before the ranks with a
drawn sword grasped between his teeth; and for the edification of the
bystanders the notes of a martial song were powerfully poured forth in
chorus from three hundred Christian throats.
The cone occupied by Alio Amba is only one of the thousand precipitous
eminences into which the entire mountain side is broken on its junction
with the plain. Swollen and foaming, the intersecting torrents appeared
from the pinnacle like small threads of silver, twining and gliding far
below amid green bushes and verdant fields to the great outlet, whence
they escape to be soon lost on the desert sand. Together with a
boundless prospect over the inhospitable tract beneath, countless
villages now met the eye upon the entire intervening mountain side, and
wherever the slope admitted of the plough being held, there cultivation
flourished. Wheat, barley, Indian com, beans, peas, cotton, and oil
plant, throve luxuriantly around every hamlet--the regularly marked
fields mounting in terraces to the height of three or four thousand
feet, and becoming in their boundaries gradually more and more
indistinct, until totally lost on the shadowy green side of Mamrat, "The
Mother of Grace."
This towering peak, still shrouded in clouds when all was sunshine
below, is clothed with a dense forest of timber, and at an elevation of
some thirteen thousand feet above the sea, affords secure shelter to the
treasures of the monarch, which have been amassing since the
re-establishment of the kingdom, one hundred and fifty years since.
Loza forms the apex of the opposite side of the crescent, and perched on
its wooded summit is a monastery forming the temporary abode of Halloo
Mulakoot, heir-apparent to the throne of Shoa. But by far the most
interesting feature in the stern landscape is a conical hill,
conspicuous from its isolated position, and rising amid dark groves of
pine-like juniper, from a lofty serrated ridge. Hereon stands the
stronghold of Goncho, the residence of Wulasma Mohammad, constructed
over the state dungeon keep, in which, loaded with galling fetters, the
three younger brothers of a Christian king--victims to a barbarous
statute--have found a living tomb since the present accession, a period
of thirty years!
After much needless detention in the market-place, exposed to the
impertinent comments and rude gaze of the thronging populace, Ayto
Kalama Work, a tall raw-boned man with a loose scrambling gait and a
dead yellow eye, introduced himself as governor of the town. He
condescended in person to conduct the British guests of his royal master
to a mansion which had once boasted of himself as a tenant, but was now
in the occupation of a fat old Moslem dame and her three daughters,
whose respective appellatives being duly translated, proved worthy the
days of Prince Cherry and Fairstar. Eve, Sweet-limes, and Sunbeam, all
clothed alike in scarlet habiliments, vacated the premises with the
utmost alacrity, and many good-humoured smiles; but owing to the length
and difficulty of the road, that portion of the baggage most in request
did not arrive until midnight--when, through the officious interference
of Ayto Wolda Hana, whose garrulity had increased rather than abated, a
new inventory of effects in charge of each principal of a village was to
be penned by the royal scribe, and thus neither bedding nor food could
be obtained.
The edifice so ostentatiously allotted for the accommodation of the
party by him of the unpromising exterior, was of an elliptical form,
about thirty feet in length by eighteen in breadth, and surrounded on
every side by those tall rank weeds that delight to luxuriate in filth.
Two undressed stakes supported a tottering grass thatch. Windows there
were none. A long narrow aperture did duty for a door, and the walls,
which met the roof at a distance of ten feet from the ground, were of
the very worst description of wattle and dab--the former an assemblage
of rotten reeds, and the latter decayed by time in a sufficiency of
places to admit the light indispensable to a full development of the
dirt and misery within.
In the principal of two apartments, a circular excavation in the floor
surrounded by a parapet of clay, served as a stove. Heavy slabs of
stone embedded in high mud pedestals, and used for grinding grain,
engrossed one corner, and in another were piled heaps of old bullock
hides in various stages of decomposition. Very buggy-looking bedsteads,
equipped with a web of narrow thongs in lieu of cotton tape, assumed
that air of discomfort which a broken or ill-adapted leg is so prone to
impart. The narrow necks of divers earthen urn-shaped vessels
containing mead, beer, and water, were stuffed with bunches of green
leaves. Larger mud receptacles were filled with wheat, barley, and
beans; and huge lumps of raw beef, with sundry bullocks' heads, which
were promiscuously strewed about, garnished the floor, the beds, and the
walls, in every direction.
The inner chamber boasted the presence of mules and female slaves, who,
if judgment might be formed from the evil odours exhaled, were revelling
in the garbage of the shambles. Constructed on the slope of a hill, the
floor of the edifice throughout was of the natural earth, and dipping at
least one foot below the level of the threshold, had never known the
presence of the housemaid's besom. Equalling the filthiest Irish hovel
in dirt and discomfort, the cheerless abode could boast of no sleek
little pig, and of no pond covered with fat ducks, both being alike held
in abhorrence by the Jew-Christians of Shoa; and even the old hat was
wanting wherewith to cram the gaps through which whistled the keen
cutting blast of Alpine climes.
Fatigue soon closed the weary eyes; but the change in the atmosphere,
consequent upon the great elevation attained, presently interfered with
repose upon the damp bare floor. Rain then set in with extreme
violence. The water came tumbling through the manifold apertures in the
crazy walls and shattered roof, and having speedily flooded the sloping
court, poured over the threshold to deluge the floor with standing
pools. Although the smoke of sodden wood, unable to escape, proved an
inconvenience scarcely to be borne, there was no dispensing with a fire;
and troops of fleas and sanguinary bugs, coursing over the body, by
their painful and poisonous attacks, might almost have caused a sigh for
the execrated plains of the Adaiel, which, with all their discomforts of
watch and ward, were at least free from the curse of vermin.
But the lingering day dawned at last, and with the tedious hours of a
cold and sleepless night the rain had also disappeared. As the rising
sun shone against the lofty and now cloudless peaks, preparations were
made for continuing the journey to Ankober, in accordance with the royal
invitation; but Ayto Wolda Hana, whose presence ever betokened evil,
after wading through the compliments of the morning, proceeded with
unbending gravity to unfold the dismal tidings that the monarch had
altered his resolves. His Majesty would tarry yet some days longer at
Debra Berhan, and in consequence graciously extended the option of
visiting the court there or resting at Alio Amba, pending his indefinite
arrival at the capital.
The difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of transporting the mass
of baggage to so great a distance, in such weather, and with very
inadequate means at command, rendered imperative the adoption of the
latter alternative. Aytos Wolda Hana and Katama, with the whole of the
escort, meanwhile took their departure, to report orally the important
discoveries they had been able to make relative to the nature of the
presents designed for the throne, together with the particulars of the
quarrel betwixt Izhak and Mohammad Ali, and the respective pretension of
the rivals to the honour of having conducted the British visitors into
Abyssinia.
One of those mysterious boxes, the lading of which, unviolated by the
scrutinising scribes, remained hermetically sealed to the inquisitive
gaze of officious spies, had, before leaving Farri, been broken open
with the design of obtaining access to an indispensable portion of the
contents. To this unfortunate necessity may possibly be ascribed the
sudden and unlooked-for alteration in the royal intentions. In lieu of
ingots of gold were revealed to the astounded sight the leathern
buckets, linch-stocks, and tough ash staves pertaining to the
galloper-guns. Words of derision burst from the mouth of every
disappointed spectator. "These," exclaimed fifty vain-glorious lips at
once, "be but a poor people. What is their nation when compared with
the Amhara; for behold in this trash, specimens of the offerings brought
from their boasted land to the footstool of the mightiest of monarchs!"
Volume One, Chapter XLI.