The King had oftentimes vaunted the extraordinary natural fortification
of Angollala by the river Chacha, 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 Bereza and by numerous
other streams, skirts the celebrated sanctuary of Sena Markos, 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 Facha, 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 Katama, 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 _Abelam_ [derived from the
Amharic word "_abella_," "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 Gureyo, 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
Chacha rises the silent village of Cherkos, rendered famous a few years
since through the massacre of one thousand of its Christian inhabitants
by Medoko [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
Angollala. 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 Chacha 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.
Medoko'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 Cherkos,
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 Chara, the son of the rebel, one of the only two
members of the disgraced family to whom Sahela Selassie 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 Medoko's execution, was also of the
_cortege_; 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 Wodage 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 Mesar Medur,
a post of high honour, which he enjoys to the present day, and which
occupies the frontier of the Galla dependencies.
Volume Two, Chapter XIII.