Excursions abroad continued as usual to occupy the royal leisure; and
even when rats and horned owls formed the ignominious quarry, the king's
Gyptzis were invariably summoned. But the dark forests which clothe the
foot of Mamrat proved the favourite scene of these rambles, and thither
the steps of the monarch were usually directed. Large colonies of the
_gureza_, which inhabit the noblest trees, offered an irresistible
attraction; and although, from their retired habits no less than from
their appearance, these inoffensive apes are regarded in the light of
monks, their holy character did not exempt them from frequent and severe
punishment. A shower of iron and stone balls tumbled one after the
other from his perch on the topmost branches of some venerable
moss-grown _woira_, where, notwithstanding many cunning artifices, the
white cowl and the long snowy cloak upon the otherwise sable body,
betrayed the place of concealment; and numbers being soon prostrate upon
the ground, the survivors, amazed at the murderous intrusion, were to be
seen swinging from bough to bough like a slack-rope dancer, and leaping
from tree to tree as they sought more secure quarters in the, to man,
inaccessible sides of the hail-capped mountain.
Occupying manifold caves and subterranean crannies in this the most
elevated pinnacle within the range of vision, the idolised riches of
Sahela Selassie are covered with massive iron plates, barred, and
secured by large heaps of stone. A strong guard of matchlock-men
occupies the only practicable ascent to the treasury; and the keys of
its well-crammed coffers, which are never opened unless for the purpose
of being still further stuffed, are strictly confided to Ayto Habti, the
master Cyclops of the realm. At the extremity of a forest vista, the
huge wooded cone presents a grand and imposing object, avenues of tall
trees screening its dark defiles, whilst the fleecy vapour that steals
across the hoary summit, discloses glimpses of the many smiling hamlets
which crest the Abyssinian Alps.
A Mohammadan legend asserts, that in time of yore, "the Mother of Grace"
towered even to the skies, and so remained until the first invasion of
Graan. Ameer Noor, his brother, the ruler of Hurrur in its golden days,
having formed his camp upon a rising ground above Alio Amba, despatched
his chieftains in all directions to slay, burn, and plunder. Upon their
return, laden with rich booty, obtained without having encountered a
single Amhara, the disappointed Ameer exclaimed, in his religious zeal,
"'tis the mountain Mamrat that hides the dastardly infidels. May Allah,
the only one God, who rules over the universe, grant that it be
overthrown, and my foes revealed!" Scarcely had the pious prayer
escaped his lips, than the pile reeled to and fro like a drunken man,
and sank to its present level.
"The country of the Adaiel," adds the same veracious authority, "through
which the Ameer led the followers of the true Prophet, was in those days
a trackless desert, totally destitute of springs; but on his stamping
his foot upon the thirsty soil at the termination of each day's march,
there gushed forth a fountain of living water, which has continued to
flow until the present time." During the struggle that followed the
arrival of the Moslem invaders, the Christians are said to have been in
danger of perishing from lack of provisions, until the inhabitants of
Argobba, who are styled Shooggur, from the name of their ancestor,
supplied the army, by rolling over the mountain side skins filled with
grain. In a battle fought shortly after the arrival of this seasonable
supply, Ali Muggan, the governor of Zeyla, was slain on the terrace
betwixt Mamrat and Alio Amba, and his body left to the wild beasts;
whereupon Noor, his brother, cursing the race who, professing the faith
of Islam, had been the agents of so dire a calamity, doomed their necks
to be chafed for ever by the galling yoke of vassalage to unbelievers.
Far hid in the rugged bosom of the "Mother of Grace," is a spacious
cell, often visited by the king. During one half of the fourteenth
century, it formed the abode of an anchorite, renowned far and wide for
the austerity of his life, who invariably slept upon a bed of sharp
thorns, and whose food was restricted to roots and wild honey. Hatze
Amda Zion was then engaged in his disastrous war with Adel; and the
ascetic, seizing his white staff, abandoned his rigorous solitude for
the first time, and fired by religious zeal, rushed into the presence of
the Emperor, who was encamped on the banks of the Hawash. Displaying
the holy cross to the dispirited soldiery, he exhorted them to be of
good heart, and not to let the standard of Christ droop before the
profane ensign of the infidels; for that it was written in the book of
the Revelation of Saint John, that Islamism was that year to be crushed
and trodden under foot throughout the world. At his bidding, three
merchants of Hurrur, who, under the guise of suttlers, performed the
office of spies, were hung without trial, and their heads being
transmitted to the King of Adel, proved the forerunners of a bloody
defeat, which he shortly afterwards sustained.
To the latest occupant of the cave of Mamrat is attached the legend
embodied in the two ensuing chapters. It is fully illustrative of the
grovelling superstition that enthrals the Amhara, of whom none ever
allude to the dread sorcerer Thavanan, without an invocation to the
Deity. He was an exiled noble of Northern Abyssinia, high in the favour
of Asfa Woosen, fifth monarch of Shoa, who took forcible possession of
his sister, and after degrading the courtier for opposing this despotic
measure, sentenced him to the loss of an eye, which was put out with a
hot iron. Resolved to have his revenge, the outcast became a worshipper
of the eighty-eight invisible spirits, termed _Saroch_, believed to be
the emissaries for evil of Warobal Mama, the King of the Genies, whose
court is held at the bottom of Lake Alobar, in Mans, whence his drum is
heard pealing over the water whenever war, famine, or pestilence are
about to visit the land.
Having purchased supernatural powers at the price of his hope of
salvation, Thavanan tormented the king day and night--spirited away his
seraglio, and, having thus recovered his sister, deprived her oppressor
of sight by means of magic spells. Taking the name of Abba Zowald, he
then became a stern ascetic; and his bones now lie interred in the cell
beneath a pile of rough stones, which, during a long period of
mortification, served him for a couch, whilst roots and wild fruits
formed his only fare. Angels are said to have ministered unto him; his
voice was the voice of an oracle; and none recognising the sorcerer in a
holy Christian anchorite, who had despised the world and its vanities
during a period of fifty years, he lived universally regarded in
Abyssinia as a second Peter.
Volume Two, Chapter XXXIII.