Invitation to visit the Negoos.--Karissa and his firelock.--
Some account of the countries to the south of Shoa.--
Distances.--A reputed cannibal people.--Other absurd
rumours.--Probable truth.--Of the Doko: not dwarfs but
monkeys.
_August 24th._--Early this morning, Tinta appeared at my house. He had
returned from Ankobar the night before, and had brought an invitation
or command, that if I were able I should visit the Negoos at Debra
Berhan, on the 24th of September, upon which day a great national
festival is held in honour of the anniversary of the discovery of
the Cross by the Empress Helena. This is called the _muscal_ from a
similar word signifying _cross_, and is a kind of military review,
before the Negoos, of all his forces, every tenant and slave capable
of bearing arms being expected to be present. It is, in fact, an
Abyssinian wapentake, and its real origin, although at the present time
concealed by the substitution of a religious name and purpose, may be
still traced to the same social institutions that first established
similar feudal parades among the older European nations. I shall
dismiss the subject at present, however, with the single remark, that
no Mahomedan, except he wear the _matab_ for the occasion of the
muscal, or the expeditions against the Gallas, is expected to appear
as a soldier before the Negoos; the Wallasmah Mahomed having all claim
upon military service from those inhabitants of Shoa who profess that
religion.
With Tinta came a gunman of the Negoos’ body guard, named Karissa, with
whom I was previously acquainted, and who, having injured the lock of
his new musket, now came to solicit me to set it to rights, under the
full impression that I had been brought up to the business. Finding
on examination that a small fragment of the catch of the trigger was
only broken off, which prevented it being held properly in the groove
of the tumbling portion of the lock, I promised to do it for him, but
as I had then no spring vice, or files, I told him he must stop until
Tinta could procure them for me, which the latter promised to do in the
course of the day.
Karissa was a very intelligent Galla, wore his hair in their usual wild
manner, in a series of long plaited elf-locks, hanging on all sides
of his head and dark brown face. His features were regular and well
defined, which is not very usual among those considered to be true
Galla, but as he came from Cambat to the south and east of Zingero,
and as I have seen others from the same country who resembled Karissa
very much, future discoveries have yet to determine to what is owing
this difference in the appearance of the countenance from those whom I
term Soumaulee Gallas, or the mulatto progeny of Shankalli and Dankalli
parents. At present it will serve our purpose to class them as a mixed
race between the Amhara and the Shankalli, or what is more probable,
between the Amhara and the Soumaulee Galla.
As he sat with me all day, and it happened to be my good day, in
contradistinction to the alternate evil one on which I was afflicted
with the ague fit, I asked him many questions respecting his
country and his parents. As I began to feel more interested in the
conversation, and found that my partial knowledge of Amharic prevented
me from making my visitor quite understand some of my questions, I sent
Walderheros for Ibrahim, who soon came, and very readily undertook to
act as interpreter and illustrator of Karissa’s information.
He first told me that he was not a born slave of the Negoos, but had
recommended himself to the notice of the monarch, by the dexterous
manner in which he had conveyed messages to the Kings of Enarea, and of
his own country, Cambat. For the fidelity which had marked his return
to servitude, and for his bravery during the rebellion of Matoko he had
been rewarded by being made a _nuftania_, or gunman, and would, were he
to marry, have a house bestowed upon him, with as much land as two oxen
could plough in the year.
He had lived several years in Gurague, and had crossed the river
Gibbee where it passes to the south of Enarea, and he stated positively
that it flowed into the Abiah, and so far gratified Ibrahim, who
had so described it to me in his geography of Southern Abyssinia.
One circumstance favourable for my proper understanding of the true
situation of the countries he described as having passed through in his
several journeys was, that Karissa had crossed the Hawash at Mulkukuyu,
so we had at once a standard of distance that both of us knew, and this
aided me materially in correcting the situations of many places with
the names and relative positions of which I was already familiar from
my conversations with Ibrahim.
Respecting Ankor, Karissa stated it to be a part of Enarea, and not of
Zingero. He did not know whether it had ever formed part of the latter
country, which I had heard from another authority, a Christian duptera,
who told me he had read it in a book belonging to the church of St.
Michael, in Ankobar (where the Negoos deposits the greater part of his
manuscript volumes), that Anquor, or Ankor, was a province of Zingero.
Be that as it may, from Ankobar to Ankor is three times the distance
between the former place to the ford over the Hawash, or about 150
miles. Zingero was about the same distance, directly to the south-west,
whilst Ankor, or that part of Enarea which borders on the Gibbee, was
nearly to the west-south-west. The sources of the Gibbee were not more
than eighty miles from Angolahlah, and going on horseback, Karissa
said that he could drink of the waters of that river before the evening
of the second day. The Gallas of Limmoo he had heard of, but never
visited, so that when I mentioned to him the name of Ouare, the Galla
informant of M. Jomard, and also Kilho, who is represented as being
chief of that country, he could give me no information respecting them.
The river Abiah he knew was the same as the Gibbee, and said that it
went through the Shankalli country to Sennaar.
Beyond the Abiah I was now told, a nation of white people like
ourselves existed, but who were cannibals, and had all their utensils
made of iron. That they boiled and eat all intruders into their
country. He stated positively that he had himself seen a woman of this
people, who had been brought to Enarea, and who had confirmed all the
statements he was now making to me. As I believe myself that the Bahr
ul Abiad will be found to have its earlier sources in an isolated
table land like Abyssinia, but of much greater elevation, I began to
suspect that these white people must be the inhabitants of the country
surrounding the distant sources of this mysterious river, and that
as the Assabi derived its name from flowing through a country of red
people, that the White Nile, in like manner had been so designated
from the circumstance of its table land being inhabited by a white
race, and as a branch of that river is known by the name of Addo,
which I consider to be the _Arian_ term for _white_, this added some
confirmation to my ideas. On inquiring, however, what knowledge Karissa
had of the Bahr ul Abiad, I found that he was entirely ignorant of
such a river, and when I modified the name, by calling it the river
of the Tokruree, or blacks, he instantly conceived I was speaking of
the Kalli, that is well known to flow to the south and east of Kuffah
into the Indian Ocean, and by which caravans of slaves are constantly
passing between Zingero and the coast of Zanzibar. There must, in fact,
exist in this situation a most available road into the very centre of
the continent of Africa, for I have subsequently seen Nubian slaves
who had been in the service of Zaid Zaid, Imaum of Zanzibar, that
corroborated this statement of Karissa in every particular respecting
the transit of slaves across the table land of Abyssinia, from Sennaar
to Lamoo on the Indian Ocean, and so to the market of Zanzibar.
I was, however, more interested in the account I received of the white
people, and which was as exaggerated a relation, as many of the reports
received by some travellers respecting the Doko dwarfs. To retail
here all the absurd nonsense that Karissa entertained me with would
be sadly misappropriating space, but I could gather from the reports
that a singular race of men live in the most jealous seclusion, in a
large desert-surrounded table land, similar in many respects to that
of Abyssinia. That they were civilized was evident, from the fact of
their writing being said to be quite different from the Geez, and it is
not a nation just emerged from barbarism that would possess a knowledge
of such an abstruse art as that of writing. As to the tale of their
being cannibals, I recollected that even at the present day the very
same report is entertained, and believed by the Negroes around Kordofan
of European habits, and that we ourselves are supposed by them to be
cannibals. This is, in fact, a charge so easily made, and serves so
admirably to heighten the horrible, in a picture of a barbarous people
drawn by an imaginative mind, that even among modern travellers we find
an inclination to spread such rumours, without any examination as to
their correctness, and sometimes, from a hasty conclusion, or an error
in interpretation, without any foundation whatever. In this manner, a
stigma of cannibalism has been attached to the Dankalli, but which only
shows how careful travellers ought to be before they promulgate such
strange and absurd stories.[11]
Nothing can be positively asserted; but I believe, myself, that we
are on the eve of a most interesting ethnological and geographical
discovery, that will at once afford a solution to all the strange and
improbable accounts which have reached us respecting the inhabitants
of Central Africa. What we hear of dwarfs, cannibals, and communities
of monkeys, may, perhaps, prove to be merely a muddied stream of
information, conveyed to us through the medium of ignorant and
barbarous tribes; but which may have a foundation of an unexpected
character, in the existence of a nation in this situation; which,
almost physically separated from the rest of the world by impassable
deserts and unnavigable rivers, has continued in its original integrity
that perfect condition of society which, once general, then almost
extinguished, evidently preceded the barbarism from which the present
transition state has emerged, and which I believe to be gradually
progressing to the re-attainment of the previous excellence of the
primeval social institutions.
One strange report respecting the inhabitants of intra-tropical Africa,
I think I shall be able to show the origin and foundation of, and
which is the existence, in a situation to the south of Kuffah, of a
nation of dwarfs, called Doko. From the information I have received
myself, and from an examination of unpublished Portuguese documents
relative to the geography of the eastern coast of Africa, and of the
people inland; in the very situation presumed to be the native country
of the Doko, I learn that a very different family of man is only to
be found--the tall, muscular, and powerful Shankalli negro; and,
more than this, the French traveller, M. d’Abbadie, from information
received in Abyssinia, has reported that to the south of Enarea and
Kuffah, a nation of Shankalli reside, to whom the name Doko was given.
It cannot, therefore, I think, be doubted that a people so designated
do occupy the country to the south of Abyssinia, and that from among
them are taken the greater number of slaves, that arrive at the markets
of Enarea and Zingero, where the dealers dispose of them to the slave
Kafilahs that are proceeding to Zanzibar, or to northern Abyssinia.
Doko perhaps designates the slave country, or, perhaps, signifies as
much as our _terra incognita_, for we find the same word entering into
the name of the unknown countries situated to the south of Bornou and
the Mandara range, and, therefore, the Dukalata of those portions on
the west of Africa may correspond with the equally unknown country of
the Doko upon the eastern side.
The accounts, however, lately received of the dwarfs of central Africa,
is not new information, but is merely the revival of a very old idea,
which in less enlightened times was naturally enough entertained by
just and properly constituted minds, who acknowledged the greatness of
the natural truths which had been demonstrated to them, by thus not
refusing to believe that which with their limited knowledge, they could
not consistently deny might be possible. It is this which characterizes
the humility of genius, and which is rewarded by the light which
must result from the inquiries excited by such expectations. But it
becomes a proof of no little mental obtuseness, when the probability
of any popular rumour is insisted upon, after the knowledge of facts
has so far accumulated, as to enable us to demonstrate its absurdity.
No reasonable being can positively deny the existence of a nation of
very short statured men in Africa, but that he must believe because
there may be such a people, that the animals described as the Doko
dwarfs, are them, is quite out of the question. The real dwarfs may,
ultimately, prove to be the Gonga people, and most probably they are.
I have some singular evidence upon this very subject, which I only wish
somewhat farther to confirm, to lay before the public; but shall at
present confine myself to denying, that the Doko, of modern Abyssinian
fable, represent the dwarfs alluded to by the naturalists of antiquity;
or, that, in fact, they are men at all.
Ludolph and d’Lisle are, I believe, still the great authorities
upon the geography of interior Africa; their maps were evidently
constructed from well compared and long considered information; and
conjectural geographers of the present day, are too glad, when their
theories accord in any way with the delineation of these countries as
represented by those authors. On examination of their maps it will
be perceived, that both received such apparently well-authenticated
accounts, of a nation of dwarfs dwelling to the South of Abyssinia,
that they had been obliged to recognise their existence, and, of
course, to find them a locality.
Ludolph, whose knowledge of the Geez and Amharic probably prevented
him from considering the accounts of so great an importance as did the
French geographer, only notices, by a small note appended to the name
on the map, that the King of Zingero was stated to be a monkey. In the
body of his work, however, he represents that he received considerable
information respecting a nation of dwarfs living in this situation,
and who accord in so many respects with the Doko of the present day,
that there cannot be any reasonable doubt, but that both have resulted
from similar popular rumours that have continued to us, from the time
of Ludolph. A plate in his very interesting “History of Ethiopia,”
actually gives the presumed character of these so-called dwarfs, and
who are represented in several situations characteristic of their
habits, among which appears as most prominent that of being employed
in devouring ants, which we are told also forms the principal food of
the Doko. Ludolph, however, has so much respect for human nature as not
to picture these dwarfs as men, but in every respect has delineated
them as monkeys; and when it is understood that the word Zingero in
Amharic signifies baboon, as well as the name of a large kingdom in
the south of Shoa, the connexion of words and the confusion of ideas
will be allowed to be quite natural, when we consider the ignorance
of the Abyssinian informants, and the imperfect knowledge of their
language, more especially of its synonymes, by even the most learned
of the travellers from whom had been received any account of that
country. It was this which misled Ludolph, although from the cautious
note upon the map respecting the King of Zingero being stated to be a
monkey, it appears that he had certain doubts, but his fidelity as a
_closet_ geographer and historian did not allow him to throw aside the
information, merely because his own opinion did not accord with that
which he was told to be the fact.
M. d’Lisle seems to have been perfectly satisfied as to the human
nature of the Government, and of course the people of Zingero, but
still he was trammeled with a nation of so-called dwarfs, which in his
days were represented to occupy a tract of country more remote than the
Abyssinian kingdom of Zingero, so we find that in his map encircling
that country to the west and south, a nation of dwarfs is placed, the
name of whom, he was informed, was Makoko. Exactly as in the case of
the _Zingero_ of Ludolph, Makoko is nothing more but the Amharic term
for monkey, and of course the same explanation proves the connexion of
these Makoko dwarfs with those animals, and also of their identity with
the same reported race of which Ludolph had previously recorded his
knowledge, although, as I have before said, their existence as a nation
was not so insisted upon by him as it appears to have been by d’Lisle.
I will now direct attention to the principal characteristics of the
modern Doko, but I may observe, that no Abyssinian I ever questioned
upon the subject, either learned duptera, or Kuffah slave, could give
me any information, excepting an old servant of Dr. Krapf, Roophael,
who seemed fully acquainted with them, and I have seen him amusing a
whole circle of Shoans with his relation of these people. But be it
observed that Ludolph’s “History of Ethiopia” formed a part of his
master’s library, and he appeared perfectly familiar with the plate of
the ant-eating monkeys, to which he always referred as his authority
for his strange tale. The fullest account of these dwarfs is found in
Major Harris’s recent work, “The Highlands of Æthiopia,” where we are
told, “Both sexes go perfectly naked, and have thick pouting lips,
diminutive eyes, and flat noses.” “They are ignorant of the use of
fire.” “_Fruits_ are their principal food, and to obtain these, women
as well as men ascend the trees in numbers, and in their quarrels
and scrambles not unfrequently throw each other from the branches.”
“They have no king, no laws, no arts, no arms, possess neither flocks
nor herds, are not hunters, do not cultivate the soil, but subsist
entirely upon fruits, roots, mice, _reptiles_, _ants_, and honey.”
These, such as they are described, cannot certainly be men possessing
reasoning powers, and without that necessary characteristic of human
nature, I cannot conceive how the idea could have been entertained for
an instant, that the Doko belonged to our species, or that they could
have been believed to be the dwarfs, supposed to exist in Africa by
those ancient authors who have in their works treated upon the subject.
Had it been shown that they possessed any attribute of humanity; a
knowledge of God, for example, beyond a mere prostration with their
feet against a tree, and a calling upon “_Yare! Yare!_” when in
trouble or pain; or of social order beyond mere gregarious instinct;
or of the simplest arts of life requiring the exercise of the least
reasoning powers, then there might have been some reason to accord to
the Doko the dignity of belonging to our species; but when we are fully
acquainted with the character and manner of living of an animal that
coincides exactly with the chief characteristics of the habits of the
Doko, it would have been more philosophical to have classed them at
once with monkeys. In that case, no reasonable objection could have
been made to the supposition that they were a new and distinct variety
of that animal, and which, perhaps, admitted of domestication to a much
greater extent than any with which we are at present acquainted. It is
probable, indeed, that this will be found to be the foundation of the
whole story, for we are told that “their docility and usefulness, added
to very limited wants, render them in high demand. None are ever sold
out of the countries bordering the Gochob, and none, therefore, find
their way to Shoa.” This I consider to be another evidence of their
being monkeys, for had they been real men and women, slave-dealers
would most certainly have conveyed some of them either into northern
Abyssinia or to Zanzibar. The plea of humanity, which has been stated
to actuate these traffickers in human flesh not to separate the
faithful and affectionate Doko from his master, I am glad to observe
is too absurd not to be suppressed; but it is no reason why I should
not mention this part of the statement as an additional evidence of
the entirely ridiculous character of the information that has excited
lately some little interest and attention among ethnologists in Europe,
as to the probable existence of a new variety of the human species in
intertropical Africa.
That the Doko may be monkeys admitting of considerable domestication
I am the more inclined to believe, from the fact that the ancient
Egyptians did call to their aid such a species of animal servants;
and in many of the representations of the habits and arts of that
interesting people will be found instances where monkeys are employed
upon the duty they are so well adapted for--that of collecting fruits
for their masters. At the present day we have no practice similar to
this in the customs of any known people; but among other novelties
to reward future enterprise, will be probably the identification of
the Doko of Kuffah with the house-monkey of ancient Egypt, and their
docility and usefulness, in that case, may then lead to their being
introduced into other countries adapted to their constitutions, and
where their services may be required. Such an animal, among a people
subsisting upon fruits and vegetables, would be as valuable as the
sheep-dog to a herdsman, or as the domesticated cormorant to the
fish-eating inhabitants on some of the canals in China.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] One evening, on my return from Abyssinia, in company
with the British Political Mission, a Galayla Muditu
appeared in the camp. Around his head was placed
the brindled shaggy tail of a hyena, which added
not a little to the savage appearance of the man.
He squatted on his heels in the customary manner,
and most of the Europeans surrounded him, to look at
the extreme of barbarism his figure and appearance
presented. Several of our Kafilah men joined us,
volunteering information; among other things, it was
observed by a slave-dealer, that the man before us
“was a bad man” (pointing at the same time to the
Hyena’s tail), “that eats man,” meaning of course,
that the man being a Mahomedan, was very wicked for
wearing any part of such a corpse-eating beast about
his person. I met this very slave-merchant, who had
thus expressed himself, some weeks afterwards, in
the Red Sea, and as we were together on board the
same vessel for several days, our conversation was
frequently upon Abyssinian matters. I once recalled
the scene of the so-called man-eater, and he was
astonished, certainly, when I told him it was reported
that the Dankalli were cannibals, and that the picture
of this very Galayla Muditu was taken with that idea,
as a portrait of a man-eater. Dankalli Mahomed, as
he was then called, never came afterwards to sit
with me and my friend, Padre Antonio Foggart, but he
went through the process of sawing his throat, as if
cutting it with a knife, to intimate how any cannibal
would be punished if he appeared in their country.