Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile/Volume 2/Book 4/Chapter 6
OUSTAS.
From 1709 to 1714.
IT has been already observed in the course of this history that the Abyssinians, from a very ancient tradition, attribute the foundation of their monarchy to Menilek son of Solomon, by the queen of Saba, or Azab, rendered in the Vulgate, the Queen of the south. The annals of this country mention but two interruptions to have happened, in the lineal succession of the heirs-male of Solomon. The first about the year 960, in the reign of Del Naad, by Judith queen of the Falasha, of which revolution we have already spoken sufficiently. The second interruption happened at the period to which we have now arrived in this history, and owed its origin, not to any misfortune that befel the royal family as in the massacre of Judith, but seemed to be brought about by the peculiar circumstances of the times, from a well-founded attention to self-preservation.
Yasous the Great, after a long and glorious reign, had been murdered by his son Tecla Haimanout. Two years after, this parricide fell in the same manner. The assassination of two princes, so nearly related, and in so short a time, had involved, from different motives, the greatest part of the noble families of the kingdom, either in the crime itself, or in the suspicion of aiding and abetting it.
Upon the death of Tecla Haimanout, Tisilis, or Theophilus, brother of Yasous, had been brought from the mountain, and placed on the throne as successor to his nephew; this prince was scarcely crowned when he made some very severe examples of the murderers of his brother, and he seemed privately taking informations that would have reached the whole of them, had not death put an end to his inquiries and to his justice.
The family of king Yasous was very numerous on the mountain. It was the favourite store whence both the soldiery and the citizens chose to bring their princes. There were, at the very instant, many of his sons princes of great hopes and of proper ages. Nothing then was more probable than that the prince, now to succeed, would be of that family, and, as such, interested in pursuing the same measures of vengeance on the murderers of his father and of his brother as the late king Theophilus had done; and how far, or to whom this might extend, was neither certain nor safe to trust to.
The time was now past when the nobles vied with each other who should be the first to steal away privately, or go with open force, to take the new king from the mountain, and bring him to Gondar, his capital: A backwardness was visible in the behaviour of each of them, because in each one's breast the fear was the same.
In so uncommon a conjuncture and disposition of men's minds, a subject had the ambition and boldness to offer himself for king, and he was accordingly elected. This was Oustas[1], son of Delba Yasous, by a daughter of the late king of that name; and Abyssinia now saw, for the second time, a stranger seated on the throne of Solomon. Oustas was a man of undisputed merit, and had filled the greatest offices in the state. He had been Badjerund, or master of the household, to the late king Yasous. Tecla Haimanout, who succeeded, had made him governor of Samen; and though, in the next reign, he had fallen into disgrace with Theophilus, this served but to aggrandize him more, as he was very soon after restored to favour, and by this very prince raised to the dignity of Ras, the first place under the king, and invested at once with the government of two provinces, Samen and Tigré. He was, at the death of Theophilus, the greatest subject in Abyssinia; one step higher set him on the throne, and the circumstances of the time invited him to take it. He had every quality of body and mind requisite for a king; but the constitution of his country had made it unlawful for him to reign. He took, upon his inauguration, the name of Tzai Segued.
Oustas, though a new king, followed the customs of the ancient monarchs of Abyssinia; for that very reason was unwilling to add novelty to novelty, and it has been a constant practice with these to make a public hunting-match the first expedition of their reign. On these occasions the king, attended by all the great officers of state, whose merit and capacity are already acknowledged, reviews his young nobility, who all appear to the best advantage as to arms, horses, and equipage, with the greatest number of servants and attendants. The scene of this hunting is always in the Kolla, crowded with an immense number of the largest and fiercest wild beasts, elephants, rhinoceros, lions, leopards, panthers, and buffaloes fiercer than them all, wild boars, wild asses, and many varieties of the deer kind.
As soon as the game is roused, and forced out of the wood by the footmen and dogs, they all singly, or several together, according to the size of the beast, or as strength and ability in managing their horses admit, attack the animal upon the plain with long pikes or spears, or two javelins in their hands. The king, unless very young, sits on horseback on a rising ground, surrounded by the graver sort, who point out to him the names of those of the nobility that are happy enough to distinguish themselves in his fight. The merit of others is known by report.
Each young man brings before the king's tent, as a trophy, a part of the beast he has slain; the head and skin of a lion or leopard; the scalp or horns of a deer; the private parts of an elephant; the tail of a buffalo, or the horn of a rhinoceros. The great trouble, force, and time neccessary to take out the teeth of the elephant, seldom make them ready to be presented with the rest of the spoils; fire, too, is necessary for loosing them from the jaw. The head of a boar is brought stuck upon a lance; but is not touched, as being unclean.
The elephant's teeth are the king's perquisites. Of these round ivory rings are turned for bracelets, and a quantity of them always brought by him to be distributed among the most deserving in the field, and kept ever after as certificates of gallant behaviour. Nor is this mark attended with honour alone. Any man who shall from the king, queen-regent, or governor of a province, receive so many of these rings as shall cover his arm down to his wrist, appears before the twelve judges on a certain day, and there, laying down his arm with these rings upon it, the king's cook breaks every one in its turn with a kind of kitchen-cleaver, whereupon the judges give him a certificate, which proves that he is entitled to a territory, whose revenue must exceed 20 ounces of gold, and this is never either refused or delayed. All the different species of game, however, are not equally rated. He that slays a Galla, or Shangalla, man to man, is entitled to two rings; he that slays an elephant to two; a rhinoceros, two; a giraffa, on account of its speed, and to encourage horsemanship, two; a buffalo, two; a lion, two; a leopard, one; two boars, whose tusks are grown, one; and one for every four of the deer kind.
Great disputes constantly arise about the killing of these beasts; to determine which, and prevent feuds and quarrels, a council sits every evening, in which is an officer called Dimshasha, or Red Cap, from a piece of red silk he wears upon his forehead, leaving the top of his head bare, for no person is allowed to cover his head entirely except the king, the twelve judges, and dignified priests. This officer regulates the precedence of one nobleman over another, and is possessed of the history of all pedigrees, the noblest of which are always accounted those nearest to the king reigning.
Every man pleads his own cause before the council, and receives immediate sentence. It is a settled rule, that those who strike the animal first, if the lance remain upright, or in the same direction in which it enters the beast, are understood to be the slayers of the beast, whatever number combat with him afterwards. There is one exception, however, that if the beast, after receiving the first wound, tho' the lance is in him, should lay hold of a horse or man, so that it is evident he would prevail against them; a buffalo, for example, that should toss a man with his horns, or an elephant that should take a horse with his trunk, the man who shall then slay the beast, and prevent or revenge the death of the man or horse attacked, shall be accounted the slayer of the beast, and entitled to the premium.
This was the ancient employment of these councils. In my time they kept up this custom in point of form; the council sat late upon most serious affairs of the nation; and the death, banishment, and degradation of the first men in the kingdom were agitated and determined here under the pretence of sitting to judge the prizes of pastimes. This hunting is seldom prolonged beyond a fortnight.
The king, from ocular inspection, is presumed to be able to choose among the young nobility those that are ready for taking the necessary charges in the army; and it is from his judgment in this that the priests foretel whether his reign is to be a successful one, or to end in misfortune and disappointment.
Oustas, having taken a view of his nobility, and attached such to him as were most necessary for his support, set out for this hunting with great preparations. The high country of Abyssinia is destitute of wood; the whole lower part of the mountains is sown with different sorts of grain; the upper part perfectly covered with grass and all sorts of verdure. There are no plains, or very small ones. Such a country, therefore, is unfit for hunting, as it is incapable of either sheltering or nourishing any number of wild beasts.
The lower country, however, called Kolla, is full of wood, consequently thinly inhabited. The mountains, not joined in chains or ridges, run in one upon the other, but, standing each upon its particular base, are accessible all round, and interspersed with plains. Great rivers falling from the high country with prodigious violence, during the tropical rains, have in the plains washed away the soil down to the solid rock, and formed large basons of great capacity, where, though the water becomes stagnant in pools when the currents fail above, yet, from their great depth and quantity, they refill being consumed by evaporation, being also thick covered with large shady trees whose leaves never fall. These large trees, which, in their growth, and vegetation of their branches, exceed any thing that our imagination can figure, are as necessary for food, as the pools of water are for cisterns to contain drink for those monstrous beasts, such as the elephant and rhinoceros, who there make their constant residence, and who would die with hunger and with thirst unless they were thus copiously supplied both with food and water.
This country, flat as the deserts on which it borders, has fat black earth for its soil. It is generally about 40 miles broad, though in many places broader and narrower. It reaches from the mountains of the Habab, or Bagla, which run in a ridge, as I have already said, from the south of Abyssinia[2] north down into Egypt, parallel to the Red Sea, dividing the rainy seasons, and it stretches like a belt from east to west to the banks of the Nile, encircling all the mountainous, or high land part of Abyssinia; which latter country is, at all times, temperate, and often cold, while the other is unwholesome, hazy, close, and intolerably hot.
Many nations of perfect blacks inhabit this low country, all Pagans, and mortal enemies to the Abyssinian government. Hunting these miserable wretches is the next expedition undertaken by a new king. The season of this is just before the rains, while the poor savage is yet lodged under the trees preparing his food for the approaching winter, before he retires into his caves in the mountain, where he passes that inclement season in constant confinement, but as constant security; for these nations are all Troglodytes, and by the Abyssinians are called Shangalla.
However Oustas succeeded in attaching to him those of the nobility that partook of his sports, his good fortune in the capital was not equal to it. A dangerous conspiracy was already forming at Gondar by those very people who had persuaded him to mount the throne, and whom he had left at home, from a persuasion that they only were to be trusted with the support of his interest and the government in his absence.
Upon the first intelligence, the king, with a chosen body of troops, entered Gondar in the night, and surprised the conspirators while actually sitting in council. Ras Hezekias, his prime minister, and Heraclides, master of his household, and five others of the principal confederates, lost their ears and noses, and were thrown into prison in such circumstances that they could not live. Benaia Basilé, one of the principal traitors, and the most obnoxious to the king, escaped for a time, having had already intelligence of Oustas's coming.
The king having quieted every thing at Gondar, being at peace with all his neighbours, and having no other way to amuse his troops and keep them employed, set out to join the remainder of his young nobility whom he had left in the Kolla to attack the Shangalla.
The Shangalla were formerly a very numerous people, divided into distinct tribes, or, as it is called, different nations, living each separately in distinct territories, each under the government of the chief of its own name, and each family of that name under the jurisdiction of its own chief, or head.
These Shangalla, during the fair half of the year, live under the shade of trees, the lowest branches of which they cut near the stem on the upper part, and then bend, or break them down, planting the ends of the branches in the earth. These branches they cover with the skins of wild beasts. After this they cut away all the small or superfluous branches in the inside, and so form a spacious pavilion, which at a distance appears like a tent, the tree serving for the pole in the middle of it, and the large top overshadowing it so as to make a very picturesque appearance.
Every tree then is a house, under which live a multitude of black inhabitants until the tropical rains begin. It is then they hunt the elephant, which they kill by many various devices, as they do the rhinoceros and the other large creatures. Those who reside where water abounds, with the same industry kill the hippopotami, or river-horses, which are exceedingly numerous in the pools of the stagnant rivers. Where this flat belt, or country, is broadest, the trees thickest, and the water in the largest pools, there the most powerful nations live, who have often defeated the royal army of Abyssinia, and constantly laid waste, and sometimes nearly conquered, the provinces of Tigré and Siré, the most warlike and most populous part in Abyssinia.
The most considerable settlement of this nation is at Amba Tzaada, between the Mareb and Tacazzè, but nearer by one-third to the Mareb, and almost N. W. from Dobarwa. These people, who have a variety of venison, kill it in the fair, months, and hang it up, cut into thongs as thick as a man's thumb, like so many ropes, on the trees around them. The sun dries and hardens it to a consistence almost like leather, or the hardest fish sent from Newfoundland. This is their provision for the winter months: They first beat it with a wooden mallet, then boil it, after which they roast it upon the embers; and it is hard enough after it has undergone all those operations.
The Dobenah, the most powerful of all the Shangalla, who have a species of supremacy or command over all the rest of the nations, live altogether upon the elephant or rhinoceros. In other countries, where there is less water, fewer trees, and more grass, the Shangalla feed chiefly upon more promiscuous kinds of food, as buffaloes, deer, boars, lions, and serpents. These are the nations nearer the Tacazzé, Ras el Feel, and the plains of Sirè in Abyssinia, the chief of which nations is called Baasa. And still farther west of the Tacazzè, and the valley of Waldubba, is a tribe of thefe, who live chiefly upon the crocodile, hippopotamus, and other fish; and, in the summer, upon locusts, which they boil first, and afterwards keep dry in baskets, most curiously made with split branches of trees, so closely woven together as to contain water almost as well as a wooden vessel.
This nation borders nearly upon the Abyssinian hunting-ground; but, not venturing to extend themselves in the chace of wild beasts, they are confined to the neighbourhood of the Tacazzé, and rivers falling into it, where they fish in safety: the banks of that river are deep, interrupted by steep precipices inaccessible to cavalry, and, from the thickness of the woods, full of thorny trees of innumerable species, almost as impervious to foot. These streams, possessed only by themselves, afford the Baasa the most excellent kinds of fish in the most prodigious plenty.
In that part of the Shangalla country more to the eastward, about N. N. E. of Amba Tzaada, in the northern extremities of the woody part, where the river Mareb, leaving Dobarwa, flows through thick bushes till it loses itself in the sands, there is a nation of these blacks, who being near the country of the Baharnagash, an officer whose province produces a number of horse, dare not, for that reason, venture to make an extensive use of the variety of wild beasts which throng in the woods to the southward, for fear of being intercepted by their enemy, constantly upon the watch for them, part of his tribute being paid in black slaves. These, therefore, confine themselves to the southern part of their territory, near the Barabra.
The extraordinary course of this river under the sand, allures to it multitudes of ostriches, which, too, are the food of the Shangalla, as is a beautiful lizard, never, that I know, yet described. These are the food of the eastern Shangalla; and I must here observe, that this country and people were much better known to the ancients than to us. The Egyptians traded with them, and caravans of these people were constantly in Alexandria in the reigns of the first Ptolemies. Most of the productions of these parts, and the people themselves, are mentioned in the remarkable procession made by Ptolemy Philadelphus on his accession to the throne of Egypt, as already observed, though a confusion often arises therein by this country being called by the name of India.
Ptolemy, the geographer, classes these people exactly enough, and distinguishes them very accurately by their particular food, or dietetique regimen, though he errs, indeed, a little in the particular situation he gives to the different nations. His Rhizophagi, Elephantophagi, Acridophagi, Struthiophagi, and Agriophagi, are all the clans I have just described, existing under the same habits to this day.
This soil, called by the Abyssinians Mazaga, when wet by the tropical rains, and dissolving into mire, forces these savages to seek for winter-quarters. Their tents under the trees being no longer tenable, they retire with their respective foods, all dried in the sun, into caves dug into the heart of the mountains, which are not in this country basaltes, marble, or alabaster, as is all that ridge which runs down into Egypt along the side of the Red Sea, but are of a soft, gritty, sandy stone, easily excavated and formed into different apartments. Into these, made generally in the steepest part of the mountain, do these savages retire to shun the rains, living upon the flesh they have already prepared in the fair weather.
I cannot give over the account of the Shangalla without delivering them again out of their caves, becaufe this return includes the history of an operation never heard of perhaps in Europe, and by which considerable light is thrown upon ancient history. No sooner does the sun pass the zenith, going southward, than the rains instantly cease; and the thick canopy of clouds, which had obscured the sky during their continuance, being removed, the sun appears in a beautiful sky of pale blue, dappled with small thin clouds, which soon after disappear, and leave the heavens of a most beautiful azure. A very few days of the intense heat then dries the ground so perfecty, that it gapes in chasms; the grass, struck at the roots by the rays, supports itself no more, but droops and becomes parched. To clear this away, the Shangalla set fire to it, which runs with incredible violence the whole breadth of Africa, passing under the trees, and following the dry grass among the branches with such velocity as not to hurt the trees, but to occasion every leaf to fall.
A proper distance is preserved between each habitation, and round the principal watering-places; and here the Shangalla again fix their tents in the manner before described. Nothing can be more beautiful than these shady habitations; but they have this fatal effect, that they are discernible from the high grounds, and guide their enemies to the places inhabited.
The country now cleared, the hunting begins, and, with the hunting, the danger of the Shangalla. All the governors bordering upon the country, from the Baharnagash to the Nile on the west, are obliged to pay a certain number of slaves. Ras el Feel (my government) was alone excepted, for a reason which, had I staid much longer in the country, would probably have been found more advantageous to Abyssinia than all the slaves they procure by the barbarous and prodigal effusion of the blood of these unhappy savages; for, when a settlement of these is surprised, the men are all slaughtered; the women, also, are many of them slain, many throw themselves down precipices, run mad, hang themselves, or starve, obstinately refusing food.
The boys and girls under 17 and 18 years of age, (the younger the better) are taken and educated by the king, and are servants in all the great houses of Abyssinia. They are instructed early in the Christian religion, and the tallest, handsomest, and best inclined, are the only servants that attend the royal person in his palace. The number of the men was 300 that had horses in my time. They were once 280, and, before my time, less than 200. These are all cloathed in coats of mail, and mounted on black horses; always commanded by foreigners devoted entirely to the king's will. By strict attention to their morals, removing all bad examples from among them, giving premiums to those that read most and best, (for they had all time enough upon their hands, especially in winter) and, above all, by the great delight and pleasure the king used to take in conversing with them while alone, countenancing and rewarding them in the line he knew I followed, this body became, as to firmness and coolness in action, equal perhaps to any of the same number in the world; and the greatest difficulty was keeping them together, for all the great men used to wish one of them for the charge of his door, which is a very great trust among the Abyssinians. The king's easiness was constantly prevailed upon to promise such, and great inconvenience always followed this, till Ras Michael discharged this practice by proclamation, and set the example, by returning four that he himself had kept for the purpose before mentioned.
While what I have said is still in memory, I must apply a part of it to explain a passage in Hanno's Periplus. We saw, says that bold navigator, when rowing close along the coast of Africa, rivers of fire, which ran down from the highest mountains, and poured themselves into the sea; this alarmed him so much, that he ordered his gallies to keep a considerable offing.
After the fire has consumed all the dry grass on the plain, and, from it, done the same up to the top of the highest mountain, the large ravines, or gullies, made by the torrents falling from the higher ground, being shaded by their depth, and their being in possession of the last water that runs, are the latest to take fire, though full of every sort of herbage. The large bamboos, hollow canes, and such like plants, growing as thick as they can stand, retain their greenness, and are not dried enough for burning till the fire has cleared the grass from all the rest of the country. At last, when no other fuel remains, the herdsmen on the top of the mountains set fire to these, and the fire runs down in the very path in which, some months before, the water ran, filling the whole gully with flame, which does not end till it is checked by the ocean below where the torrent of water entered, and where the fuel of course ceases. This I have often seen myself, and been often nearly inclosed in it, and can bear witness, that, at a distance, and by a stranger ignorant of the cause, it would very hardly be distinguished from a river of fire.
The Shangalla go all naked; they have several wives, and these very prolific. They bring forth children with the utmost ease, and never rest or confine themselves after delivery, but washing themselves and the child with cold water, they wrap it up in a soft cloth made of the bark of trees, and hang it upon a branch, that the large ants, with which they are infested, and the serpents, may not devour it. After a few days, when it has gathered strength, the mother carries it in the same cloth upon her back, and gives it suck with the breast, which she throws over her shoulder, this part being of such a length as, in some, to reach almost to their knees.
The Shangalla have but one language, and of a very guttural pronunciation. They worship various trees, serpents, the moon, planets, and stars in certain positions, which I never could so perfectly understand as to give any account of them. A star passing near the horns of the moon denotes the coming of an enemy. They have priests, or rather diviners; but it should seem that these were looked upon as servants of the evil-being, rather than of the good. They prophecy bad events, and think they can afflict their enemies with sickness, even at a distance. They generally wear copper bracelets upon their wrists and arms.
I have said the Shangalla have each several wives. This, however, is not owing to any inordinate propensity of the men to this gratification, but to a much nobler cause, which should make European writers, who object this to them, ashamed at the injustice they do the savage, who all his life, quite the reverse of what is supposed, shews an example of continence and chastity, which the purest and most refined European, with all the advantages of education, cannot pretend to imitate.
It is not the men that seek to avail themselves of the liberty they have by their usages of marrying as often and as many wives as they please. Hemmed in on every side by active and powerful enemies, who consider them as a species of wild beasts, and hunt them precisely as they do the elephant and rhinoceros, placed in a small territory, where they never are removed above 20 miles from these powerful invaders furnished with horses and fire-arms, to both of which they are strangers, they live for part of the fair season in continual apprehension. The other part of the season, when the Abyssinian armies are all collected and abroad with the king, these unhappy savages are constantly employed in a most laborious hunting of large animals, such as the rhinoceros, the elephant, and giraffa; and afterwards, in the no less laborious preparation of the flesh of these quadrupeds, which is to serve them for food during the six months rains, when each family retires to its separate cave in the mountain, and has no intercourse with any of its neighbours, but leaves the country below immersed in a continual deluge of rain. In none of these circumstances, one should imagine, the savage, full of apprehension and care, could have much desire to multiply a race of such wretched beings as he feels himself to be. It is the wife, not the man, that is the cause of this polygamy; and this is surely a strong presumption against what is commonly said of the violence of their inclinations.
Although the Shangalla live in separate tribes, or nations, yet these nations are again subdivided into families, who are governed by their own head, or chief, and of a number of these the nation is composed, who concur in all that regards the measures of defence and offence against their common enemy the Abyssinian and Arab. Whenever an expedition is undertaken by a nation of Shangalla, either against their enemies, the Arabs on the north, or those who are equally their enemies, the Abyssinians on the south, suppose the nation or tribe to be the Baasa, each family attacks and defends by itself, and theirs is the spoil or plunder who take it.
The mothers, sensible of the disadvantage of a small family, therefore seek to multiply and increase it by the only means in their power; and it is by their importunity that the husband suffers himself to be overcome. A second wife is courted for him by the first, in nearly the same manner as among the Galla.
I will not fear to aver, as far as concerns these Shangalla, or negroes, of Abyssinia, (and, I believe, most others of the same complexion, though of different nations), that the various accounts we have of them are very unfairly stated. To describe them justly, we should see them in their native purity of manners, among their native woods, living on the produce of their own daily labours, without other liquor than that of their own pools and springs, the drinking of which is followed by no intoxication or other pleasure than that of assuaging thirst. After having been torn from their own country and connections, reduced to the condition of brutes, to labour for a being they never before knew; after lying, stealing, and all the long list of European crimes, have been made, as it were, necessary to them, and the delusion occasioned by drinking spirits is found, however short, to be the only remedy that relieves them from receding on their present wretched situation, to which, for that reason, they most naturally attach themselves; then, after we have made them monsters, we describe them as such, forgetful that they are now not as their Maker created them, but such as, by teaching them our vices, we have transformed them into, for ends which, I fear, one day will not be found a sufficient excuse for the enormities they have occasioned.
I would not, by any means, have my readers so far mistake what I have now said as to think it contains either censure upon, or disapprobation of, the slave-trade. I would be understood to mean just the contrary; that the abuses and neglect of manners, so frequent in our plantations, is what the legislature should direct their coercion against, not against the trade in general, which last measure, executed so suddenly, cannot but contain a degree of injustice towards individuals. It is a shame for any government to say, that enormous cruelties towards any set of men are so evident, and have arrived to such excess, without once having been under consideration of the legislature to correct them. It is a greater shame still for that government to say, that these crimes and abuses are now grown to such a height that wholesome severity cannot eradicate them; and it cannot be any thing but an indication of effeminacy and weakness at once to fall to the destruction of an object of that importance, without having first tried a reformation of those abuses which alone, in the minds of sober men, can make the trade exceptionable.
The incontinence of these people has been a favourite topic with which blacks have been branded; but, throughout the whole of this history, I have set down only what I have observed, without consulting or troubling myself with the systems or authorities of others, only so far, as having these relations in my recollection, I have compared them with the fact, and found them erroneous. As late as two centuries ago, Christian priests were the only historians of heathen manners.
In the number of these Shangalla, or negroes, of which every department of Gondar was full, I never saw any proof of unbridled desires in either sex, but very much the contrary; and I must remark, that every reason in physics strongly militates against the presumption.
The Shangalla of both sexes, while single, go entirely naked: the married men, indeed, have a very slender covering about their waist, and married women the same. Young men and young women, till long past the age of puberty, are totally uncovered, and in constant conversation and habits with each other, in woods and solitudes, free from constraint, and without any punishment annexed to the transgression. Yet criminal commerce is much less frequent among them than in the same number chosen among Christian nations, where the powerful prejudices of education give great advantage to one sex in subduing their passions, and where the consequences of gratification, which always involve some kind of punishment, keep within bounds the desires of the other.
No one can doubt, but that the constant habit of seeing people of all ages naked at all times, in the ordinary transactions and necessities of life, must greatly check unchaste propensities. But there are still further reasons why, in the nature of things an extraordinary vehemence of passion should not fall to be a distinguishing characteristic among the Shangalla. Fahrenheit's thermometer rises there beyond 100°. A violent relaxation from profuse perspiration must greatly debilitate the savage. In Arabia and Turkey, where the whole businefs of man's life is the devoting himself to domestic pleasure, men remain constantly in a sedentary life, eat heartily, avoiding every manner of exercise, or expence of animal spirits by sweats. Their countries, too, are colder than that of the Shangalla, who, living sparingly under a burning sun, and obliged to procure food by laborious hunting, of consequence deprive themselves of that quantity of animal spirits necessary to lead them to any extreme of voluptuousness. And that this is the case is seen in the constitution of the Shangalla women, even though they are without fatigue.
A woman, upon bearing a child or two, at 10 or 11 years old, sees her breast fall immediately down to near her knees[3]. Her common manner of suckling her children is by carrying them upon her back, as our beggars do, and giving the infant the breast over her shoulders. They rarely are mothers after 22, or begin child-bearing before they are 10; so that the time of child-bearing is but 12 years. In Europe, very many examples there are of women bearing children at 14, the civil law fixes puberty at 12, but by an inuendo[4] seems to allow it may be something earlier. Women sometimes in Europe bear children at 50. The scale of years of child-bearing between the savage and the European is, therefore, as 12 is to 38. There can be little doubt but their desires are equal to their strength and constitution; but a Shangalla at 22 is more wrinkled and deformed, apparently by old age, than is a European woman of 60.
To come still nearer; it is a fact known to naturalists, and which the application of the thermometer sufficiently indicates, that there is a great and sensible difference in the degree of animal heat in both sexes of different nations at the same ages or time of life. The voluptuous Turk estranges himself from the fairest and finest of his Circassian and Georgian women in his seraglio, and, during the warm months in summer, addicts himself only to negro slaves brought from the very latitudes we are now speaking of; the sensible difference of the coolness of their skins leading him to give them the preference at that season. On the other hand, one brown Abyssinian girl, a companion for the winter months, is sold at ten times the price of the fairest Georgian or Circassian beauty, for opposite reasons.
The very great regard I shall constantly pay my fair readers has made me, as they may perceive, enter as tenderly as possible into these discussions, which, as a philosopher and a historian, I could not, however, wholly omit: the most useful study of mankind is man; and not the least interesting view of him is when, stripped of his vain-glory and the pageantry of palaces, he wanders naked and uncorrupted among his native woods and rivers.
I must mention, greatly to the credit of two of the first geniuses of this age, M. de Buffon and Lord Kaimes, that they were both so convinced by the arguments above mentioned, stated in greater detail and with more freedom, that they immediately ordered their bookseller to strike out from the subsequent editions of their work all that had been advanced against the negroes on this head, which they had before drawn from the herd of prejudiced and ignorant compilers, strangers to the manners and language of the people they were dishonouring by their descriptions, after having before abused them by their tyranny.
The Shangalla have no bread: No grain or pulse will grow in the country. Some of the Arabs, settled at Ras el Feel, have attempted to make bread of the feed of the Guinea grass; but it is very tasteless and bad, of the colour of cow-dung, and quickly producing worms.
They are all archers from their infancy. Their bows are all made of wild fennel, thicker than the common proportion, and about seven feet long, and very elastic. The children use the same bow in their infancy that they do when grown up; and are, by reason of its length, for the first years, obliged to hold it parallel, instead of perpendicular to the horizon. Their arrows are full a yard and a half long, with large heads of very bad iron rudely shaped. They are, indeed, the only savages I ever knew that take no pains in the make or ornament of this weapon. A branch of a palm, stript from the tree and made straight, becomes an arrow; and none of them have wings to them. They have this remarkable custom, which is a religious one, that they fix upon their bows a ring, or thong, of the skin of every beast slain by it, while it is yet raw, from the lizard and serpent up to the elephant. This gradually stiffens the bow, till, being all covered over, it can be no longer bent even by its master. That bow is then hung upon a tree, and a new one is made in its place, till the same circumstance again happens; and one of these bows, that which its master liked best, is buried with him in the hopes of its rising again materially with his body, when he shall be endowed with a greater degree of strength, without fear of death, or being subjected to pain, with a capacity to enjoy in excess every human pleasure. There is nothing, however, spiritual in this resurrection, nor what concerns the soul, but it is wholly corporeal and material; although some writers have plumed themselves upon their fancied discovery of what they call the savages belief of the immortality of the soul.
Before I take leave of this subject, I must again explain, from what I have already said, a difficult passage in classical history. Herodotus[5] says, that, in the country we have been just now describing, there was a nation called Macrobii, which was certainly not the real name of the Shangalla, but one the Greeks had given them, from a supposed circumstance of their being remarkable long livers, as that name imports. These were the western Shangalla, situated below Guba and Nuba, the gold country, on both sides of the Nile north of Fazuclo.
The Guba and the Nuba, and various black nations that inhabits the foot of that large chain of mountains called Dyre and Tegla[6], are those in whole countries the finest gold is found, which is washed from the mountains in the time of violent rains, and lodged in holes, and roots of trees and grass, by the torrents, and there picked up by the natives; it is called Tibbar, or, corruptly, gold-dust. The greatest part finds its way to Sennaar by the different merchants. Pagan and Mahometan, from Fazuclo and Sudan. The Agows and Gibbertis also bring a small quantity of it to Gondar, mostly debased by alloy; but there is no gold in Abyssinia, nor even in Nubia, west of Tchelga, among the Shangalla themselves.
Cambyses marched from Egypt expressly with a view of conquering the gold country, and sent messengers before him to the king, or chief of it, requiring his immediate submission. I omit romantic and fabulous circumstances; but the answer of the king of Macrobii to Cambyses was, Take this bow, and till you can bring me a man that can bend it, you are not to talk to us of submission. The bow was accordingly carried back with the defiance, but none of the Persian army could bend it. Yet it was their own weapon with which they practised from their infancy; and we are not to think, had it been possible to bend this bow, but that some of their numerous archers would have done it, for there is no such disproportion in the strength of men. But it was a bow which had lost its elastic force from the circumstance above mentioned, and had been long given up as impossible to be bent by the Macrobii themselves, and was now taken down from the tree where it had probably some time hung, and grown so much the less flexible, and intended to be buried, as these bows are, in the grave with their master, who is to use it, after his resurrection, in another world, where he is to be endowed with strength infinitely more than human: it is probable this bow would have broke, rather than have bent.
If the situation of these Macrobii in Ptolemy did not put it past dispute that they were Shangalla, we should hesitate much at the characteristic of the nation; that they were long livers; none of these nations are so; I scarcely remember an example fairly vouched of a man past sixty. But there is one circumstance that I think might have fairly led Herodotus into this mistake; some of the Shangalla kill their sick, weak, and aged people; there are others that honour old age, and protect it. The Macrobii, I suppose, were of this last kind, who certainly, therefore, had many old men, more than the others.
I shall now just mention one other observation tending to illustrate a passage of ancient history.
Hanno, in his Periplus, remarks, that, while sailing along the coast of Africa, close by the shore, and probably, near the low country called Kolla, inhabited by the kind of people we have been just describing, he found an universal silence to prevail the whole day, without any appearance of man or beast: on the contrary, at night, he saw a number of fires, and heard the sound of music and dancing. This has been laughed at as a fairy tale by people who affect to treat Hanno's fragment as spurious; for my own part, I will not enter into the controversy.
A very great genius, (in some matters, perhaps, the greatest that ever wrote, and in every thing that he writes highly respectable) M. de Montesqieu, is perfectly satisfied that this Periplus[7] of Hanno is genuine; and it is a great pleasure again to endeavour to obviate any doubt concerning the authenticity of the work in this second passage, as I have before done in another.
In countries, such as those that we have been now describing, and such as Hanno was then failing by, when he made the remark, there is no twilight. The stars, in their full brightness, are in possession of the whole heavens, when in an instant the sun appears without a harbinger, and they all disappear together. We shall say, at sun-rising the thermometer is from 48° to 60°; at 3 o'clock in the afternoon it is from 100° to 115°; an universal relaxation, a kind of irresistible languor and aversion to all action takes possession of both man and beast; the appetite fails, and sleep and quiet are the only things the mind is capable of desiring, or the body of enduring: cattle, birds, and beasts all flock to the shade, and to the neighbourhood of running stream, or deep stagnant pools, and there, avoiding the effects of the scorching sun, pant in quiet and inaction. From the same motive, the wild beast stirs not from his cave; and for this, too, he has an additional reason, because the cattle he depends upon for his prey do not stroll abroad to feed; they are asleep and in safety, for with them are their dogs and their shepherds.
But no sooner does the sun set, than a cold night instantly succeeds a burning day; the appetite immediately returns; the cattle spread themselves abroad to feed, and pass quickly out of the shepherds sight into the reach of a multitude of beasts seeking for their prey. Fires, the only remedy, are everywhere lighted by the shepherds to keep these at a respectful distance; and dancing, singing, and music at once exhilarate the mind, and contribute, by alarming the beasts of prey, to keep their flocks in safety, and prevent the bad effects of severe cold[8]. This was the cause of the observation Hanno made in sailing along the coast, and it was true when he made it: just the same may be observed still, and will be, so long as the climate and inhabitants are the same.
I have been more particular in the history of this extraordinary nation, because I had, by mere accident, an opportunity of informing myself fully and with certainty concerning it; and, as it is very improbable that such an opportunity will occur again to any European, I hope it will not be ungratefully received.
I shall only add an answer to a very obvious question which may occur. Why is it that, in this country, nothing that would make bread will grow? Is it from the ignorance of the inhabitants in not choosing the proper seasons, or is it the imperfection of the soil? To this I answer, Certainly the latter. For the inhabitants of Ras el Feel were used to plow and sow, and did constantly eat bread; but the grain was produced ten or fifteen miles off upon the sides of the mountains of Abyssinia, where every certain number of soldiers had small farms allowed them for that purpose by government; but still they could never bring up a crop in the Mazaga; and the progress of the miscarriage was this: Before the month of May all that black earth was rent into great chasms, trode into dust, and ventilated with hot winds, so as to be a perfect caput mortuum, incapable of any vegetation. Upon the first sprinkling of rain the chasms are filled up, and the whole country resembles dry garden-mould newly dug up. As the sun advances the rains increase; there is no time to be lost now; this is the season for sowing; let us suppose wheat. In one night's time, while the wheat is swelling in the ground, up grows an immense quantity of indigenous natural grass, that, having sowed itself last year, has lain ever since in a natural matrix, ready to start at the most convenient season. Before the wheat, or any grain soever can appear, this grass has shot up so high and so thick as absolutely to choke it. Suppose it was possible to hoe or weed it, the grass will again overtop the grain before it is an inch from the ground. Say it could be again hoed or cleared, by this time the rains are so continual, the black earth becomes a perfect mire. The rain increases, and the grain rots without producing any crop.
The same happens to millet, or Indian corn; the rain rots the plant which is thrown down by the wind. It is equally destroyed if sown at the end of the rains; the grass grows up, wherever the ground is cleared, in a greater proportion, if possible, than in the beginning of the year; and the rain ceasing abruptly, and the sun beginning to be intensely hot the very day it passes the zenith, the earth is reduced to an impalpable powder, whilst the grain and plant die without ever fhewing a tendency to germinate.
We left the king, Oustas, after detecting a conspiracy, ready to fall upon some settlement of Shangalla. This he executed with great success, and surrounded a large part of the nation called Baasa, encamped under the trees suspecting no danger. He put the grown people to the sword, and took a prodigious number of children of both sexes captive. He was intending also to push his conquest farther among these savages, when he was called to Gondar by the death of his prime minister and confident, Ras Fasa Christos.
Besides his attention to hunting and government, the king had a very great taste for architecture, which, in Abyssinia, is a very popular one, though scarcely any thing is built but churches. In the season that did not permit him to be in the field, he bestowed a great deal of leisure and money this way; and he was, at this time, busy erecting a magnificent church to the Nativity, about a mile below Gondar, on the small river, Kahha.
But the season of hunting returning before he had finished it, he left it to repair to Bet Malo, a place in the Kolla, where he had built a hunting-seat, not far distant from the Shangalla, called Baasa. Here he had a most successful hunting-match of the buffalo, rhinoceros, and elephant, in which he often put himself in great danger, and distinguished himself in dexterity and horsemanship greatly above any of his court. He returned upon news, that persons, whom he had secretly employed, had apprehended Betwudet Basilé, and his son Claudius, who had escaped when the last conspirators were seized. Both these he sentenced immediately to lose their eyes.
These hunting-matches, so punctually observed, and so eagerly followed by a man already past the flower of his youth, had, in their first appearance, nothing but sound policy. The king's title was avowedly a faulty one; and the many conspiracies that had been formed had shewn him the nobility were not all of them disposed to bear his yoke; nothing then was more political than to keep a considerable number of them employed in field-exercises, to be informed of their inclinations, and to attach them to his person by favours. At the head of this little, but very active army, he was ready in a moment to fall upon the disaffected, before they could collect strength sufficient for resistance. Time, however, shewed this was not entirely the reason of these continual intervals of absence for so long a time in the Kolla.
Notwithstanding the misfortune that had befallen the French ambassador, M. du Roule, at Sennaar, in the reign of Yasous I. and Tecla Haimanout his son, under Baady el Ahmer, there had still remained below, in Atbara, some of those missionaries who had courage and address enough to attempt the journey into Abyssinia, and they succeeded in it. Oustas had probably been privy to their arrival in Yasous's time, and had, equally with him, a favourable opinion of the Romish religion.
These missionaries, though Yasous was now dead, were perfectly well received by Oustas; he had given them in charge to Ain Egzic, an old and loyal servant of Yasous, and governor of Walkayt. He had placed also with them an Abyssinian priest, who had been in Jerusalem, and was well-affected to the Romish faith, to be their interpreter, stay with them always, and manage their interests, while he himself, stealing frequently from the hunting-matches, heard mass, and received the communion, returning back to his camp, as he flattered himself, unperceived. These meetings with the priests were not, however, so well concealed but that they came to the knowledge of many people about court, both seculars and clergy. But the king's character, for severity and vigilance, made everybody confine their thoughts, whatever they were, within their own breasts.
The employment of this year was a short journey to Ibaba, a large market-town, where there is a royal residence, below Maitsha, on the west, or Gojam side of the Nile, from which it is about three days distance. From this he returned again, and went to Tcherkin, a small village in Kolla, beyond Ras el Feel, in the way to Sennaar, the principal abode of the elephant. But, in the first day's hunting, Yared, master of his household, and a considerable favourite, being torn to pieces by one of these quadrupeds, he gave over the sport, and returned very sorrowful to bury him at Gondar, leaving three of his servants to execute a design he had formed against the Baasa in that neighbourhood.
From the constant interruptions Oustas had met with in all these hunting-matches, and his success, notwithstanding, whenever he had himself attended, the divining monks had prophesied his reign was to be short, and attended with much bloodshed; nor were they for once distant from the truth; for, in the month of January 1714, while he was over-looking the workmen building the church of Abba Antonius at Gondar, he was taken suddenly ill, and, suspecting some unwholsomeness or witchcraft in his palace, he ordered his tent to be pitched without the town till the apartments should be smoaked with gunpowder. But this was done so carelessly by his servants, that his house was burnt to the ground, which was looked upon as a very bad omen, and made a great impression upon the minds of the people.
The 27th of January it was generally understood that the king was dangerously ill, and that his complaint was every day increasing. Upon this the principal officers went, according to the usual custom, to condole with and comfort him. This was at least what they pretended. Their true errand, however, was pretty well known to be an endeavour to ascertain whether the sickness was of the kind likely to continue, till measures could be adopted with a degree of certainty to take the reins of government out of his hand.
The king easily divined the reason of their coming. Having had a good night, he used the strength that he had thereby acquired to rouse himself for a moment, to put on the appearance of health, and shew himself, as usual, engaged in his ordinary dispatch of business. The seeming good countenance of the king made their condolence premature. Some excuse, however, for so formal a visit, was necessary; but every apology was not safe. They adopted this, which they thought unexceptionable, that hearing he was sick, which they happily found he was not, they came to propose to him a thing equally proper whether he was sick or well; that he would, in time, settle the succession upon his son Fasil, then in the mountain of Wechnè, as a means of quieting the minds of his friends, preventing bloodshed, and securing the crown to his family.
Oustas did the utmost to command himself upon this occasion, and to give them an answer such as suited a man in health who hoped to live many years. But it was now too late to play such a part; and, in spite of his utmost dissimulation, evident signs of decay appeared upon him, which his visitors conjectured would soon be past dissembling, and they agreed to stay with the king till the evening.
But the soldiers on guard, who heard the proposal of sending for Oustas's son, and who really believed that these men spoke from their heart, and were in earnest, were violently discontented and angry at this proposal. They began to be weary of novelty, and longed, for a king of the ancient royal family. As soon, therefore, as it was dark they entered Gondar, and called together the several regiments, or bodies of soldiers, which composed the king's household. Having came to a resolution how they were to act, they returned to their quarters where they were upon guard, and meeting the great officers coming out of Oustas's tent, where they, too, had probably agreed upon the same measure, though it was not known, the soldiers drew their swords, and slew them all, being seven in number. Among these were Betwudet Tamerté, and the Acab Saat; the one the principal lay-officer, the other the chief ecclesiastic in the king's house.
This massacre seemed to be the signal for a general insurrection, in the course of which, part of the town set on fire. But the soldiers, at their first meeting in the palace[9], had shut up the coronation-chamber, and the other royal apartments, and possessed themselves of the kettle-drum by which all proclamations were made at the gate, driving away, and rudely treating the multitude on every side. At last they brought out the drum, though it was yet night, and made this proclamation:—"David, son of our late king Yasous, is our king." The tumult and disorder, nevertheless, still continued; during all which, it was very remarkable no one ever thought of offering an injury to Oustas.
While these things were passing at Gondar, a violent alarm had seized all the princes upon the mountain of Wechnè. They had been treated with severity during Oustas's whole reign. Their revenues had been with-held, or at least not regularly paid, and they had been reduced nearly to perish for want of the necessaries of life. When, therefore, the accounts of Oustas's illness arrived, and that the principal people had proposed to name Fasil his son, then their fellow-prisoner, to succeed him, their fears no longer reminded them of the hardships of his father's reign, as they expected utter extirpation as the only measure by which he could provide for his own security. Full of these fears, they agreed, with one consent, to let down from the mountain fifty princes of the greatest hopes, all in the prime of life, and therefore most capable of defending their own right, and securing the lives of those that remained upon the mountain, from the cruel treatment they must obviously expect if they fell into the hand of an usurper or stranger.
The brother of Betwudet Tamerté, who, with the six others, had been murdered before Oustas's tent, was, at this time, guardian of the mountain of Wechné. His brother's death, however, and the unsettled state of government, had so much weakened both his authority and attention, that he either did not choose, or was not able, to prevent the escape of these princes, all flying for their lives, and for the sake of preserving the ancient constitution of their country. And that this, and no other was their object, appeared the instant the danger was removed; for, as soon as the news that David was proclaimed at Gondar arrived at the mountain, all the princes returned of their own accord, excepting Bacussa, younger brother to the king, who fled to the Galla, and lay concealed among them for a time.
On David's arrival at Gondar, all the old misfortunes seemed to be forgotten. The joy of having the ancient royal line restored, got the better of those fears which first occasioned the interruption. The prisons were thrown open, and David was crowned the 30th of January 1714, amidst the acclamations of all ranks of people, and every demonstration of festivity and joy.
David was son of Yasous the Great, and consequently brother to the parricide Tecla Haimanout, but by another mother. At his coronation he was just twenty-one years of age, and took for his inauguration name Adebar Segued.
In all this time, however, Oustas was alive. Oustas was, indeed, sick, but still he was king; and yet it is surprising that David had been now nine days at Gondar, and no injury had been offered to Oustas, nor any escape attempted for him by his friends.
It was the 6th of February, the day before Lent, when the king sent the Abuna Marcus, Itchegué Za Michael, with some of the great officers of state, to interrogate Oustas judicially, for form's sake, as to his title to the crown. The questions proposed are very short and simple—"Who are you? What brought you here?" To these plain interrogatories, Oustas, then struggling with death, answered, however, as plainly, and without equivocation, "Tell my king David, that true it is I have made myself king, as much as one can be that is not of the royal family; for I am but a private man, son of a subject, Kasmati Delba Yasous: all I beg of the king is to give me a little time, and let me die with sickness, as I shortly shall, without putting me to torment or pain."
On the 10th day of February, that is four days after the interrogation, Oustas died, but whether of a violent or natural death is not known. The historian of his reign, a cotemporary writer, says, some reported that he died of an amputation of his leg by order of the king; others, that he was strangled; but that most people were of opinion that he died of sickness; and this I think the most probable, for had the king been earnestly set upon his death, he would not have allowed so much time to pass, after his coronation, before his rival was interrogated; nor was there any reason to allow him four days after his confession. David's moderation after the death, moreover, seems to render this still more credible; for he ordered his body to be buried in the church of the Nativity, which he had himself built, with all the honours and public ceremonies due to his rank as a nobleman and subject, who had been guilty of no crime, instead of ordering his body to be hewn in pieces, and scattered along the ground without burial, to be eat by the dogs; the invariable punishment, unless in this one instance, of high-treason in this country.
Posterity, regarding his merit more than his title, have, however, kept his name still among the list of kings; and tradition, doing him more justice still than history, has ranked him among the best that ever reigned in Abyssinia.
- ↑ It signifies justus.
- ↑ Vid general map.
- ↑ Juvenal, sat. 13. 1, 163.
- ↑ Nisi malitia suppleat ætatem.
- ↑ Herod. lib. 3. par. 17. & seq.
- ↑ Supposed to be the Garamantica Vallis of Ptolemy.
- ↑ Dodswell's dissertation of Hanno's Periplus—Montesquieu, tom. I. lib. 21. cap. ii.
- ↑ This sensation of the savage in the heart of Africa seem to be unknown to the enemies of the slave-trade; they talk much of heat, without knowing the material suffering of the negro is from cold.
- ↑ There seems here some contradiction which needs explanation. It is said that the palace was burnt before Oustas went to his tent. How then could the soldiers assemble in it afterwards? The palace consists of a number of separate houses at no great distance, but detached from one another with one room in each. That where the coronation is performed is called Anbasa Bet; another, where the king sits in festivals, is called Zeffan Bet; another is called Werk Sacala, the gold-house; another Gimja Bet, or the brocade-house, where the wardrobe and the gold stuffs used for presents, or received as such, are laid. Now, we suppose Oustas in any one of these apartments, say Zeffan Bet, which he left to go to his tent, and it was then burnt; still there remained the coronation-house where the regalia was kept, which the soldiers locked up that it might not be used to crown Fasil, Oustas's son, whom they thought the seven great men they had murdered conspired to place upon the the throne after his father.