The Galla Borders—Proclamation of War.
Shortly after our departure from Ankóber, a robbery was committed in the residency; and the delinquents having been duly traced out by the Lebáshi, were sent in chains to Angollála, and incarcerated in one of the palace court-yards. The principal party proved to be a slave of the king, aided and abetted by a scribe, who had been for some time employed in copying manuscripts for Dr Roth; and the greater portion of the stolen property was shortly returned by the hands of the chief smith, who succeeded the disgraced page in the office of báldoraba. “Strangers have visited me from a far country,” was the message wherewith he was charged, “and whilst residing under my protection they have been plundered by my subjects. My name has become tarnished. I have beaten the culprits with sticks, and shall cut off the ears of the slave Wooseni, and sell him to the merchants of Hurrur.”
Intercession, backed by presents, was successfully made with the king and queen, in behalf of the offender, a lad of ten years of age, and he was liberated after severe castigation. “God must be angry with me,” sobbed the juvenile thief, who had once before been detected beneath a bed with a pair of scissors in his possession—“God must be angry with me, for I have only twice attempted to rob, and on both occasions have I been punished.”
Among the articles stolen, which consisted chiefly of beads, were sovereigns of William the Fourth and of Queen Victoria, and suspicions arising in the royal mind that these were not of gold, as asserted by Lieutenant Barker, His Majesty proposed testing the metal by the ordeal of fire. A coin of the former reign was accordingly thrust into the forge, and having then been immersed in water, was broken with a chisel by the conclave of smiths. “Call you this English gold?” exclaimed the Negoos: “here then is a piece of Abyssinian gold for you,”—and throwing upon the ground the brass foil of a sword scabbard, he laughed immoderately. A fourpenny piece was then exhibited, as a somewhat more portable and commodious medium of exchange than blocks of fossil salt, and the figure on the obverse immediately elicited the inquiry whether the queens of England went forth with their armies to battle, since Britannia was equipped with spear and shield, and was about to set a saréti in her crown like the warrior king of the Amhára.
(The saréti is a sprig of wild asparagus worn in Shoa as a token of victory, as will be seen presently.)
A quarrel of long standing between Ayto Melkoo and the commander-in-chief of the gun-men, who ranked among the foremost of the court sycophants, had been this day brought for adjustment before the royal tribunal. The award being found in favour of the appellant, the Master of the Horse, although a great favourite, was handcuffed, and imprisoned in the brewery, but after a few hours’ durance he was set at large, and his punishment commuted to a fine of seven hundred and fifty pieces of salt. “It is of no consequence,” he remarked somewhat unwisely, “I shall carry a mamalacha to the ‘commander,’ Captain Harris, and he will pay the amount for me.”
This boast had given occasion to malicious insinuations on the part of his enemies, and after dark a confidential message was brought to me from the palace, to the effect that Ayto Melkoo stood suspected of concealing certain “pleasing things” understood to have been received from my hands. But this imputation, which, if confirmed, must have involved disgrace and confiscation of property, proved, fortunately for the accused, to have no foundation.
A better instance could scarcely have been adduced to illustrate the fleeting and precarious nature of the despot’s smiles. The mother of this tottering favourite, a native of Ambásel in the province of Lasta, was for many years the mistress of Hatzé Yasoo, then Emperor of Gondar, on whose demise she became an inmate of the seraglio of Asfa Woosen. Ayto Wadi, the distinguished Galla governor of Angollála, being thrown into prison by the latter monarch, contrived to solace himself with the presence of the lady, and the Master of the Horse was the result of the intrigue. No disgrace whatever attaching to his illegitimate origin, he was regarded in the light of a member of the royal family; and, being brought up in the palace, has succeeded during three several reigns in maintaining a position at court, which might now have been sacrificed by the clandestine possession of a dozen ells of English broad-cloth. The amende was, nevertheless, made to him in the course of a few days, by the addition of another village to his landed possessions at Dóba.
Such paltry proofs of espionage were invariably followed by some especial token of the royal goodwill, ushered in by a goat, or a jar of honey, as a peace-offering. In this instance, after the despot had been fully satisfied of the groundless nature of his surmises, I received a special invitation to accompany him the next day on a shooting excursion, a Galla ram, the size of a well-grown calf, having first been thrust into the tent by the bearer of the message—the dirty page Besábeh—who, as usual, composed himself to sleep in a corner after the due performance of his errand.
Saturday, being the Jewish Sabbath, brings rest from all labour, and is invariably devoted by the king to excursions abroad. Starting on horseback at an early hour, a gallop of several miles led us across the Chácha, and over the border of the Galla dependencies, to an extensive, but narrow sheet of water, where an otter had lately been seen. “It has hands, and nails, and fingers like a man,” observed the monarch gravely, “and a head like a black dog, and a skin like velvet; and it builds its house at the bottom of the river, and plucks grass, and washes it in the water; and all my people thought it was the devil, and would destroy them with strong medicine. Now is this animal found in your country, and how do they call its name?”
We amused ourselves by killing snipe, much to the entertainment of the monarch, who displayed little talent for shooting birds on the wing, and made no secret of many very unsportsmanlike ideas. Numerous ducks and geese soon arrested his attention. Drawing up with his retinue, and resting his weapon over the shoulder of an attendant to insure steady aim, he kept up a murderous fire with ball, shot, and slugs, during a full half hour.............