Conclusion of a Treaty of Commerce.

Angollála continued bitterly cold throughout the month of December; and fires, although not quite indispensable, were always found pleasant enough. A dry cutting wind from the eastward blew throughout the day; but the clouds, which often gathered over the surrounding mountains, occasionally disturbed the serenity of the afternoon with a squall of hail. Snipe abounded among the serpentine streams which intersected the environs of the palace-hill; and the hero who possessed courage to cast off the blankets before the sun rose, invariably saw the hoar-frost lying white over the faded meadows. Dogs continued to howl in packs, and mendicants to importune as of yore. Dirty pages and troublesome idlers still infested my tent; and the approaches were choked by numerous bands of Yedjow Galla, who were begging their way to the country of Dedjasmach Paris. Day and night their monotonous voices arose from every quarter of the town, and Christian adjurations by “Miriam” and “Kedoos Michael” were often nearly drowned by the choral hymn uplifted to Allah and the false prophet.

A new invoice of beads, cutlery, trinkets, ghemdjia, and other “pleasing things,” had been received from the coast; and visits were therefore unusually frequent on the part of all who loved to be decorated. Abba Mooálle, surnamed “the Great Beggar in the West,” with his adopted brother, appeared to hold the lease of the tent in perpetuity; and in return for amber necklaces and gay chintz vestments, hourly volunteered some promise, simply, it would seem, that they might afterwards enjoy the pleasure of forfeiting a gratuitous oath. If solemn asseverations by highly respectable saints and martyrs, were to be received with credit, messengers were almost daily despatched, and on fleet horses too, for the purpose of bringing from the Galla dependencies on the Nile, amongst other treasures, the spoils of the gássela, a black leopard, elsewhere not procurable, and “worn only by the governors of provinces.” But by some unaccountable fatality, not one of these fleet couriers ever found his way back to the English camp at Angollála; and the cry meanwhile continued, without intermission,—“Show me pleasing things; give me delighting things; adorn me from head to foot.”

Nor were there wanting other standing dishes of an equally rapacious and insatiable character, and scarcely more addicted to veracity. Gádeloo, “the hen-pecked,” was punctual in his attendance, by order of the Emabiet of Mahhfood, who had always a new want to be supplied. “May they buy,” with an unsound steed for sale at an unconscionable price, brought daily an urgent request of some sort from his spouse. Neither did any morning pass without a protracted visit from Shunkoor, “Sugar,” own brother to the queen, escorted by Ayto Dedjen, “Doors,” his shadow and boon companion, and grand-nephew to the monarch himself. But the attachment subsisting between these inseparable allies was one day suddenly dissolved over a decanter of unusually potent hydromel, and a sabre-cut on the head of either, demonstrated, alas! the fleeting and unstable nature of all sublunary friendship.

As each evening closed, the nobility were to be seen streaming towards our tents from the royal banquet, supported upon their ambling mules by a host of armed and not very sober retainers; and a tribe of ragged pages bringing messages from the palace, accidentally entered at the same time to report the substance of the conversation, although many of the illustrious visitors were absolutely inarticulate. Lances were hurled at a target to the imminent peril of all spectators; and the neck of the vanquished having been duly trampled under foot, according to the ancient Oriental form of military triumph, all who anticipated any difficulty in reaching their own abodes, staggered back to the Gyptzis to laugh at the mad pranks of Dághie, the obsequious court buffoon, and the flower of Abyssinian minstrelsy.

Decked by the favour of the monarch in a shining silver sword, this Merry Andrew, fiddle in hand, came scraping and chanting his way homeward, with eyes sufficiently inflamed to indicate where he had been dining. Kissing the earth as he took his seat in the tent, amid many antics, grimaces, and inquiries, he proceeded to elicit from his instrument imitations of the human voice under various intonations of joy, surprise, and sorrow; and a host of retainers, crowding round the doors with shoulders bared, next shouted their approval to some travestie of the wild Adel slogan, or joined their voices in full chorus to swell the Amhára death triumph, or this, the pibroch of the Nile:—

    “The sword is burning for the fight,
    And gleams like rays of living light;
    Let thoughts of fear inthral the slave—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.

    “Clustering they come, the Turkish rout
    Ring back on high the Amhára shout;
    For honour, home, or glorious grave—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.

    “The sword of Confu leads the war.
    And dastard spirits quail afar;
    None here to pity, none to save—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.

    “Our swords in tint shall soon outvie
    Yon scabbard of the crimson dye.
    And overhead shall ruddy wave—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.

    “Red as their belts their blood shall flow,
    Deep as the hue of sunset glow;
    Mercy to none who mercy crave—
    Rouse to the strife, ye Gojam brave.”

Pages and abigails were hourly in attendance, on the part of their royal master or mistress, with some rubbish from the palace, which was carefully removed from its red and yellow basket of Guráguê grass, divested of all its numerous wrappers, and confidentially exhibited with an inquiry, sotto voce, “whether more of the same description was not to be obtained?” The outcry raised for detonating caps was wearisome and incessant; for although it was notorious that the royal magazines boasted a hoard sufficient to answer the utmost demand of at least three generations, the king was ever apprehensive of bankruptcy, in event of a quarrel with the Ada?el, “because his own people knew not the road beyond the world of waters.” Thus it happened that Kidána Wold, “the long gunman,” who had charge of the royal armoury, received private instructions to look in at the Residency at least twice a week, with a mamálacha for fifty or a hundred tezábs, and regularly once a month averred that he had been so unfortunate as to drop from his girdle another box of His Majesty’s patent anticorrosives—a loss which, unless timely repaired, must inevitably result in the forfeiture of his liberty. “The Gaita has discovered my carelessness,” he would add, with tears in his eyes; “and, by Mary, if you don’t help me immediately, I shall be sent to Góncho.” Treble strong canister gunpowder was also in high demand, its superiority over the manufacture of Shoa being admitted even by the maker. But the sulphur monopoly remained as heretofore most jealously guarded. The ill-starred individual who had charge of the mines on the frontier, in an evil hour accepted silver for a lump of the purified commodity, which was required for the cure of applicants having the beggar’s disease; and spies reporting the peculation, the delinquent was condemned to perpetual labour in the hot valleys of Giddem.
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