The Second Winter in Shoa.

Another dreary season of rain, and of mist, and of heavy fog, had now set in; the lance and the shield of the Christian had been suspended in the dark windowless hall, and the war-steed ranged loose over the swampy meadow. During three long months the weather seldom permitted us to quit our damp miserable habitation at Ankóber, but I found ample occupation in endeavouring to put into some kind of order the notes from which these three volumes have been prepared. My assistants were also busily engaged in the various departments which I had allotted to them, and in spite of the gloomy light afforded by oiled parchment, a highly valuable collection of maps, drawings, and reports, had been completed before any change was observable in the weather. Within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, the floods had never continued longer nor wuth greater violence. Morning after morning the heavy white clouds still clung above the saturated metropolis. Every hollow footpath had been converted into a muddy stream, and each deep valley had become a morass, impassable to the equestrian; whilst the swollen Háwash had inundated the lowlands for many miles on either side of its serpentine banks.

Amongst the few events which occurred to disturb the monotony of our second winter in Shoa, was the annual audience given, towards the close of July, by the king to the Ada?el and Hurrurhi, residing in the market town of Alio Amba. Our old acquaintance, Kalama Work, having been detected in practising extensive peculation, had first undergone imprisonment in the madi beit, under the watchful eye of Wolda Hana, and was eventually stripped of his property, and turned forth upon the wide world a beggar. Abd el Yonag, the Hurrur consul, who possessed in eminent perfection the arts of fawning and flattery, had, during the interregnum, turned to good account his insatiable taste for power and intrigue. He was formally nominated to the vacant government, and when we entered the raised balcony occupied by the king, the wily old slave-dealer, duly girded with the silver badge of office and authority, occupied the disgraced governor’s seat at the footstool of the throne.

Armed with creese, and spear, and shield, the kilted band whirled howling into the courtyard, performing their savage war-dance. The precincts of the palace rung to their wild yells; and the vivid pantomime of throat-cutting and disembowelment was enacted to the life, in all its pleasing varieties. “Moot! moot! moot!” shouted each prevailing warrior of note, shaking his sun-blanched locks, and ominously quivering his heavy lance, as he sprang in turn to the front, for the approval of the Christian monarch. “Is he dead? Is he dead?” “Burdhoo! Burdhoo! you’ve slain him! you’ve slain him!” returned the turbaned pedlar, facetiously clapping his hands on behalf of his royal patron—“Burdhoo! Burdhoo!” and ere the hero of this gratifying applause had retired, another and another brave had commenced his vaunting exhibition in front of the sable ranks, or was in the act of ripping up the foe who in mock conflict had sprung like a tiger across his adversary’s loins, to grasp him as in a vice betwixt the muscles of his thighs. The court buffoon was meanwhile diligently plying his occupation, by capering through the ranks with his unsheathed reaping-hook, and chattering in ludicrous imitation of the Moslem barbarians—his successful mimicry eliciting shouts of applause, notwithstanding that the reality, as enacted in the hot valleys below, had, on more occasions than one, been calculated to leave no very agreeable recollections in the mind of the Amhára audience.

At the motion of the herald, the assembled warriors now squatted their meagre, wiry forms before the raised alcove, each resting upon his spear-staff, and peering over his shield, according to the undeviating custom of the Bedouin savage. “Are you all well? Are you well? Are you quite well?” repeated the dragoman who interpreted His Majesty’s salutations.—“How have you passed your time? Are your wives and all your children happy, and are your houses prosperous? Have your flocks and your herds multiplied, and are your fields and your pastures covered with plenty?&r............