Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCLX. FEBRUARY, 1854. VOL. LXXV.

CONTENTS.

ABYSSINIAN ABERRATIONS, 129
THE QUIET HEART.—PART III., 150
NATIONAL GALLERY, 167
A GLANCE AT TURKISH HISTORY, 184
MACAULAY’S SPEECHES, 193
FIFTY YEARS IN BOTH HEMISPHERES, 203
A SPORTING SETTLER IN CEYLON, 226
GRAY’S LETTERS, 242

EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET,
AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON;

_To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed._

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCLX. FEBRUARY, 1854. VOL. LXXV.

ABYSSINIAN ABERRATIONS.[1]

Locomotion, profitless and often aimless, is, in the opinion of Continentals, a condition of an Englishman’s existence. Provided with a dressing-case that would contain a Frenchman’s entire wardrobe, and with a hat-box full of pills “to be taken at bedtime,” every son of Albion is supposed to perform, at some period of his life, a distant journey, with the sole apparent object of acquiring a right to say that he has been “there and back again.” An Englishman, in the opinion of Europe, would be a miserable being, had he not continually present to his mind the recollection or the anticipation of a journey to the uttermost parts of the earth—to the North Pole or the South Seas, to the feverish heart of Africa or the scarcely less perilous wastes of Tartary. That opinion will be strongly confirmed by the peregrinations of Mansfield Parkyns.

There can be no reasonable doubt that when the handsome volumes, full of amusing letter-press and neat sketches, and externally decorated with a chubby and Oriental St George spearing a golden dragon, with bossy shields and carved scimitars, and lion’s mane and tail, which Mr Murray has just published, shall have been as generally read as they deserve to be, the tide of enterprising travel will set strongly in the direction of Abyssinia. Everybody will take wing for the land of the Shohos and Boghos; African outfits will be in perpetual demand; sanguine railway projectors will discuss the feasibility of a “Grand Cairo and Addy Abo Direct” line. Mr Parkyns tells us, in his preliminary pages, that he shall estimate the success of his book, not by his friends’ flatteries or his reviewers’ verdict, but by its sale. Sale!—why, it will sell by thousands, in an abridged form, with a red cover, as the “Handbook for Abyssinia.” Persons starting for those parts will ask for Parkyns’ Handbook, just as tenderer tourists, who content themselves with an amble through Andalusia, inquire for Ford’s. That many such starts will be made, we cannot doubt, after reading the book in which are so vividly described the charms of the pleasant land of Tigrè, the delights of the journey thither, and of the abode there. Never was anything so tempting. The mere introduction makes us impatient to be off. Mr Parkyns is resolved to lure his readers, in his very first chapter, not only to read his book, but to roam in his footsteps. Werne’s _Campaign in Taka_ gave us some idea of the advantages enjoyed by those privileged mortals to whom it is given to ramble between the Blue Nile and the Red Sea; but the German’s narrative, which we thought striking and startling enough when we read it, is thrown into the shade by the vivid and lively delineations of the friend and comrade of Prince Shetou. The sanitary, dietetic, and surgical instructions, with which, for the benefit of future travellers in Abyssinia, he preludes his subject, would alone suffice to inspire us with an ardent longing to pass a season in the delightful regions where they are applicable. The preservation of health, he justly observes, should be every traveller’s chief care, since, without it, pleasure or profit from the journey is alike impossible. Then he proceeds to point out the chief dangers to health in Abyssinia, and the means of warding them off. The highlands, he tells us, are highly salubrious, but unfortunately one cannot always abide upon the hills; and down in the valleys malaria prevails, engendering terrible inflammatory fevers, to which four patients out of five succumb, the fifth having his constitution impaired for life, or at least for many years. Parkyns points out a preservative. Light two large fires and sleep between them. They must be so close together that you are obliged to cover yourself with a piece of hide to avoid ignition of your clothes. “Not very agreeable till you are used to it,” says the cool Parkyns, “but a capital preventive of disease. Another plan, always adopted by the natives, is not, I think, a bad one:—Roll your head completely up in your cloth, which then acts as a respirator. You may often see a nigger lying asleep with the whole of his body uncovered, but his head and face completely concealed in many folds”;—a _sort of woodcocking_ which may be pleasant, but can hardly be considered picturesque. Tobacco is indispensable; in that country you must smoke abundantly. On the White Nile no negro is ever without his pipe, which sometimes holds a pound of tobacco. “The largest I now possess,” says Parkyns, somewhat dolefully, “would not contain much more than a quarter of that quantity.” The sun, generally considered formidable to travellers in Africa, is disregarded by him to whom we now give ear. “I never retired into the shade to avoid the noonday heat; and for four years I never wore any covering to my head except the rather scanty allowance of hair with which nature has supplied me, with the addition occasionally of a little butter. During the whole of that time I never had a headache”;—an immunity we are disposed to attribute less to the sun’s forbearance than to some peculiar solidity in the cranium of Parkyns. “In these climates,” he next informs us, “a man cannot eat much, or, even if he could, he ought not.” This probably applies exclusively to foreigners, for we are afterwards introduced to native dinners, where the gormandising surpassed belief, and yet none of the guests were a pin the worse. Indeed, in the course of the book, the Abyssinians are invariably represented as enormous feeders, capable of demolishing four or five pounds of meat, more or less, raw, as one day’s ration, and without ill effects. As long as you are moderate in quantity, the quality of what you eat is evidently unimportant in a sanitary point of view. “A man who cares a straw about what he eats should never attempt to travel in Africa. It is not sufficient to say, ‘I can eat anything that is clean and wholesome.’ You will often have to eat things that are far from being either, especially the former. I have eaten of almost every living thing that walketh, flyeth, or creepeth—lion, leopard, wolf, cat, hawk, crocodile, snake, lizard, locust, &c.; and I should be sorry to say what dirty messes I have at times been obliged to put up with.” As general rules for the preservation of health, we are instructed to avoid bad localities—the valleys, especially after the rainy season, when the sun pumps up malaria from stagnant pools and decayed vegetable matter—to be abstemious in all respects, and to follow the native customs with respect to food, injunctions which appear difficult to reconcile. Should all precautions prove ineffectual, and fever or other ills assail us, kind, considerate Parkyns, who himself, he tells us, has some knowledge of the healing art, instructs us what to do. “Local bleedings, such as the natives practise, are often highly advantageous; and firing with a hot iron may also be adopted at their recommendation. For severe inflammation of the bowels, when you cannot bear to be touched on the part, _some boiling water poured on it_ will be a ready and effective blister,—a wet rag being wrapped round in a ring to confine the water within the intended limits. For bad snake-bites or scorpion stings, bind above the part as tightly as possible, and _cut away with a knife_; then apply the end of an iron ramrod, _heated to white heat_. This, of course, I mean supposing you to be in the backwoods, out of the reach of medicines. Aquafortis is, I have heard, better than the hot iron, _as it eats farther in_.” Actual cautery, boiling-water blisters, and “cutting away” really compose a very pretty basis for a surgical system. Professor Parkyns gives but few prescriptions, supposing, he says, that few of his readers would care to have more, or be likely to profit by them. Judging from the above sample, we are inclined to coincide in his supposition.

Mr Mansfield Parkyns is an amateur barbarian. Leaving England when a very young man, he plunged, after some previous rambling in Europe and Asia Minor, into the heart of Abyssinia, and adopted savage life with an earnestness and gusto sufficiently proved by his book, and by the regret with which he still, after three years’ return to what poor Ruxton called “civilised fixings,” speaks of his abode in the wigwams of Ethiopia, and of his hankerings—not after the flesh-pots of Egypt, but—after the ghee-pots and uncooked beef he so long throve upon in the dominions of the great Oubi, Viceroy of Tigrè. Fancy a civilised Englishman, gently nurtured and educated, pitching his tent for three years amongst filthy savages, adopting their dress and usages, rubbing his head with butter, sleeping with the but of his rifle for a pillow—the grease from his plaited locks being “beneficially employed in toughening the wood”—having himself partially tattooed, eating raw beef, substituting raw sheep’s liver soused in vinegar for oysters, discarding hats and shoes, and going bareheaded and barefoot under the broiling sun and over the roadless wastes of Abyssinia, burning and gashing his flesh in order to produce peculiar scars and protuberances, deemed ornamental by the people amongst whom he dwelt, and, upon his return home (to England, we mean to say, for the home of his predilection is amongst the savoury savages he so reluctantly left, and amongst whom he evidently considers himself naturalised), coolly writing down and publishing his confessions—in most amusing style, we freely admit, but not without a slight dash of self-complacency, as if he would say, See what a fine fellow I am to have thus converted myself into a greasy, shoeless, raw-beef-eating savage for a term of years! We have nothing in the world, however, to do with Mr Parkyns’ peculiar predilections. This is a free country—as the Yankee observed when flogging his nigger—whose natives have a perfect right to exhibit themselves in any character they please, from an Objibbeway to an alabaster statue, so long as they do not outrage decency, or otherwise transgress the law. For our part, we should have been sincerely sorry if Mr Parkyns had not en-cannibaled himself, and told us how he did it. We should have been deprived of two of the most extraordinary, original, and amusing volumes through which we ever passed our paper-knife. We accept the book, and are grateful for it. With the author’s tastes, depraved though we cannot but consider them, we purpose not to meddle. Men of his stamp should be prized, like black diamonds, by reason of their rarity. We are much mistaken, or Mr Parkyns will be the cynosure of all eyes during the approaching spring—particularly if he condescends occasionally to exhibit his tattooed arm, and to bolt a raw beef-steak. Gordon Cumming, on his return from his South-African slaughterings, was the lion of the London season; Mansfield Parkyns will receive much less than his due if he be not made its hippopotamus.

Mr Parkyns started from Smyrna for a tour of the Nile, in company with the poetical member for Pontefract, Mr Monckton Milnes, then pondering his “Palm Leaves.” Of the Nile tour, so repeatedly made and so well described by others, he abstains from speaking, in order the sooner to get to Abyssinia. After an agreeable boat voyage of two months’ duration, he parted from his companion at Cairo. Mr Milnes must surely have regretted quitting so lively and intrepid a fellow-traveller, and Mr Parkyns, we cannot doubt, equally deplored their separation. The cool of the evening would have been so pleasant in the desert. But parliamentary duties summoned one of the travellers northwards; the _Wander-trieb_, the vagabond instinct, impelled the other southwards, and so they parted. A double-barrelled gun, a single rifle, a brace of double pistols, and a bowie-knife, composed Mr Parkyns’ travelling arsenal; he also took with him three pair of common pistols, a dozen light cavalry sword-blades, some red cloth, white muslin, and Turkey rugs, as presents for Abyssinian chiefs, and in March 1843 he sailed from Suez for Jedda, on board a miserable Arab boat, loaded with empty rice-bags and a hundred passengers. The throng was too great to be agreeable, but Mr Parkyns, who has evidently a happy temper and a knack at making himself popular amongst all manner of queer people, was soon on most friendly terms with the Turks, Bedouins, Egyptians, Negroes, and others who composed the living freight of the clumsy lateen-rigged craft. The voyage from Suez to Jedda varies from nine days to three months. Mr Parkyns was so fortunate as to accomplish it in little more than three weeks. We pass over its incidents, which amused us when we first read them, but which have lost their piquancy now that we recur to them with the highly-spiced flavour of the Abyssinian adventures hot upon our palate, and we go on at once to Massawa Island, on the Abyssinian coast, whose climate may be estimated from the remark made by an officer of the Indian navy to Mr Parkyns, to the effect that he thought Pondicherry the hottest place in India, but that Pondicherry was nothing to Aden, and Aden a mere trifle to Massawa. “Towards the latter end of May I have known the thermometer rise to about 120° Fahrenheit in the shade, and in July and August it ranges much higher.” Indoors, the natives, men and women, wear nothing but striped cotton napkins round their loins. Most Europeans suffer severely from the heat of the place. Mr Parkyns, who is first cousin to a salamander, suffered not at all, but ran about catching insects, or otherwise actively employing himself, whilst his servants lay in the shade, the perspiration streaming off them. He is clearly the very man for the tropics. After ten days at Massawa, he started for the interior, previously getting rid of his heavy baggage, to an extent we should really have thought rather improvident, but which, if he had already made up his mind to content himself with the comforts, and conform to the customs of the people he was going amongst, was doubtless extremely wise. We have enumerated his stock of arms, and his assortment of presents for the natives. The list of his wardrobe, after he had given away his European toggery—partly at Cairo, and partly to Angelo, a Massawa Jew, who made himself useful and agreeable—is very soon made out. When he landed on the mainland, opposite Massawa, it consisted of “three Turkish shirts, three pair of drawers, one suit of Turkish clothes for best occasions, a pair of sandals, and a red cap. From the day I left Suez (25th March 1843), till about the same time in the year 1849, I never wore any article of European dress, nor indeed ever slept in a bed of any sort—not even a mattress; the utmost extent of luxury I enjoyed, even when all but dying of a pestilential fever, that kept me five months on my beam-ends at Khartoum, was a coverlet under a rug. The red cap I wore on leaving Massawa was soon _borrowed_ of me, and the sandals, after a month, were given up; and so, as I have before said in the Introduction, for more than three years (that is, till I reached Khartoum), I wore no covering to my head, except a little butter, when I could get it, nor to my feet, except the horny sole which a few months’ rough usage placed under them.” The sole in question had scarce put its print upon Ethiopian soil when it was near meeting with an accident that would have necessitated the use of the sharp knife and white-hot ramrod. On his way to the house of Hussein Effendi, a government scribe, at the sea-coast village of Moncullou, Mr Parkyns put his bare foot near an object that in the twilight had the appearance of a bit of stick or stone. “I was startled by feeling something cold glide over it, and, turning, saw a small snake wriggling off as quickly as possible. From what little I could distinguish of its form and colour, it seemed to answer the description I had heard of the cerastes, or horned viper, which is about a foot and a half long, rather thick for its length, and of a dirty, dusty colour, mottled. The horns are nearly over the eyes, and about the eighth of an inch in length. This is considered one of the most venomous of the snake tribe, and they are very numerous in this neighbourhood. I tried to kill it, but without success.” He soon came to think very little of such small deer as this. Snakes are as common as rats in those torrid latitudes, and about as little heeded. On his way to the hot springs of Ailat, a day’s journey from Massawa, he killed another horned viper, as it was coolly wriggling across his carpet, “spread in a natural bower formed by the boughs of a species of mimosa, from whose yellow flowers, which emit a delicious fragrance, the Egyptians distil a perfume they call ‘fitneh.’” After this he makes no mention of adventures with snakes on account of their frequency, until he gets to his chapter on the natural history of Abyssinia, towards the close of the second volume, to which we shall hereafter refer. We are at present anxious to get up the country, to the court of King Oubi, whose capital, Adoua, was Mr Parkyns’ headquarters during his residence in Tigrè. There he had what he calls his town-house, of which he presents us with a plan and sketches. He remained for some weeks at Ailat, the Cheltenham of Abyssinia, whose healing springs attract visitors from great distances. There he lodged in the house of a sort of village chief, called Fakak, and passed his time shooting. It was rather an amusing residence, caravans of Bedouins and Shohos frequently passing through on their way to and from Massawa, and he had excellent sport. The evening before starting for Kiaguor, three days’ journey on the road to Adoua,

“I went out to procure a supper for myself and numerous friends and
attendants; and, to tantalise my English sporting readers, I will tell
them what bag I brought home in little more than an hour. My first
shot brought down four guinea-fowl; my second, five ditto; third, a
female of the little Ben Israel gazelle; fourth, her male companion;
and, fifth, a brace of grouse; so that in five shots I had as good a
bag as in England one would get in an average day’s shooting, and
after expending half a pound of powder, and a proportionate quantity
of shot, caps, and wads. But I feel it my duty to explain that _I
never shoot flying_, considering that unsportsmanlike. A true
sportsman shows his skill by getting up to his game unperceived, when,
putting the muzzle of his gun as close to the tail-feathers as he
possibly can, he blazes away into the thick of the covey, always
choosing the direction in which he sees three or four heads picking in
a row! At any rate, this is the only way you can shoot in a country
where, if you entirely expend your powder and shot, you must starve,
or else make more, as I have been obliged to do many a time. I cannot
understand how people in Europe can enjoy shooting, where one is
dependent on a crowd of keepers, beaters, dogs, sandwiches, grog,
&c.... My sole companion on ordinary occasions is a little boy, who
carries my rifle, whilst I carry my gun, and we do all the work
ourselves. His sharp eyes, better accustomed to the glare than my own,
serve me in every point as well as a setter’s nose. The country (about
Ailat) is sandy and covered with large bushes. Most of the trees are
thorny, being chiefly of the mimosa tribe, and their thorns are of a
very formidable description, some of them being about two inches and a
half in length, and as thick at the base as a large nail; while
another variety, called in Abyssinian the ‘Kantàff-tafa,’ have thin
short-curved thorns placed on the shoots two and two together. These
catch you like the claws of a hawk, and if they enter your clothes you
had better cut off the sprig at once, and carry it with you till you
have leisure to liberate yourself, otherwise you will never succeed;
for as fast as you loosen one thorn another catches hold.”

Some interesting sporting anecdotes follow (they abound in Mr Parkyns’ book), told in off-hand characteristic style—encounters with wild pigs, rather dangerous animals to deal with—and then we take the road to Kiaguor. A night’s rest there, and we are off to Adoua. Hereabouts Mr Parkyns gives a sketch of “Abyssinian Travelling.” We presume that he himself, somewhat tanned by the climate, is the gentleman mounted on a jackass, with bare head and legs, and a parasol for protection from the sun. Suppress the donkey and supply a parrot, and he might very well pass for the late Mr R. Crusoe.

Vague ideas of columns and obelisks, Moorish architecture and the like, floated in Mr Parkyns’ fancy as he drew near to the capital city of the kingdom of Tigrè, one of the most powerful of all Ethiopia. He found a straggling village of huts, most of them built of rough stones, and thatched with straw. The customhouse—they possess that civilised nuisance even in Abyssinia—gave him trouble about his baggage, which it found exorbitant in quantity, and suspected him of smuggling in goods on account of merchants. He explained that he had a supply of arms, powder, lead, &c., for two or three years’ consumption, besides presents for the prince, but the Tigrè _douaniers_ insisted on examining all his packages. He would not submit, and set off to make an appeal to Oubi—nominally the viceroy, but in reality the sovereign of the country—who was then at a permanent camp, at a place entitled Howzayn. During this part of his travels, Mr Parkyns was in company with Messrs Plowden and Bell; and on reaching Howzayn, which they did in a heavy shower of rain, they went at once to the habitation of Càfty, the steward of Oubi’s household, who had been Mr Bell’s _balderàbba_ on a former visit. “It is customary for every person, whether native or foreigner, after his first audience with the prince, to ask for a ‘balderàbba,’ and one of his officers is usually named. He becomes a sort of agent, and expects you to acknowledge, by presents, any service he may render you—such as assisting you out of difficulties in which you may be involved, or procuring for you admission to his master when you may desire it. Càfty was absent on an expedition. His brother, Negousy, was acting for him, and he volunteered to procure us an audience of the prince without delay.” Meanwhile the travellers were not very comfortable. Some poor fellows were turned out of their huts into the rain to make room for them; but the huts let in water so freely, that the new occupants were scarcely better off than those who had been ejected. Only one hut, about 7 feet in diameter, and 5½ feet high, had a water-tight roof. Imperfect shelter was but one of their annoyances, and a minor one. It is a custom of that country for the king to send food to travellers as soon as he hears of their arrival, and our three Englishmen, aware of this, had brought no provisions. This was unfortunate, for Oubi neglected to observe the hospitable custom, and they were half starved. Instead of obtaining for them an immediate interview with the prince, Negousy, who was fishing for presents, put them off from day to day. They were obliged to send a servant round the camp, crying out, “Who has got bread for money?” and offering an exorbitant price; but even thus they could not obtain a tithe of what they needed. To add to their vexations, Mr Parkyns’ servant, Barnabas, a negro whom he had engaged at Adoua, was claimed as a slave by a man in authority, to whose uncle he had formerly belonged. At last, on the fourth evening after their arrival, Oubi sent them a supper. “It consisted of forty thin cakes, thirty being of coarser quality for the servants, and ten of white ‘teff’ for our own consumption. These were accompanied by two pots of a sort of sauce, composed of common oil, dried pease, and red pepper, but, it being fast time, there was neither meat nor butter. To wash all down there was an enormous horn of honey beer.” On the morning of the sixth day Oubi sent for them, and, escorted by Negousy, they hastened to the Royal Hovel. They had to wait some time for admission, amidst the comments of a crowd of soldiers—comments then unintelligible to Mr Parkyns, but which he afterwards ascertained to be far less complimentary to the personal appearance of himself and companions than he at the time imagined—their eyes being compared to those of cats, their hair to that of monkeys, and their skin, to which the sun had given a bright capsicum hue, being greatly coveted for red morocco sword-sheaths.

Oubi was reclining on a stretcher, in a circular earthen-floored hut, thirty feet in diameter. Although it was the middle of August there was a fire in the apartment, and Mr Parkyns was almost blinded by the wood smoke. When he was able to see, he beheld “a rather good-looking, slight-made man, of about forty-five years of age, with bushy hair, which was fast turning grey. His physiognomy did not at all prepossess me in his favour. It struck me as indicative of much cunning, pride, and falsity; and I judged him to be a man of some talent, but with more of the fox than the lion in his nature. Our presents were brought in, covered with cloths, and carried by our servants. They consisted of a Turkey rug, two European light-cavalry swords, four pieces of muslin for turbans, and two or three yards of red cloth for a cloak. He examined each article as it was presented to him, making on almost every one some complimentary remark. After having inspected them all, he said, ‘God return it to you,’ and ordered his steward to give us a cow.” The cow proved to be what a Far West trapper would call very “poor bull”—a mere bag of bones, which would never have fetched two dollars in the market (the value of a fat cow in Abyssinia varies from 8s. to 12s. 6d.); but, such as it was, the taste of meat was welcome to the hungry travellers, who devoured the beast the same day they received it, so that by nightfall not an eatable morsel was left. Oubi made a better acknowledgment of their gifts by settling their difficulty with the chief of the customhouse, and not long after this Mr Parkyns parted from Messrs Bell and Plowden, their routes no longer lying together. “I prepared for a journey into Addy Abo, a province on the northern frontier of Tigrè, then so little known as not to be placed on any map. My principal object in going there was the chase, and if possible to learn something of the neighbouring Barea or Shangalla—a race totally unknown, except by the reputation they have gained in many throat-cutting visits paid to the Abyssinians.” When recording his parting from his two friends, both of whom he believes to be still in Abyssinia, he intimates his intention of revisiting that country. “It is not improbable,” he says, “that we three may meet again, and do what we have often done before—eat a raw beef-steak, and enjoy it for the sake of good company.”

The road to Addy Abo took Mr Parkyns through Axum, the capital of that part of Abyssinia until supplanted by Adoua. Axum contains a tolerably well-built church, probably of Portuguese construction, and some neatly-built huts, whilst broken columns and pedestals tell of the civilisation of former ages. It possesses, moreover, a beautiful obelisk and a very remarkable sycamore tree, “both of great height, the latter remarkable for the extraordinary circumference of its trunk, and the great spread of its branches, which cast their dark shade over a space of ground sufficient for the camp of the largest caravan. The principal obelisk is carved on the south side, as if to represent a door, windows, cornices, &c.; whilst, under the protecting arms of the venerable tree, stand five or six smaller ones, without ornament, most of which have considerably deviated from the perpendicular. Altogether they form a very interesting family party.” Judging from the present book, antiquarian researches have not much interest for Mr Parkyns, whose sympathies are with the living, his pleasures in the field and forest, and who seems more of a sportsman than of a student. It would be unfair, however, not to mention, that whilst enjoying himself in his own peculiar ways (and some of his ways certainly were extremely peculiar), he kept less selfish aims in view, and exerted himself to make collections of objects of natural history, of costumes, arms, and other curiosities, besides investigating the history and geography of the country. His collections were on a very large scale: unfortunately some went astray upon the road; others, left for years in warehouses, and ill cared for by those to whom they were consigned, were plundered of their most precious specimens. The latter was the case with his first great shipment, of more than twelve hundred birds, sent to England by way of Hamburg. Rats and moths destroyed the contents of another case, left by mistake for four years at Aden; and another, containing arms, silver-mounted ornaments, and zoological specimens, its owner supposes to be either at Bombay, Calcutta, or in some warehouse of the Transit Company in Egypt. These losses are the more to be deplored, that they comprised that of many extremely rare specimens of birds and monkeys, some of them from regions into which it is probable that no European traveller ever before penetrated. To make sure of not losing his collection made in Nubia and on the White Nile, Mr Parkyns himself went out to fetch it, and never lost sight of it till he had it safe at home. It consisted of six hundred birds, and of about a ton weight of negro arms and implements. He was still more unfortunate in geographical than in zoological matters, having lost the whole of the observations, maps, &c. made during his long residence in Tigrè.

The Great Gondar road, along which Mr Parkyns travelled for some distance after quitting Axum, bears about the same resemblance to a civilised European highway that Oubi’s smoky cabin bears to the Louvre or the Escurial. High-roads in Abyssinia are mere tracks worn by passage. “The utmost labour bestowed on any road in that country is, when some traveller, vexed with a thorn that may happen to scratch his face, draws his sword and cuts off the spray. Even this is rarely done. An Abyssinian’s maxim is, ‘I may not pass by this way for a year again; why should I give myself trouble for other people’s convenience?’ The road, however, here as in many parts of Tigrè, is abundantly watered by several tolerably copious streams, which flow _all_ the year round. These are most useful to the numerous merchants who pass constantly between Gondar, Adoua, and the Red Sea, with large caravans of laden animals, offering not only ready means for watering their cattle, but often green food for them near the banks, when all the rest of the country is parched up and dry, and a cool grassy bed for their own weary limbs to repose upon.” Hereupon Mr Parkyns breaks out into rapturous laudation of life in the wilderness, and advises his readers to shoulder their rifles, abandon civilised diggings, and take a few months’ roughing and hardship in a hot climate. Only in such a life, he maintains, is real happiness and enjoyment to be found. His arguments are as original as his book. The principle that he goes upon is, that one enjoys nothing thoroughly until one has suffered from privation of it. Shade, a patch of grass, a stream of water, a cloud, are treasures in Africa, whilst in England they are unheeded, because easily obtainable. A draught of water in the desert, albeit dirty or tar-flavoured, is more precious than the choicest Tokay in epicurean _blasé_ Europe; a piece of scorched gazelle and an ill-baked loaf, made by putting a red-hot stone into the middle of a lump of dough, form a repast more luxurious, when hunger and exercise supply the sauce, than ever was placed before royal _gourmet_ by the most renowned of France’s cooks. There is not much fruit in Abyssinia—but, oh! for a good raw onion for luncheon! Scenting some of those fragrant bulbs, greedy Parkyns, during his residence in the “Happy Valley” of Rohabaita, once ran two miles up a hill, in the heat of the day. How he enjoyed himself in that pleasant province of Rohabaita, hard by the banks of the Mareb, where he abode nine months, and to which he feels disposed to devote many chapters! He had the good fortune, he says, during his long stay, to become considered as one of the country, and to be offered the government of that and another province by H.R.H. Dejatch Lemma, Oubi’s eldest son, who held authority in the north-western districts of Tigrè, but who had been unable to acquire much influence over the Rohabaitese—rough border-men, particularly averse to tax-paying, and who, when pressed for the impost, fled with their movables across the frontier. For, in Abyssinia, inattention to the tax-gatherer’s claim is terribly punished. In the first instance, the offender is subjected to a sort of _dragonnade_; soldiers are sent to live upon him, waste his substance, and treat him brutally; so that, if he cannot at once borrow money to pay his debt, he is speedily ruined. Another means of extortion is still more barbarous: the insolvent is cast into prison, and chained by the arm. “The iron round his wrist is not clasped, but is merely a strong hoop, opened by force to allow the hand to enter, and then hammered tight between two stones. At first it is only made tight enough to prevent any possibility of the prisoner’s escape. After some time, however, if the sum required be not forthcoming, it is knocked a little tighter, and so, by degrees, the hand dies, the nails drop out, and the poor prisoner is at best maimed for life. Death sometimes ensues from this treatment.” Rather savage work, Mr Parkyns is fain to admit, whilst assuring us that this torture is not often practised, and that his Tigrine friends, with all their faults, have many good qualities. Lofty were the castles he built in Rohabaita (aërial ones, of course, castles of more solid structure being rare in a land whose sovereign is lodged as we have described) whilst waiting for Oubi’s permission, for which Lemma was obliged to apply before installing the Englishman in his government. Besides the payment of a tribute to Lemma, Mr Parkyns undertook to keep in order the neighbouring tribe of the Bàza, whom he more frequently speaks of as the Barea or slaves, that being the name given to them in Abyssinia. He was very desirous to visit that brave and hardy tribe of savages, and had made all his arrangements to do so, when Oubi unfortunately determined on a _razzia_, in retaliation of numerous recent murders and robberies perpetrated by them in his dominions. In the last of their forays they had pillaged monasteries, and slain their holy occupants, whose blood cried aloud for vengeance. His project of a pacific ramble amongst the Barea being thus knocked on the head, Mr Parkyns hoped that the campaign itself would give him opportunities of obtaining an insight into their manners. He was disappointed. Little or nothing was seen of the natives except at the sword’s point. They appear to be bold and wary warriors, skilled in the stratagems of savage warfare. Mr Parkyns, when at Rohabaita, received a visit and presents from a friend of his, one Obsabius, a hospitable old cock, and man in authority, whom, on his departure, he accompanied for some distance with a small escort, Obsabius, when coming, having seen Barea sign upon the road. He was convinced that the blacks were outlying, and that he had escaped attack only by having joined a number of other travellers.

“Scarcely had we passed the brook of Mai-Chena when one of our men, a
hunter, declared that he saw the slaves. Being at that time
inexperienced in such matters, I could see nothing suspicious. He then
pointed out to me a dead tree standing on an eminence at a distance of
several hundred yards, and charred black by last year’s fire. To
explain this, I should remark that the rains cause to spring up a
thick jungle of grass, canes, and bushes, which cover the whole
surface of the country, growing to a height of several feet. When this
becomes dry, it is set fire to—in some places by the farmers, as the
readiest means of clearing the ground; in others by hunters, to enable
them to get at their game with greater facility; and often
accidentally.... However, all that I saw was a charred stump of a
tree, and a few blackened logs or stones lying at its foot. The hunter
declared that neither tree nor stones were there the last time he
passed, and that they were simply naked Barea, who had placed
themselves in that position to observe us, having no doubt seen us for
some time, and prepared themselves.... So confident was I of his
mistake, that, telling the rest to go on slowly, as if nothing had
been observed, I dropped into the long grass and stalked up towards
them. A shot from my rifle, at a long distance (I did not venture too
close), acted on the trees and stones as powerfully as the fiddle of
Orpheus, but with the contrary effect; for the tree disappeared, and
the stones and logs, instead of running after me, ran in the opposite
direction. I never was more astonished in my life; for so complete was
the deception, that even up to the time I fired, I could have declared
the objects before me were vegetable or mineral—anything, indeed, but
animal. The cunning rascals who represented stones were lying flat,
with their little round shields placed before them as screens.”

The presents brought by the obliging Obsabius were a supply of food—corn and honey—for there was considerable hunger in the Happy Valley just then, the chase being unproductive, and the natives having fled from the apprehension of a tax-gathering visit from the troops of the extortionate Oubi. Abstinence, however, is a good thing in that climate, and Mr Parkyns never felt himself better than during this tolerably long period of semi-starvation. He was never fatigued, and wounds of all kinds healed with wonderful rapidity. He led a rough life in that frontier country, and wounds were common enough. “Once, in running down the stony and almost precipitous path leading to the Mareb, I struck my bare foot against an edge of rock, which was as sharp as a razor, and a bit of flesh, with the whole of the nail of my left foot little toe, was cut off, leaving only the roots of the nail. This latter I suppose to have been the case, for it has grown all right again. I could not stop longer than to _polish off_ the bit which was hanging by a skin, for we were in chase of a party of Barea, who had cut the throats of three of Waddy Hil’s nephews the night before, but was obliged to go on running for about twenty miles that afternoon, the greater part of the way up to our ankles in burning sand. Whether this cured it, I know not, but I scarcely suffered at all from it the next day, and forgot it the day after.” Thorns in the feet—no trifling prickles, but three or four inches long—were picked out by the half-dozen at a time; and such, says Mr Parkyns, is the force of habit and the thickness of skin one acquires, that such an operation is thought no more of than an English sportsman would of kicking away a clod of clay clinging to his shooting-shoes. But to return to the Barea. Oubi remained nearly two months in their country, which he completely traversed—so completely, indeed, as to have unintentionally (?) committed depredations on certain tribes to the north, claimed as tributary by the Egyptians. Although good fighting men, the Bàza have too little idea of united action, and are too ignorant of modern improvements in the art of slaughter, to make head against their Abyssinian enemies when these take the field in force. Their idea of cavalry is very ludicrous. They imagine them to be old or infirm men, carried by horses because they cannot keep up with their comrades on foot! “So in their campaigns, whenever the Bàza are met by cavalry, they amuse themselves at their expense by facetiously plucking handfuls of grass and holding them towards the horses, and calling them ‘Tish, Tish,’ &c. They appear never able to understand how the firearms of their adversaries kill them. Occasionally it has been noticed that when a man has fallen among them by a gun-shot wound, his neighbours will assist him up, imagining him to have stumbled; should life be extinct, they manifest their astonishment at finding him dead from some unseen cause, and when, on examining his body, they discover the small round hole made by the ball, they will stare at it, poke their fingers into it, and absolutely laugh with surprise and wonder.” Notwithstanding these artless ways, the Bàza are ugly customers in a hand-to-hand tussle—one of them usually proving more than a match for two Abyssinians, and Mr Parkyns relates several anecdotes illustrative of their physical superiority. But we feel desirous to take a glance at his town life, which has even greater novelty than his chapters of wild adventure, and so we return with him to Adoua, whither he went to pass the rainy season when he left Rohabaita. He waited several months for Oubi’s consent to his installation as governor; but before it arrived he received long-expected supplies from England, and abandoned his ambitious and philanthropical schemes—unfortunately for the Rohabaitese, to the improvement of whose physical and moral condition they tended, and fortunately for the Barea, against whom he proposed to organise a system of moss-trooping, to result in much profit in ivory and buffalo hides.