ABYSSINIAN ABERRATIONS.[1]

BLACKWOOD’SEDINBURGH MAGAZINE.No.CCCCLX. FEBRUARY, 1854.Vol.LXXV.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No.CCCCLX. FEBRUARY, 1854.Vol.LXXV.

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’sCampaign in Takagave 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”;—asort of woodcockingwhich 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 itwill 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, andcut 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; theWander-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 soonborrowedof 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 thatI 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 Tigrèdouaniersinsisted 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’sbalderàbbaon 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 flowallthe 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 epicureanblaséEurope; 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 royalgourmetby 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 ofdragonnade; 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 arazzia, 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 topolish offthe 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.

The delay of remittances from Europe rendering it probable that Mr Parkyns would be detained for some time in Abyssinia, he resolved completely to domesticate himself with the natives, as the best way of studying their habits and mode of life. This he seems to us to have done from the very commencement; for, as he justly observes, “there is nothing like a civil tongue, and quiet unpretending manners, to get one on in those countries;” so, upon principle, he always showed himself ready to answer questions, and to do the amiable, and even to put up with savage familiarities and intrusions, which he would gladly have dispensed with: as, for instance, during his stay at Addaro, a village of Addy Abo, formerly an important market, but now decayed and almost deserted. It was there that he first saw the snake-killing secretary bird, called Farras Seytan, or the Devil’s Horse, from the astonishing swiftness with which it runs. He was the first white man who had ever entered the place, with the exception of two French medical men, who had passed through some years previously on their way to the Mareb, and one of whom was carried off by fever, and the other by a crocodile, “picked out by the voracious animal from the colour of his skin, whilst swimming between two guides.” So a white skin was a great curiosity in Addaro; and here we come to a plate representing Mr Parkyns reclining on a settle, receiving perpetual visitors, whilst he jots down in his journal the following memoranda:—“Blessed with a swarm of bees that have lodged in the house. They have stung me several times; but I can bear that, especially as they have also stung some of my importunate visitors, who, by this means, are kept away. In fact, the only method I have to rid myself of my friends is to stir up the bees—to rid myself of the bees, I am obliged to stir up the fire, which is kept burning all day for the cooking; but, by the time the bees are gone, the hut is intolerable. Fancy a roaring fire, and lots of smoke, at noon in one of the hottest places in Abyssinia.” His visitors were of a mixed description, and not all of agreeable aspect; and, upon the whole, they bothered him no little with their interminable questionings, attempts to extort presents, and squabbles amongst themselves; but it would have been impolitic to turn them out, except by the indirect agency of the bees; and, moreover, he seems to possess one of those even,insoucianttempers, hard to ruffle, which we take to be a prime requisite for a man who sojourns amongst savages, and without which he certainly would not have been able to say, at the end of his second volume, that, during nine years’ travel, he never met with a companion, of whatsoever colour, station, or religion, who gave him a moment’s cause to quarrel with him, or from whom he parted otherwise than with regret. Far be it from us to doubt the word of Mr Parkyns; but we would ask him if he really grieved at relinquishing the society of an elderly warrior—his “friend,” he calls him—who sat close to him at Addaro, looking over him as he wrote, and begging to be set down in his book? “His name is Welda Georgis. He is naturally very ugly; nor is his appearance at all improved by the want of his nose, which he says he lost in battle. He cannot speak at all without stopping the holes with his fingers; hence his voice, especially when he speaks loud, is, as may be judged, not the most harmonious; and just now he is raising it to a considerable pitch, being excited to wrath by one of his companions insinuating that he was never but in one battle, and that then he ran away before a blow had been struck.” An imputation not to be borne; and, accordingly, in the plate we see Welda Georgis and the other gentleman engaged in single combat upon the floor. Presently Mr Parkyns is disturbed in his writing by a bang, by a scream from a woman who is boiling a pot (a child in a bag on her back), and by a “Wa!” from Welda Georgis, who, ignorant of the dangers of a little knowledge, has been retailing to his friends instructions he had received the day before in the art of cocking double-barrelled pistols. He had cocked both barrels, but had pulled the left trigger whilst holding the right hammer. A gourdful of capsicum paste and a corn-jar were mortally wounded, but no other damage was done. Welda laid down the weapon, which he evidently suspected of foul play, looked gravely at it, and apostrophised it as “a naughty devil!” Easy-going Mr Parkyns took all these trifles with an excellent grace, as became a man of strong nerves, who had gone out to rough it, and who had no desire to leave his bones in Abyssinia, or to have his physical integrity in any way deteriorated. He smilingly put up with intruders, and even with spies. He could not go out for a walk without being followed. There is a notion abroad in those parts that Europeansmakemoney. This was confirmed, in the case of Mr Parkyns, by his happening to have a great many new dollars. When he put one in circulation, the receiver would exclaim, “Wa! this is only just made; see how it shines!” So somebody always accompanied him, when he strolled out with his gun, under pretence of showing him game, but in reality to watch his motions, thinking to catch him in the very act of coining. It does not appear that these scouts took much by their curiosity. “I often retire to the neighbouring hills” (thus runs one of the brief verbatim quotations from his journal, occasionally given by Mr Parkyns) “when about to take an observation, or for some other reason wishing to be undisturbed, and seek out some snug little nook or corner amongst the rocks. Scarcely, however, have I time to make my preliminary arrangements, when, looking up, I find two or three heads curiously peering into my retreat, fully persuaded that they are about to behold the entire process of extracting dollars from the earth, ready stamped with the august head of her Imperial Majesty. Sometimes they were most laughably disappointed in their expectations.” All this was at an early period of Mr Parkyns’ abode in the country; the natives had not got used to him, and he had not yet become a complete Abyssinian; and, as we have already seen, Addaro is an out-of-the-way place, where whites are rare. To see him to advantage, we must accompany him to Adoua, notwithstanding that he tells us he was less happy there, and exerted himself less to write down what he observed, than “in the more genial solitude of the backwoods;” the reason being, that “Adoua is a capital (!), though a small one; and in all capitals, whether great or small, I feel out of my element, losing at once my health, spirits, and energy and disposition for work.” The force of imagination, the magic of a name, can hardly farther go. Let us see what were the employments and pursuits of this wild man of the woods in the village metropolis of Tigrè, in which the houses of the wealthy are square and flat-roofed, whilst those of the poorer classes have a conical thatch of straw. They seem to have consisted in noting native peculiarities, in taking part in native banquets and merry-makings, and in setting the fashion to Young Abyssinia. It is time, by the by, that we should say a word of his intimate friend, Shetou, a fine fellow and daring soldier, but no favourite with his father, Oubi, who took every opportunity of snubbing him, and showed a marked preference for his puny elder brother, Lemma. “Shetou has rather a slang way of dressing, which greatly offends his father. Sometimes he comes in with one leg of his trousers drawn up in the proper manner above his calf, and the other dangling down about his ankle. On such an occasion, it would not be at all extraordinary should Oubi, after looking at him fixedly, and in his usual quiet smiling manner, begin, in the presence of all assembled, ‘Well done, son of a Mahommedan mother! Pretty way of wearing your breeches, isn’t it? Some new fashion of your own, eh?’ And, turning to theagafari(doorkeepers), ‘Turn him out! turn him out!’ The poor lad is put out in the most neck-and-crop manner, and, returning to his tent, he broods over this treatment, and vows vengeance on his brother, Lemma, who, from being the favourite, is partly the cause of it.” A prince of the blood-royal must naturally feel incensed at being ignominiously ejected from the court of his despotic dad, for no greater offence than the fanciful sit of his breeks. But whose fault is it? No one’s, if not that of Mr Parkyns, the Brummel of that foreign court, the promoter of all manner of sartorial extravagances and innovations. “This” (a particular cut of trouser) “was considered so very ultra-fashionable that, except Dejatch Shetou, myself, and one or two others, few dared attempt it. It was I and my friend Shetou who first introduced the habit of allowing the sword to swing perpendicularly from the side, instead of its sticking out horizontally, like a dog’s tail; as well as of wearing the belt over the hips, instead of round the waist, and up to the armpits, as it was worn when I first arrived. These, with the increased length of trousers, reaching, as we wore them, nearly to the ankle, and so tight below that it took an hour to draw them over the heel, gave a very ‘fast’ look.” Mr Parkyns has immortalised his name in Tigrè, and will be spoken of with admiration by future generations, to whom his fame will be handed down by the dandies to whom he set so bright an example. The incompatibility of cleanliness and elegance in Abyssinia rather shocks our European prejudices. The great “go,” we are told, amongst the dandies in those parts, is “to appear in the morning with a huge pot of butter (about two ounces) placed on the top of the head, which, as it gradually melts in the sun, runs over the hair, down the neck, over the forehead, and often into the eyes, thereby causing much smarting.” The grease is wiped from the brow and eyes withthe quarryor cloth, a garment compared by Mr Parkyns to the Roman toga, and which it is the fashion to wear dirty, a clean one being considered “slow.” But the town life of the young fashionables of rank in the chief cities of Abyssinia, may best be summed up and exhibited in an extract from Mr Parkyns’ thirty-eighth chapter, where he shows himself to us in all his glory as the D’Orsay of Adoua.

“I was leading,” he says, “the life of an Abyssinian gentleman ‘about town,’ my hair well tressed, my pantaloons always of the newest, frequently of an original cut; in dull weather setting fashions, disputing and deciding on the merits and demerits of shields and spears; in fine weather swelling about the town with a quarter of a pound of butter melting on my head, face, neck, and clothes, and with a tail of half a dozen well-got-up and equally greasy soldiers at my heels; doing the great man, with my garment well over my nose, at every festival and funeral worth attending; ‘hanging out’ extensively when I had a few shillings to spend; sponging on my neighbours when, as was oftener the case, I had nothing;—in fact, living a most agreeable life on a very limited income. I cannot deny that I look back to those times with a certain feeling of regret. It was the only period of my life in which I ever felt myself a really great man. I ‘cry very small’ in England, with a much greater expenditure. The men will not look after me with admiration, nor the girls make songs about me here.”

Poor Parkyns! fallen from your high estate, dwindled from an African savage into an English gentleman! We wretched, civilised Europeans are rather in thenil admirarivein, but we will answer for your being “looked after” with curiosity and wonderment, by all who have read your book, if you will but adopt some distinguishing mark by which you may be recognised when you walk abroad. As to the songs, whose absence you deplore, we can only say that if you are not taken for the subject of romantic ditties by the poetesses of England, as you were by those of Tigrè, it will certainly not be because the theme is unsuggestive. Innumerable incidents in your Abyssinian career deserve to be commemorated in flowing metre, and sung by Ethiopian serenaders to banjo accompaniment, and to the ancient and pathetic melody of “The King of the Cannibal Islands.” And this reminds us to accompany you to one of the festivals you above allude to—a dinner party at Adoua—first advising ladies to have their salts at hand, and permitting squeamish readers to pass over a page if it so please them. Here are a score of Abyssinian gentlemen squatted, sword in hand, on cut grass round a low table. It is perhaps unnecessary to mention that the tablecloth has been forgotten, and that napkins are absent, their place being supplied by cakes of bread, on which the guests wipe their fingers after dipping them in the dish or smearing them with the blood of the raw meat. The cooked dishes are first brought in and their contents distributed by waiters, who cut the meat or tear it with their fingers into pieces of a convenient size. They also take a piece of bread from before each person, sop it in the sauce, and return it to him. “The guests take their bread and sauce and mix them together into a sort of paste, of which they make balls, long and rounded like small black puddings (black enough, we doubt not); these they consider it polite to poke into their neighbours’ mouths; so that, if you happen to be a distinguished character, or a stranger to whom they wish to pay attention, which was often my case, you are in a very disagreeable position; for your two neighbours, one on each side, cram into your mouth these large and peppery proofs of their esteem so quickly, one after the other, that, long before you can chew and swallow the one, you are obliged to make room for the next.” Surely these can hardly be included amongst the “happy moments” Mr Parkyns so pathetically regrets, when recording, towards the close of his work, his tearful parting from his Adoua friends—the first time, he says, since his arrival in the country, that he felt the want of a pocket-handkerchief. Let us, however, proceed with our repast, after a glance at the accompanying plate of the “Dinner Party,” where a favoured guest, with distended jaws, is undergoing the cramming process. This first course, of cooked dishes, is usually mutton; whilst it is being gobbled up, a cow is killed and flayed outside, and as soon as the first course is removed, in comes the raw meat—thebroundo, as it is called—brought in by servants in quivering lumps.

“There is usually a piece of meat to every five or six persons, among whom arises some show of ceremony as to which of them shall first help himself; this being at length decided, the person chosen takes hold of the meat with his left hand, and with his sword or knife cuts a strip a foot or fifteen inches long from the part which appears the nicest and tenderest. The others then help themselves in like manner. If I should fail in describing properly the scene which now follows, I must request the aid of the reader’s imagination. Let him picture to himself thirty or forty Abyssinians, stripped to their waists, squatting round the low tables, each with his sword or knife or ‘shotel’ in his hand, some eating, some helping themselves, some waiting their turn, but all bearing in their features the expression of that fierce gluttony which one attributes more to the lion or leopard than to the race of Adam. The imagination may be much assisted by the idea of the lumps of raw pink-and-blue flesh they are gloating over.”

Some still more full-flavoured details follow, which we abstain from extracting, thinking we can fill up the space remaining to us better than by their transcription, and referring those curious in such matters to chapter xxvii., “Manners and Customs,” where they will see how the pepperballs already spoken of are got rid of by those into whose mouths they are thrust, how boys lie under the table and act as scavengers, and how Mr Parkyns expresses his belief that raw meat, eaten whilst yet warm, would be preferred to cooked meat by any man who from childhood had been accustomed to it. In the chapter headed “Religion, &c.,” which “&c.” comprises a variety of strange things, we are told of “a small entertainment” he gave to a select party of friends on the occasion of the great festival of Mascal or the Cross, a season celebrated, like Christmas in England, by hospitality and good cheer. He sent out his cards for an early hour, knowing that his guests would have several other feeds to attend in the course of the day. But when he had done this, his conscience smote him, for he reflected that, with half a dozen other breakfasts and dinners in view, his friends would but take the sharp edge off their appetites in his wigwam, and husband their masticatory and digestive powers for the subsequent banquets. “My rather savage feelings of hospitality,” he says, “were piqued at the idea of their leaving me without being well filled. But truly I was agreeably disappointed; for a fine fat cow, two large sheep, and many gallons of mead, with a proportionate quantity of bread, disappeared like smoke before the twelve or fourteen guests, leaving only a few pickings for the servants.” Mr Parkyns met several of these hungry gentlemen at other dinners in the course of the same day, and was utterly confounded to observe that most of them played as good a knife and fork (we mean sabre and fingers) at every ensuing repast as they had done at his. The capacity of an Abyssinian stomach is evidently incalculable.

The 19th and 37th chapters of Mr Parkyns’ work are amongst those that please us best. In the earlier of the two he is on his way from Axum to Addàro, across a vast open plain, embellished with a great variety of flowers; amongst them a kind of scarlet aloe, met with in most parts of Tigrè, and flowering at all seasons, and countless mimosas, pink, yellow, and white, some of them so fragrant as to scent the whole neighbourhood, adding their perfume to that of a profusion of jessamine. “There is also a beautiful parasitical creeper, growing, like the mistletoe, from the bark of other trees. It has a bright dark-green fleshy leaf, with brilliant scarlet flowers.” But Mr Parkyns is not much of a botanist; zoology, and especially ornithology, are his favourite pursuits, and, a capital shot, he bagged as many specimens as he chose. “Rifle-shooting,” he modestly says, “was about the only thing in the world I could do well.” Thewasis to be deplored. It is thus accounted for. Near Addàro, a hunter, either accidentally or mischievously, set fire to the jungle. Mr Parkyns was then staying in a hamlet, situated on a small hill. It consisted but of three compounds, one of which he and his servants occupied; another was inhabited by a farmer named Aito Hablo, with his wife and family; and in the third dwelt a cast-off wife and children of the same Aito. Divorces are not difficult to obtain in that country. One morning, all hands were roused by the crackling of flames close at hand. The hillock was surrounded by fire, gradually creeping up the slope. The huts were roofed with sticks and straw, and the ground was covered with long dry grass. There was no time to lose. Tearing down green boughs from the trees, the men, whilst the women and children lit counterfires upon the plan usually adopted in such cases, “made rushes at the flames, whenever a lull of the wind allowed them to approach them, and, by beating them with the boughs, in some measure impeded their progress till the space was cleared and the huts were out of danger. I and one of my servants happened to rush at the fire at an unlucky moment; for a breeze rising drove the flames towards us just as we got near them, and we were badly scorched.” Besides other injuries, the optic nerve of Mr Parkyns’ right eye was damaged, and this spoiled his rifle-shooting. “Formerly,” he says, “I managed occasionally to shoot from my left shoulder—a habit which I found useful in stalking, as in some positions you must necessarily expose yourself before you can bring your right shoulder forward. Now that I am obliged to trust to my left alone, I find it a very poor substitute for the right.” Even after this unlucky accident, however, we find Mr Parkyns very dexterously picking off bird and beast, to supply his table or enrich his collection. He tells some capital sporting anecdotes, and others, equally good, of his queer pets, and of his experience amongst the monkeys. About half-way across the mimosa-scented plain, he came to a well-wooded ravine, the trees in which swarmed with the “tota” or “waag,” a beautiful little greenish-grey monkey, with black face and white whiskers, which allows men to approach very near to it. But the cleverest of this class of animals met with in Abyssinia is the Cynocephalus, or Dog-faced Baboon, a formidable animal, of extraordinary sagacity, to which it is really difficult to refuse the possession of reasoning powers. Mr Parkyns sketches these creatures on a foray. “Arrived at the corn-fields, the scouts took their position on the eminences all around, whilst the remainder of the tribe collect provisions with the utmost expedition, filling their cheek-pouches as full as they can hold, and then tucking the heads of corn under their armpits. Now, unless there be a partition of the collected spoil, how do the scouts feed? for I have watched them several times, and never observed them to quit for a moment their post of duty till it was time for the tribe to return, or till some indication of danger induced them to take to flight.” Outlying one night on the frontier, Mr Parkyns was roused by most awful noises, and started up in alarm, thinking the Barea were upon him. It was but the baboons. A leopard had got amongst them. They habitually dwell in lofty clefts of the rock, whither few animals can follow them; but the leopard is a good climber, and sometimes attacks them. The Abyssinians say that he seldom ventures to attack a full-grown ape—and, judging from the formidable canine teeth displayed in the skull sketched by Mr Parkyns, the leopard is in the right. Driven to stand at bay, these baboons are dangerous opponents, but they have not sufficient courage to act on the offensive. “Were their combativeness proportioned to their physical powers, coming as they do in bodies of two or three hundred, it would be impossible for the natives to go out of the village except in parties, and armed; and, instead of little boys, regiments of armed men would be required to guard the corn-fields. I have, however, frequently seen them turn on dogs, and have heard of their attacking women whom they have accidentally met alone in the roads or woods. On one occasion I was told of a woman who was so grievously maltreated by them, that, although she was succoured by the opportune arrival of some passers-by, she died a few days after, from the fright and ill-treatment she had endured.” We are reminded of Sealsfield’s striking Mexican sketch of thezambos. Mr Parkyns had a female dog-face as a pet. She was young when he got her; and, from the first, her affection for him was ludicrously annoying. As she grew older she was less dependent, and cared less about being left alone. The master of a German brig who went up the country for a cargo of animals, gave Mr Parkyns a copy of “Peter Simple.” Besides the Bible and the “Nautical Almanack,” this, he says, was the first English book he had seen for two years, and he sat down greedily to devour it. “‘Lemdy’ was as usual seated beside me, at times looking quietly at me, occasionally catching a fly, or jumping on my shoulder, endeavouring to pick out the blue marks tattooed there.” The group is suggestive for a sculptor; a thousand pities no Abyssinian Canova was at hand to model it. Mr Parkyns went to light his pipe, imprudently leaving the book and the monkey together. On his return he found the latter seated in his place, and gravely turning over the leaves of Marryat’s novel; but, not understanding English, she turned them too quickly, and had torn out half the volume. “During my momentary absences she would take up my pipe and hold it to her mouth till I came back, when she would restore it with the utmost politeness.” At Khartoum, some time after the termination of his Abyssinian wanderings, Mr Parkyns became very intimate with three large monkeys of this intelligent species, and with their showman—“so much so, that I travelled with them for some days, acting as his assistant, my duty being to keep the ring, which I did by gracefully swinging round me two wooden balls covered with red cloth, and fastened, one at each end, to a rope similarly ornamented—and occasionally to assist the monkeys in collecting coppers. I passed a very agreeable time with him, and he told me many anecdotes of monkeys, as well as the usual tales of ghouls, fire-worshippers, &c., for which all Egyptians, especially of his erratic habits, are celebrated.” If this be not a joke—and there is no reason to take it for one, since Mr Parkyns, who is a sort of African Gil Blas (only more scrupulous in certain respects than his Spanish prototype), was evidently, at that time of his life, eccentric and adventurous enough to adopt on the instant any wild freak that entered his head—we hope to have a more detailed account of his association with the showman when he favours us with the narrative of his post-Abyssinian travels, not forgetting the anecdotes of monkeys (he tells two or three very good ones), and the traditions of ghouls and fire-worshippers. We are sure that he must there have materials for at least one long chapter; and we feel particular curiosity about the traditions, because the supernatural seems to partake, in tropical Africa, of the strange, fantastical, exaggerated character of the animal and vegetable productions of the country. Extraordinary stories are there current of tribes of monsters, semi-human, dwelling in the unexplored parts of the country—such as the Beni-Kelb or Dog-men (mentioned by Werne), “whose males are dogs, and females beautiful women; and the Beni-Temsah (sons of the crocodile), who have human bodies, but heads like those of their ancestor’s family. I have heard of the former of these nations in almost every country I have visited in Africa, from Egypt to the White Nile, including Kordofan and Abyssinia, and even in Arabia, whither their fame has been carried, doubtless, by pilgrims. They are, by most, believed to exist near the Fertit country (south of Darfour), where there are copper-mines, and the people of which file their teeth to points, saw-fashion.... There is no tribe in this part of Africa, indeed scarcely an individual, but believes in the existence of a race of men with tails. For my own part, I have heard so much of them that I can scarcely help fancying there must be some foundation for such very general belief.” Great diversity of opinion exists as to the whereabouts of these tail-bearers, some placing them to the north, others to the south of Bàza, and others in the centre of Africa—convenient, because unexplored. A black Fàky or priest, a speculative genius, whose acquaintance Mr Parkyns made in Abyssinia, gave him some information about his future route across Africa, and warned him against certain cannibal tribes south of Darfour, by whom white meat, being a rarity, is much esteemed, as having a fat delicate look. “He told me that a brown man, a Mahommedan priest, who went there from his country, in the hope of converting the people to Islamism, was—though protected from actual danger by his sanctity—a very tempting object among them, so much so, that whenever he went out the little children came about him, poking him with their fingers in the ribs, feeling his arms and legs, and muttering to one another, ‘Wa-wa, wa-wa!’ (meat, meat), with their mouths watering, and their features expressive of the greatest possible inclination to taste him.” We will back Mr Parkyns against the field for the humorous dressing-up of extravagant stories of this kind, and for an occasional dash of dry comical exaggeration, too obvious to mislead. His choice of pet animals was rather of the strangest. For some time he kept a “tokla” (Canis venaticus), which was as nearly tame as its wild vicious nature admitted.

“In appearance Tokla was more curious than beautiful. He had a little lean body, which no feeding could fatten, covered with a darkish brindly-spotted coat not unlike a hyena’s, and supported by legs as unlike those of any other animal as possible, being in colour white, with dark leopard spots, the hind-legs remarkably long, and so doubled under him that when walking, or rather prowling about, it was doubtful if he touched the ground oftenest with his feet orelbows.... To account for his perpetual thinness, it only requires to state his mode of feeding. He would take a huge piece of meat or offal, and put it into his stomach at once, seemingly entire, for he never appeared aware that his wonderfully muscular jaws and double row of teeth were at all available for mastication. Having thus bolted his dinner, his belly became distended till it nearly touched the ground; then he would go and lie down for twenty-four hours or more, according to the quantity he had eaten; after which he would return to be fed, as empty and starved-looking as ever.”

A useful, profitable, and agreeable inmate must the said Tokla have been. Mr Parkyns’ regard for him seems to have arisen from a sort of sympathetic feeling for the unflinching pluck and endurance displayed on various occasions by the ill-conditioned little brute. A friend of his, knowing his partiality to pet animals, made him a present of a young jackal, which he had knocked over with a stick, when it was labouring under the effects of a surfeit of locusts. Jackal was hospitably received, and a bed of cotton wool made up for him.

“Rising early one morning, I found that he and Tokla had entered into an alliance most offensive to the fowls, one of whom they had caught, and were dragging about the yard—the one holding by a foot, the other by a wing. The moment I appeared, Cobero (the jackal) let go the fowl and limped back to his corner. Tokla, more determined, I had to beat off, which I did with great difficulty, and not until the poor fowl was so lacerated that I was constrained to kill it. Excited by its death-struggles, he again laid hold; so I held up the fowl with him dangling to its wing until I was tired, and then swung him round and round, over and over, in hopes of his jaws tiring; but in this I was disappointed, for he held on till the wing breaking off threw him heavily on his back to a distance of several yards. Even in his fall he was great, for he neither uttered a sound of pain nor loosened his hold, but, getting up, stalked away quite proudly with the wing in his mouth. I was so much pleased with him that I gave him the body and all. In this, perhaps, I acted wrong, for we afterwards found that if we didn’t kill all the poultry he would, and so I gave up ever keeping any more. Poor little Tokla! I grew very fond of him, for, though rough and ugly, he had such pretty winning ways—he seemed always hungry, and would often bite people’s legs, occasionally my own, not at all from vice, but sheer appetite.”

Upon the whole, life in Abyssinia bears much resemblance to life in a menagerie, so familiar and intrusive are the wild beasts of the field. Hyenas prowl about the villages, and enter houses in quest of a supper. They are far from dainty in their diet, and will eat leathern bags and wearing apparel. “It once occurred to me,” says Mr Parkyns, “as it has often to people I have known, to be awakened by one of them endeavouring to steal my leathern bed from under me.” They are too cowardly to attack anything capable of defence, but occasionally they take a bite out of a sleeper and run away—first scratching him with their paw (so the Abyssinians assert) to be sure that he sleeps soundly, and then snatching their mouthful. As for lions, they frequently prowled around Mr Parkyns’ bivouacs, but were not aggressive, and it was not even necessary to light fires to keep them off. The buffalo-hunters of Rohabaita used, upon the contrary, to light their camp-fires in holes, and conceal their glare with branches of trees, that the blaze might neither scare the buffalo nor bring down the Barea.

“I never killed a lion during all my stay in Africa,” says Mr Parkyns, with meritorious candour—seeing that he might, without fear of contradiction, have set down to his own rifle any number of the kings of the forest. “I perhaps should have done so, had I known what a fuss is made about it at home; but in Abyssinia it is not an easy thing to accomplish.... At night I have often watched for them, but generally without success; and when they did come, it was next to impossible to shoot them. Besides, it is an awkward thing for a man, armed only with a single rifle of light calibre, to take a flying shot at a lion in the dark, especially when he has no one to back him on whose courage or shooting he can rely. You hear a lion roar in the distance; presently a little nearer; then you start up at hearing a short bark close by; and if there be a fire or moonlight, perhaps you may see a light-coloured object gliding quickly past from one bush to another. Before you are sure whether or no you saw anything, it is gone. You sit watching for a moment, rifle in hand, expecting him to appear again, when (how he got there you know not) his roar is heard at a considerable distance off in an opposite direction; and thus you go on for an hour or two, when, getting sleepy, you politely request him to take himself off to a certain warm place, and, returning your rifle between your legs, roll over and go to sleep.”

Long habit and strong reliance on the mansuetude of the Abyssinian lions must, we should think, be indispensable to slumber under such circumstances. We can hardly fancy a man’s being lulled to rest by a lion’s roar, and sinking into one of the deep and heavy sleeps common in that country, with the consciousness that when he awakes he may possibly behold a hyena gallopping off with his cheek in its mouth,[2]or find a few scorpions walking over his body, leisurely stinging him. “Scorpions are abundant everywhere in the hot districts; no house but is full of them. I have been stung several times by them, but without any serious consequences, though I have heard of many instances which have ended fatally.” Mr Parkyns, we presume, at once applied the keen blade and actual cautery recommended in his Introduction. What with incidental scars of this kind, his tattoo decorations, and the scars he voluntarily made upon his arm by an Abyssinian process similar to the moxa of European surgery, and which is done by those people partly as ornamental and partly to show their fortitude under pain, his epidermis must have rather a remarkable appearance when exposed by the scantiness of costume in which he informs us that he sometimes travelled—en cueros, namely, when on solitary roads, and with a piece of rag or hide round the loins when in populous districts. We certainly never met with or heard of any traveller who embraced savagery with such earnestness and hearty goodwill as Mr Parkyns; and we sincerely congratulate him upon his escape with trifling detriment from the perils and exposure he not only encountered but enthusiastically sought.

Tigrè is rich in reptiles. Of the extent of this undesirable wealth, a few lines, culled here and there from the chapter on Natural History, will give a vivid idea. “The crocodile is plentiful in every brook or hole where there is water enough to conceal him.” A poor German, who attached himself for a time to Mr Parkyns, and tended him carefully when he was laid up with a terrible attack of ophthalmia, imprudently walked into a river to cool himself, and suddenly disappeared, either sucked in by a whirlpool or carried off by a crocodile—the latter, Mr Parkyns thought, most probably the case; notwithstanding which, we come, a few pages afterwards, to a plate of the bold traveller crossing the same rapid and dangerous stream, aided by half a dozen swimming blacks, and apparently heedless of the fact that crocodiles, like the cannibals south of Darfour, show a decided preference for white meat. “There are many snakes, centipedes, and large venomous spiders, of the tarantula kind, in the hot low districts. There is a great variety in the smaller sort of snakes: the cerastes or horned viper, asp, a species of cobra, the puff adder, and many others of all sizes and colours, from a pale pink to the brightest emerald green, are met with in Abyssinia and the adjacent countries. I was told of a horned serpent that was killed some years ago, which appears to have been a monstrosity, either in reality or in the imagination of my informants. They describe it as about seven feet long, nearly two feet in circumference, with scarcely any diminution towards the tail, and wearing a pair of horns three inches in length. It is commonly reported that dragons, or rather flying lizards of very venomous nature, are to be met with in Walkait.” A pleasant country for pic-nics in the woods. Going one day to shoot at a mark in a long narrow gully close to Rohabaita, where the village wells were, Mr Parkyns had just paced off the distance, and was building a rough target of stones, when his servant started back, and pulled him with him, calling out, “Temen, temen!” (snake). There was a rustling in the jungle that rose abruptly on either side of the watercourse, which was only a few feet wide. Not knowing whattemenmeant, but supposing it was some wild animal, Mr Parkyns called loudly to his second attendant to bring the gun. “All this passed in a moment’s time; and although only one hundred and fifty yards off, long before the gun arrived I had seen two magnificent boa-constrictors, one about ten yards from the other, quietly leave their places, without attempting to molest us, and ascend the hill, till they were lost in jungle, whither I never cared to pursue them. The first thing I saw after the rustle was a head, which appeared for a moment above the canes, then a body, nearly as thick as my thigh, and then they disappeared, the movement of the canes alone marking the direction they had taken.” What Mr Parkyns says he himself saw we duly credit, whilst fully sharing his intimated incredulity with respect to the winged dragons, and the apocryphal horned monster. Before believing in them, we should like to see them—not, by any means, roaming at large in the state of vigour promoted by their own burning climate, but properly stuffed, or carefully wrapped in flannel and securely caged, in the gardens of the Zoological Society.

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