Although it may with perfect truth be said that no chapter of Mr Parkyns’ book is devoid of strong interest of one kind or other, all are not equally attractive; and we have preferred dwelling at some length upon the section of natural history to extracting any of the horrible stories of Abyssinian cruelty which he relates under the head of “Anecdotes of Character.” He himself seems to doubt whether they might not have been as well omitted, but perhaps he was right in deciding to give them, in order to supply data for a fair estimate of the national character of that singular people, which he might otherwise have been suspected of placing in too favourable a light. Persons to whom narratives of murder, torture, barbarous mutilation, and savage cruelty are odious and intolerable, have only to treat the pages 187 to 222 of the second volume as the monkey treated those of “Peter Simple”—turn without reading them, although we warn them that by so doing they will miss some very characteristic and curious matter. Portions of the chapter devoted to “Physical Constitution, Diseases, &c.,” may be trying to delicate stomachs, but for such Mr Parkyns has not written—as may be judged from one or two extracts already given. Amongst the traits of character, &c., we find some remarkable anecdotes of Arab swordsmanship. An Abyssinian having treacherously murdered one of the Arab allies of the Tigrè chiefs (merely for the sake of gratifying the exorbitant vanity inherent in all those people, by displaying the barbarous trophies taken from his victim), the murdered man’s friends claimed the assassin’s blood.
“The crime being proved against him, Oubi gave him over to their tender mercies. His punishment was most summary. Before they had left the presence of the prince, one of the relations of the deceased, drawing his heavy two-edged broadsword, cut the culprit through with one blow; and, turning to Oubi, said, in Arabic: ‘May God lengthen your life, oh my master!’—just as he would have done had he received a present from his hands; and then, picking up a wisp of grass from the floor, walked away, wiping his blade with as muchsangfroidas if nothing had occurred. Oubi is said to have expressed much admiration at the manly off-hand way in which this was done, as well as at the wonderful display of swordsmanship. I know, from very good authority, that the facts of the Arab being murdered, and the subsequent execution of the criminal, are true, though I was not present when it occurred. I do not dispute the fact; I do not wish any of my readers, who think such a feat impossible, to believe it in the present instance. I have known for certain of the same feat being performed by Turks with their crooked sabres, but never by an Arab with his straight sword.”
Mr Parkyns subjoins a note relating to the campaign in Taka in which Werne shared.[3]Some of the prisoners then made were, as recorded by Werne, treated with great barbarity. We do not remember his mentioning the exact circumstances now recorded; but he separated from the Egyptian army before its return to Khartoum, in order to join the expedition up the White Nile. Certain chiefs, Mr Parkyns tells us, being marched off to be made examples of on the marketplace of Khartoum, paused on the road and refused to proceed. “Suliman Cushif, who commanded the escort, having orders that all such should be put to death on the spot, is said to have practised his swordsmanship on them by cutting them through at the waist as they stood. My friend, Moussa Bey, in the same expedition, unintentionally cut a horse’s head clean off.... Seeing one of his men turn his horse’s head and make for the jungle, he determined to check so dangerous an example by summary means, and so gave chase to the fugitive. Being better mounted, he soon came up with him; but the Arab, not liking his appearance as he stood up in his stirrups with his nasty little crooked olive-brown blade, ready for a back-stroke, threw his horse suddenly back on his haunches, and dropped off; the horse’s head went up just in time to receive the blow aimed at his master”—and dropped off too, it would appear. Mr Parkyns knows, he says, plenty more such anecdotes—and indeed such anecdotes are plentiful enough in other countries than Africa—but nothing is more difficult than to sift the inventions from the verities. Haydon the artist, who seems to have been partial to such tales, and ready enough to credit them, relates some astounding exploits collected from his model life-guardsmen—amongst others a story of a cut received by a French dragoon at Waterloo, which went through helmet and head, so that the severed portion dropped on the shoulder like a slice of apple. We have not the volume at hand to refer to, but this is the substance of the incident, told nearly in the same words. Such cuts as that—like the flying dragons of Abyssinia—we must see before believing in them. At the same time, a swordsman’s power depends so much more upon the mode in which his cuts are delivered than upon mere brute strength—upon skill than upon violence—that it becomes difficult to assign exact limits to the possible effect of a good blade in adroit and practised hands. The cutting through, at the waist, of a slender Oriental, will hardly appear an impossibility to those who have seen the now commonplace feat of severing a leg of mutton at a blow. Moussa Bey’s “nasty little crooked olive-brown blade” must unquestionably have been dexterously wielded to decapitate, at a single blow, his fugitive follower’s charger, allowing even that the latter was the slenderest and most ewe-necked of its race. Oubi’s admiration of the sweeping blow of his Arab auxiliary was not surprising, since his own subjects have difficulty in inflicting a serious wound with their clumsy sickle-shaped falchions, of great length of blade, and with hilts of such awkward and inconvenient construction as to paralyse the play of the swordsman’s arm. These hilts are cut out of solid pieces of rhinoceros horn, at great waste of material, and a handsome one costs as much as £2 sterling. The sword is worn on the right side, that the Abyssinian warrior may not, when he has thrown his lance, have to disturb the position of his shield, and so uncover himself, whilst drawing his weapon across his body. Such, at least, is the explanation Mr Parkyns gives. But the whole military equipment of the Abyssinians is far from formidable. They are tolerably expert in throwing the javelin, but with firearms they are extremely clumsy; and, notwithstanding their large buffalo-hide shields, a European, who has any knowledge of the sword, is more than a match for the best of them.
“It was my original intention” (we revert to Mr Parkyns’ Introduction) “to write solely on the habits of the people, without bringing myself into notice in any part of the story; but from this I was dissuaded by being told that, without a little personal narrative, the book would be unreadable. I have, therefore, divided the subject into two parts—Travel, and Manners and Customs.” Your dissuasive friends, Mr Parkyns, were in the right, and you showed your good sense by taking their advice—informas regards the first volume, infactas regards also the greater part of the second. Personal narrative is evidently your forte; a humorous, rollicking, letter-writing style, the one you have most at your command. The “exuberant animal spirits, not dependent on temporary excitement, but the offspring of abstemious habits, combined with plenty of air and exercise—the feeling which inspires a calf to cock his tail, shake his head, kick and gallop about—which swells a pigmy into a Hercules, and causes a young hippopotamus to think of adopting the ballet as his profession,”—which you declare to be the reason of your addiction to savage life, and which you so enjoyed in Abyssinia, had evidently not abandoned you when dressing up your journal for the press within the civilised precincts of the Nottinghamshire County-hall, whence you date your dedication to Lord Palmerston. Your style, of which you unnecessarily deprecate criticism, is spirited, racy, and abundantly good for the subject. When the mass of your book is so highly interesting, it may seem unkind to mention that a few of your jokes are a little the worse for wear, and remind us too strongly of the departed Miller to add much to the originality of your otherwise extremely original and capital volumes; and if we touch on that point, it is merely in the hope that you will take the hint in a kindly spirit, and profit by it when preparing for the press the “ponderous heap of papers” you inform us you accumulated during four and a half years’ travel in Nubia, Kordofan, and Egypt. Prepare them by all means, at your leisure, and with care, and let us have them in type at the earliest convenience of yourself and publisher. After your present work, we shall expect much from them, and do not fear being disappointed. As to attacking your statements, in the way of impugning your veracity, such temerity would never enter our minds. We will not say that we have not at times been startled, almost staggered, as we read with foot on fender, and much enjoyment, the narrative of your strange experience; but, as you justly observe, stay-at-home critics sometimes get hold of the wrong end of the stick, and sneer at truth whilst swallowing exaggerations. We beg, then, to assure you that, until we ourselves have passed a season in Abyssinia, with butter on our hair, and nothing on our feet—until we have dined upon raw beefsteaks, with fingers for forks, and a curved sabre for a carving-knife—we shall never venture to question the strict correctness and fidelity of any portion of your singular narrative—an assurance you may safely accept as a guarantee of impunity at our hands, even though you should draw a far longer bow than we believe you to have done in the case of the country of which you have so pleasantly written. Of one thing we are convinced, and that is, that few who take upLife in Abyssiniawill lay it down without reading it through, and without exclaiming, when they come to the end, “What an amusing book this is, and what an agreeable savage is Mansfield Parkyns!”