As none of the Tajourah people had come with them, I sent for an Islam sheik, Hadjji Abdullah, who lived in the next house, to come and interpret between us. This man, by-the-by, came from Berberah, on the banks of the Nile, in Upper Egypt, yet he made himself perfectly understood in the Affah language; and I expect, therefore, that some ethnological connexion will be found to exist between the people of Dongola and the Dankalli tribes, although I understand that this has been denied by some modern travellers, on the ground, singularly enough, of the total distinctness between their two languages.
I was not much surprised to learn that the cause of complaint among the Hy Soumaulee was, that Ohmed Mahomed, who had received from the British Embassy one hundred and twenty dollars, to pay them their wages, at the rate of four dollars each man, had thought proper to give them no more than one each, and a small coarse cotton cloth not the value of half a dollar. Of course the Hy Soumaulee knew nothing of the British Embassy; it was to me they looked for the payment of their stipulated wages, and which, for the latter part of our journey, I had always stated would be five dollars to each man. I recollected perfectly that when they were first engaged I refused to sanction more than four dollars being given, on the plea that, perhaps, the expense I was incurring would be objected to as unnecessary, considering that Mr. Cruttenden had paid in Tajourah all the expenses that we were told would be necessary upon the road. Ohmed Mahomed, however, replied, that in case the extra dollar should be refused, Ebin Izaak and himself would each give half a dollar, and so make up the five dollars per man, and I had therefore always told the Hy Soumaulee they would receive five dollars each. When I discovered how they had been cheated by Ohmed Mahomed, who had actually told them that he had not received a dollar from the Embassy, but that the dollar he had given to each was that one promised by himself and Ebin Izaak, I was only surprised they did not sacrifice me at once to their resentment. I soon disabused them of the deceit that had been practised upon them, and promised that, as the British Mission would be in Ankobar in the course of two days, I would go up and see the Ambassador on purpose that the matter should be examined into.
My old escort then went away very peaceably; but so strict are the orders of the Negoos to prevent any strangers, more especially those coming from Adal, to enter the kingdom without special permission, that the arrival of the Hy Soumaulee in Aliu Amba created quite an alarm, lest, on the one hand, they should commit violence, although they were unarmed, except with their heavy knives; or, on the other, that the displeasure of the Negoos should be excited against the townspeople for having permitted them to come into Aliu Amba at all.
It was sometime before I became accustomed to the new circumstances by which I was surrounded. My house was merely a round shed, having a diameter of about twelve feet, the wall of dry sticks, five feet high, being surmounted by the usual conical roof of thatch. Opposite to the entrance was a slight deviation from the exact periphery of a circle, occasioned by the recess before mentioned, in which was contained my wide couch. Here the wall bulged out something like a bow window in form, and was covered by a little elongation of the roof in that situation. Nearly in the centre of the apartment was a dilapidated raised ring of clay and pebbles, some five or six inches high, and about three feet in diameter. This formed the hearth, within which two large stones, and the broken-off neck of an old jar, formed a kind of tripod, that occasionally supported a smoke-blacked earthenware “macero,” or cooking pot, in which was being boiled either some sort of grain or other for the family, or else the meat for mine and Walderheros’ supper.
On one side, ranged along the wall, stood several large jars, two of which, covered by gourd shell drinking cups, contained water, whilst others, superannuated by sundry cracks, were partly filled with teff, or wheat. The former is the minute seed of a kind of grass, of which is made the bread of the temperate countries of Abyssinia, as it flourishes best in situations between the wheat and barley fields cultivated upon the high table land of Shoa, and the jowarree plantations in the very low countries on a level with the Hawash.
The only piece of furniture, strictly speaking, in the house, except my bed, was a chair of the most primitive construction, its thong-woven bottom being scarcely six inches from the ground. It would have been altogether a good model for some rustic seat builder about to fit up the interior of a garden alcove. My two boxes assisted, however, in producing a showy effect, one of them being a Chinese trunk, covered with bright red leather, the other a shiny tin medicine chest, and to make them useful as well as ornamental, they were generally converted into seats on the occasion of any visitors of rank calling upon me.
Besides these things, old red gowns of my landlady, and some tattered grass-made baskets and sieves used in dressing and cleaning grain, were suspended from the projecting ends of the stick wall, and made the interior of the house look rather untidy.
Walderheros was one of the few Abyssinians I have met who appeared to delight in cleanliness, and a pretty dust he was continually raising, by sweeping with a large handful of well-leaved boughs the clay floor of our residence. He delighted also in the unholy pleasures of the pipe, a severe rheumatism always affecting him when he was about to indulge; and I often smile when I think of the canting tone and long visage with which he used to apostrophise the inanimate object of his affections, a gourd shell pipe, as he drew it towards him, and excused such a dereliction of duty as a Greek Christian, upon the plea that nothing but the smoke of tobacco could drive out the “saroitsh,” or demons, who, according to Abyssinian belief, affect the frame when suffering from any disease.
According to a tradition of the Greek Church, it appears that the devil paid repeated visits to Noah when he commenced building the ark, for the purpose of ascertaining by what means and of what materials he constructed it. The patriarch, however, kept his own counsel, until the devil called to his aid the herb tobacco, with which, it seems, he made poor Noah drunk, and whilst in that state the enemy of mankind wormed his secret from him. Thus assisted (for it is said Noah became an inveterate smoker), the devil availed himself of the darkness of night to undo all that Noah had put together during the day, and this was the principal cause that the building of the ark extended over so long a period. “Ever since that time,” saith the tradition, “God has laid a heavy curse upon tobacco.”[4] If some of the precepts of the Gospel were observed with equal veneration as is this ridiculous story by Abyssinian Christians, we should not have to regret the low ebb to which our religion has been reduced in this priest-ridden, but I must not say consequently, benighted land.
Walderheros, however, was a business man, and before he sat down to smoke, he was careful to shut out observers of the fact, by fixing in its place the old rotten door of three or four untrimmed trunks of small trees, tied into a kind of flat surface by the tough bark of a species of mimosa tree. This hung by two hinges of thongs to a crooked door-post, and shut against the wall on the opposite side, where its own weight kept the entrance securely closed. When all had been arranged satisfactorily, he would drag the clumsy chair into a position opposite to my couch, and sitting down with his back to the door, place the rude pipe between his feet. Then applying his mouth to the end of its long stem, between each puff he would look up, to tell me in Amharic the name of some object for me to write down, whilst he in return would endeavour to learn their Arabic names, which language for some reason or other, he seemed very anxious to learn. I found afterwards that he thought it was English, and wished to learn something of it, on purpose to understand me when speaking my own language, and thus become the admiration of a circle of his acquaintance burning with curiosity to know what I might be saying. Walderheros was, in fact, the best caricature I ever met of that spirit which prompts empirics to employ unintelligible language to increase the presumption of their extensive learning. If any of his friends were present, I could never get a syllable from him but one or other of about a dozen Arabic words he had picked up. Everything was “ewah” (yes) or “la la” (no), and how happy he was when circumstances admitted of his saying “tahle” (come), or “rah” (go), and the grave satisfaction with which he turned round to interpret to his simple gaping companions the meaning of the conversation they had just been treated with, was most ridiculously absurd. When he met a real Arab it was still better; all impatience to display his vast knowledge of their language, every word he knew of it would be pressed into service, whilst the wondering auditor, who would have understood him well enough in Amharic, with a vacant look would probably turn to me, and say, “Arder rigal muginoon fee!” (That man is a fool!)