He first told me that he was not a born slave of the Negoos, but had recommended himself to the notice of the monarch, by the dexterous manner in which he had conveyed messages to the Kings of Enarea, and of his own country, Cambat. For the fidelity which had marked his return to servitude, and for his bravery during the rebellion of Matoko he had been rewarded by being made a nuftania, or gunman, and would, were he to marry, have a house bestowed upon him, with as much land as two oxen could plough in the year.
He had lived several years in Gurague, and had crossed the river Gibbee where it passes to the south of Enarea, and he stated positively that it flowed into the Abiah, and so far gratified Ibrahim, who had so described it to me in his geography of Southern Abyssinia. One circumstance favourable for my proper understanding of the true situation of the countries he described as having passed through in his several journeys was, that Karissa had crossed the Hawash at Mulkukuyu, so we had at once a standard of distance that both of us knew, and this aided me materially in correcting the situations of many places with the names and relative positions of which I was already familiar from my conversations with Ibrahim.
Respecting Ankor, Karissa stated it to be a part of Enarea, and not of Zingero. He did not know whether it had ever formed part of the latter country, which I had heard from another authority, a Christian duptera, who told me he had read it in a book belonging to the church of St. Michael, in Ankobar (where the Negoos deposits the greater part of his manuscript volumes), that Anquor, or Ankor, was a province of Zingero. Be that as it may, from Ankobar to Ankor is three times the distance between the former place to the ford over the Hawash, or about 150 miles. Zingero was about the same distance, directly to the south-west, whilst Ankor, or that part of Enarea which borders on the Gibbee, was nearly to the west-south-west. The sources of the Gibbee were not more than eighty miles from Angolahlah, and going on horseback, Karissa said that he could drink of the waters of that river before the evening of the second day. The Gallas of Limmoo he had heard of, but never visited, so that when I mentioned to him the name of Ouare, the Galla informant of M. Jomard, and also Kilho, who is represented as being chief of that country, he could give me no information respecting them. The river Abiah he knew was the same as the Gibbee, and said that it went through the Shankalli country to Sennaar.
Beyond the Abiah I was now told, a nation of white people like ourselves existed, but who were cannibals, and had all their utensils made of iron. That they boiled and eat all intruders into their country. He stated positively that he had himself seen a woman of this people, who had been brought to Enarea, and who had confirmed all the statements he was now making to me. As I believe myself that the Bahr ul Abiad will be found to have its earlier sources in an isolated table land like Abyssinia, but of much greater elevation, I began to suspect that these white people must be the inhabitants of the country surrounding the distant sources of this mysterious river, and that as the Assabi derived its name from flowing through a country of red people, that the White Nile, in like manner had been so designated from the circumstance of its table land being inhabited by a white race, and as a branch of that river is known by the name of Addo, which I consider to be the Arian term for white, this added some confirmation to my ideas. On inquiring, however, what knowledge Karissa had of the Bahr ul Abiad, I found that he was entirely ignorant of such a river, and when I modified the name, by calling it the river of the Tokruree, or blacks, he instantly conceived I was speaking of the Kalli, that is well known to flow to the south and east of Kuffah into the Indian Ocean, and by which caravans of slaves are constantly passing between Zingero and the coast of Zanzibar. There must, in fact, exist in this situation a most available road into the very centre of the continent of Africa, for I have subsequently seen Nubian slaves who had been in the service of Zaid Zaid, Imaum of Zanzibar, that corroborated this statement of Karissa in every particular respecting the transit of slaves across the table land of Abyssinia, from Sennaar to Lamoo on the Indian Ocean, and so to the market of Zanzibar.
I was, however, more interested in the account I received of the white people, and which was as exaggerated a relation, as many of the reports received by some travellers respecting the Doko dwarfs. To retail here all the absurd nonsense that Karissa entertained me with would be sadly misappropriating space, but I could gather from the reports that a singular race of men live in the most jealous seclusion, in a large desert-surrounded table land, similar in many respects to that of Abyssinia. That they were civilized was evident, from the fact of their writing being said to be quite different from the Geez, and it is not a nation just emerged from barbarism that would possess a knowledge of such an abstruse art as that of writing. As to the tale of their being cannibals, I recollected that even at the present day the very same report is entertained, and believed by the Negroes around Kordofan of European habits, and that we ourselves are supposed by them to be cannibals. This is, in fact, a charge so easily made, and serves so admirably to heighten the horrible, in a picture of a barbarous people drawn by an imaginative mind, that even among modern travellers we find an inclination to spread such rumours, without any examination as to their correctness, and sometimes, from a hasty conclusion, or an error in interpretation, without any foundation whatever. In this manner, a stigma of cannibalism has been attached to the Dankalli, but which only shows how careful travellers ought to be before they promulgate such strange and absurd stories.[11]
Nothing can be positively asserted; but I believe, myself, that we are on the eve of a most interesting ethnological and geographical discovery, that will at once afford a solution to all the strange and improbable accounts which have reached us respecting the inhabitants of Central Africa. What we hear of dwarfs, cannibals, and communities of monkeys, may, perhaps, prove to be merely a muddied stream of information, conveyed to us through the medium of ignorant and barbarous tribes; but which may have a foundation of an unexpected character, in the existence of a nation in this situation; which, almost physically separated from the rest of the world by impassable deserts and unnavigable rivers, has continued in its original integrity that perfect condition of society which, once general, then almost extinguished, evidently preceded the barbarism from which the present transition state has emerged, and which I believe to be gradually progressing to the re-attainment of the previous excellence of the primeval social institutions.
One strange report respecting the inhabitants of intra-tropical Africa, I think I shall be able to show the origin and foundation of, and which is the existence, in a situation to the south of Kuffah, of a nation of dwarfs, called Doko. From the information I have received myself, and from an examination of unpublished Portuguese documents relative to the geography of the eastern coast of Africa, and of the people inland; in the very situation presumed to be the native country of the Doko, I learn that a very different family of man is only to be found—the tall, muscular, and powerful Shankalli negro; and, more than this, the French traveller, M. d’Abbadie, from information received in Abyssinia, has reported that to the south of Enarea and Kuffah, a nation of Shankalli reside, to whom the name Doko was given. It cannot, therefore, I think, be doubted that a people so designated do occupy the country to the south of Abyssinia, and that from among them are taken the greater number of slaves, that arrive at the markets of Enarea and Zingero, where the dealers dispose of them to the slave Kafilahs that are proceeding to Zanzibar, or to northern Abyssinia. Doko perhaps designates the slave country, or, perhaps, signifies as much as our terra incognita, for we find the same word entering into the name of the unknown countries situated to the south of Bornou and the Mandara range, and, therefore, the Dukalata of those portions on the west of Africa may correspond with the equally unknown country of the Doko upon the eastern side.
The accounts, however, lately received of the dwarfs of central Africa, is not new information, but is merely the revival of a very old idea, which in less enlightened times was naturally enough entertained by just and properly constituted minds, who acknowledged the greatness of the natural truths which had been demonstrated to them, by thus not refusing to believe that which with their limited knowledge, they could not consistently deny might be possible. It is this which characterizes the humility of genius, and which is rewarded by the light which must result from the inquiries excited by such expectations. But it becomes a proof of no little mental obtuseness, when the probability of any popular rumour is insisted upon, after the knowledge of facts has so far accumulated, as to enable us to demonstrate its absurdity. No reasonable being can positively deny the existence of a nation of very short statured men in Africa, but that he must believe because there may be such a people, that the animals described as the Doko dwarfs, are them, is quite out of the question. The real dwarfs may, ultimately, prove to be the Gonga people, and most probably they are. I have some singular evidence upon this very subject, which I only wish somewhat farther to confirm, to lay before the public; but shall at present confine myself to denying, that the Doko, of modern Abyssinian fable, represent the dwarfs alluded to by the naturalists of antiquity; or, that, in fact, they are men at all.
Ludolph and d’Lisle are, I believe, still the great authorities upon the geography of interior Africa; their maps were evidently constructed from well compared and long considered information; and conjectural geographers of the present day, are too glad, when their theories accord in any way with the delineation of these countries as represented by those authors. On examination of their maps it will be perceived, that both received such apparently well-authenticated accounts, of a nation of dwarfs dwelling to the South of Abyssinia, that they had been obliged to recognise their existence, and, of course, to find them a locality.
Ludolph, whose knowledge of the Geez and Amharic probably prevented him from considering the accounts of so great an importance as did the French geographer, only notices, by a small note appended to the name on the map, that the King of Zingero was stated to be a monkey. In the body of his work, however, he represents that he received considerable information respecting a nation of dwarfs living in this situation, and who accord in so many respects with the Doko of the present day, that there cannot be any reasonable doubt, but that both have resulted from similar popular rumours that have continued to us, from the time of Ludolph. A plate in his very interesting “History of Ethiopia,” actually gives the presumed character of these so-called dwarfs, and who are represented in several situations characteristic of their habits, among which appears as most prominent that of being employed in devouring ants, which we are told also forms the principal food of the Doko. Ludolph, however, has so much respect for human nature as not to picture these dwarfs as men, but in every respect has delineated them as monkeys; and when it is understood that the word Zingero in Amharic signifies baboon, as well as the name of a large kingdom in the south of Shoa, the connexion of words and the confusion of ideas will be allowed to be quite natural, when we consider the ignorance of the Abyssinian informants, and the imperfect knowledge of their language, more especially of its synonymes, by even the most learned of the travellers from whom had been received any account of that country. It was this which misled Ludolph, although from the cautious note upon the map respecting the King of Zingero being stated to be a monkey, it appears that he had certain doubts, but his fidelity as a closet geographer and historian did not allow him to throw aside the information, merely because his own opinion did not accord with that which he was told to be the fact.