Nothing had hitherto appeared to criminate the young prince. But it was soon told the king, that, after the death of the queen, her son Bæda Mariam had taken frankincense and wax-tapers from the churches, which he employed, at stated times, in the observation of the usual solemnities over his mother’s grave. The king, having called his son before him, began to question him about what he had heard; while the prince, without hesitation, gave him a full account of every circumstance, glorying in what, he said, was his duty, and denying that he was accountable to any man on earth for the marks of affection which he shewed to his mother.
The king, considering his son’s justification as a reproach made to himself for cruelty, ordered the prince, and, with him, his principal friend Meherata Christos, to be loaded with irons, and banished to the top of a mountain; and it is hard to say where this punishment would have ended, had not the monks of Debra Kosso and Debra Libanos, and all those of the desert, (who thought themselves in some measure accomplices with his mother), by exhortations, pretended prophecies, dreams and visions, convinced the king, that Providence had decreed unalterably, that none but his son, Bæda Mariam, should succeed him. To this ordinance the old king bowed, as it gave him a prospect of the long continuance of his family on the throne of Abyssinia.
Zara Jacob was no sooner dead, than his son, Bæda Mariam, who succeeded him, began to apply himself seriously to the affairs of government. From the reign of Judith, (in the tenth century), when so many of the princes of the royal family were massacred, the custom of sending the royal children to confinement on the top of a mountain had been discontinued. These children all lived at home with their respective fathers and mothers, like private persons; and the kings seemed to connive at abolishing their former practice, for no mountain had been yet chosen as a substitute to the unfortunate Damo. The disagreement between Zara Jacob and his queen, with the cause of it, and the prince’s frankness and resolution, seemed to point out the necessity of reviving the salutary severity of the ancient laws. Bæda Mariam gave orders, therefore, to arrest all his brethren, and send them prisoners for life to the high mountain of Geshen, on the confines of Amhara and Begemder, which ever after continued the state-prison for the royal children, till a slaughter, like to that made upon mount Damo, was the occasion, as we shall see, of deserting Geshen likewise.
The king applied himself next to measures for the better government of his country. He ordered a general pardon to be proclaimed to all who, by the severity of the late reign, lay under sentence of death, banishment, or any other punishment; and, convoking the states of the kingdom, he met them with a chearfulness and openness which inspired confidence into every rank, while, at the same time, he filled all the places he found vacant, or that he thought proper to change, with men of the greatest integrity. He then reviewed the whole cavalry that were in his service, which he distributed into bodies, and stationed them in places where they could be readiest called, to execute those designs he had then in contemplation.
The next year the king went to Debra Libanos in Shoa. It was, however, observed, that his preparations were not such as were usual in these short journies, nor such as were made in peaceable times. On the contrary, orders were sent to the borders of Tigré to receive the royal army, which was soon to arrive in those parts. The rumour of this was quickly spread abroad, and affected all the neighbouring states, according to their several interests. Mahomet king of Adel was the first that took the alarm. Tho’ a kind of peace had subsisted for several years between Adel and Abyssinia, yet inroads had been made from each country into the other; and these might have served them as pretexts for war, had that been the inclination of the times. Yet, as both countries happened to be disposed for peace, these outrages passed unnoticed.
But, to prevent surprise upon this last movement of the troops, the king of Adel thought he had a right to be informed of Bæda Mariam’s intentions, and, with this view, he sent some of the principal people of his country as ambassadors, under pretext of congratulating the king upon his accession to the throne. They met the king in Shoa, and had carried with them very considerable presents. They were received in a very distinguished manner; and the presents which Bæda Mariam returned to the king of Adel were nothing inferior to those he accepted. After having entertained the ambassadors several days with feasting and diversions, he confirmed a peace under the same duties upon trade that had formerly subsisted.
The king of Dancali also, old, infirm, yet constant in his attachment to the Abyssinians, was not without his inquietudes, though he was not afraid they intended to attack his poor territory with an army. He dreaded lest the army in its march should drink up that little quantity of water which remained to him in summer, and, without which, his kingdom would become uninhabited. It is a low, sandy district, lying on the Red Sea, just where the coast, after bearing a little to the east of north from Suez to Dancali, makes an elbow, and stretches nearly east, as far as the Straits of Babelmandeb. It has the mines of fossile-salt immediately on the north and north-west, a desert part of the province of Dawaro to the south, and the sea on the north. But it has no port, excepting a spacious bay, with tolerable anchorage, called the Bay of Bilur[15], in lat. 13° 3´, and, corruptly in vulgar maps and writings, the Bay of Bayloul.
The kingdom of Dancali is bounded on the east at Azab by part of the kingdom of Adel, and the myrrh country. The king is a Mahometan, as are all his subjects. They are called Taltal, are all black, and only some of them woolly-headed; a circumstance which probably arises from a mixture with the Abyssinians, whose hair is long. There are but two small rivers of fresh water in the whole kingdom; and even these are not visible above ground in the hot season, but are swallowed up in the sand, so as to be dug for when water is wanted. In the rainy season, these are swollen by rain falling from the sides of the mountains and from the high lands of Abyssinia, and then only they run with a current into the sea. All the rest of the water in this country is salt, or brackish, and not fit for use, unless in absolute necessity and dry years. Even these sometimes fail, and they are obliged to seek, far off in the rainy frontiers of Abyssinia, water for themselves, and pasture for their miserable goats and sheep.
When the Indian trade flourished, this prince’s revenue arose chiefly from furnishing camels for the transport of merchandise to all parts of Africa. Their commerce is now confined to the carrying bricks of solid, or fossile salt, dug from pits in their own country, which, in Abyssinia, pass instead of silver currency; these they deliver at the nearest market in the high lands at a very moderate profit, after having carried them from the sea-side through the dry and burning deserts of their own country, at the great risk of being murdered by Galla.
The presents sent to Bæda Mariam from Dancali did not make a great figure when compared with those of Adel. They consisted of one horse, a mule, a shield of elephant’s hide, a poisoned lance, two swords, and some dates. Poor as these presents were, they were much more respected than those of Adel, because they came from a loyal heart; while the others were from a nation distinguished every year by some premeditated action of treachery and bloodshed. The king, having first sent for the Abuna, Imaranha Christos, and called the ambassadors of Dancali and Adel into his presence, declared to them, that neither of these states was to be the scene of war, but that he was instantly to march against the Dobas[16], whose constant inroads into his country, and repeated cruelties, he was resolved no longer to suffer. He required the ambassadors to warn their masters to keep a strict neutrality, otherwise they would be infallibly involved in the same calamities with that nation.