Ozoro Esther’s servant (Guebra Mariam) likewise told me, that Michael, as he believed, waited for nothing but some arrangement with Fasil, for that he had no enemy remaining on the east of the Tacazzé; that his intention was to return by the way of Lasta, not willing to risk the many difficult passages in Woggora, a country full of hardy troops, inveterate enemies to the Ras, and where Ayto Tesfos of Samen had occupied all the defiles, and was resolved to dispute every post with him; it was well known, however, that the passes through the mountain of Lasta, were more dangerous and difficult than those of Woggora and Lamalmon; in a word, Guigarr, chief of the clan of Lasta (called Waag) possessed a strong-hold in those mountains, where many an Abyssinian army had perished, and where it was absolutely impossible to proceed but with the consent and connivance of that clan, or tribe; and tho’ this Guigarr had been Michael’s enemy ever since the war of Mariam Barea, peace was now concluded between them, the Ras having set Guigarr’s brother at liberty, who had been some time a prisoner, and was taken in an incursion which the people of Waag had made into Tigré: excepting this pass in the mountains of Lasta, all the ground was even from thence to Tigré; the territory of Gouliou, indeed, through which the army was to march for four days, was very ill-provided with water; it was inhabited by Galla, whom Michael had suffered to settle there, to be as a barrier between Tigré, Lasta, and Begemder; but this clan was perfectly at his command, so all was easy and secure if Guigarr only remained faithful.
After giving time to Guebra Mariam to refresh himself, I took him alone into the tent to hear Ozoro Esther’s message: she had been ailing after my leaving Gondar, had had a slow fever, which very much affected her nerves, and was now alarmed at a symptom which was but the effect of weakness, startling, or involuntary contraction of her legs and arms, or a kind of convulsion, which frequently awakened her out of her sleep. This she thought was a sure forerunner of death; and adjured me, by every claim of friendship that she had upon me, to return ere it would be too late, She, moreover, pledged herself that her nephew, Aylo of Gojam, should immediately carry me to the head of the Nile the moment she was recovered. Upon closer interrogation, I found that, being abandoned as it were entirely to Fasil’s discretion, by the retreat of Gusho and Powussen her friends, and the absence of her husband Ras Michael, she dreaded falling into the hands of Fasil, who, she well knew, was acquainted how active she had been in instigating Michael to avenge the blood of her late husband Mariam Barea, by the effusion of that of every Galla unfortunate enough to fall into his hands. Besides, the part her mother the Iteghé had acted in settling that wretch Socinios upon the throne, gave her the very best-founded apprehensions that Michael’s resentment would have no bounds; and he had declared so by frequent messages, (the last a very brutal one) that he would hang Socinios, and her mother the Iteghé, with their heads downmost, upon the same tree, before the king’s house, the very day that he entered Gondar. It was well known, besides, to his wife Ozoro Esther, and to the whole kingdom, that his performance upon these occasions never fell short of his threatenings. From all this, and a great sensibility of mind, Ozoro Esther, worn out by her late sickness, and by want of sleep, exercise, and nourishment, had fallen into a very dangerous situation, and of a very difficult cure, even though the cause was perfectly known.
I shall not trouble the reader with what passed in my mind at this juncture. I do believe the pursuit I was then engaged in was the only one which I would not have instantly abandoned upon such a summons. Besides the sincere attachment I had myself to her, as one of the most lovely and amiable women in the world; she was the mother of my most intimate friend Ayto Confu, and the wife of Ras Michael, over whom she had every day more and more influence, and I had long suspected that the young king, my constant benefactor, had contracted a decided tenderness for her. To have returned, would have been nothing had the danger or trouble been much greater; but it was obviously impossible another opportunity should offer: the country was now on the point of being plunged into a degree of disorder greater than that which had occasioned the retreat of the king to Tigré. I therefore resolved to run the risk of continuing for a time under the imputation of the foulest and basest of all sins, that of ingratitude to my benefactors; and I am confident, had it been the will of heaven that I had died in that journey, the consideration of my lying with apparent reason under that imputation would have been one of the most bitter reflections of my last moments. Having, therefore, taken my resolution, I acquainted Guebra Mariam that an immediate return was absolutely impossible; but that I should endeavour, with the utmost of my power, to make a speedy one; in the mean time, I sent word to the Greek priest (who was a sort of physician) how he was to proceed in the interim during my absence.
We had now left Maitsha by crossing the river Kelti. I shall only add, to what I have already said, that it is a very fruitful country, but so flat that the water with difficulty runs off after the tropical rains, and this occasions its being for several months unhealthy. Several tribes of Galla, from the south of the Nile, were settled here by Yasous the Great, and his son David, as a defence for the rich countries of the Agows, Damot, Gojam, and Dembea, against the desolations and inroads of the wild Galla their countrymen, from whom they had revolted; they consist of ninety-nine families; and it is a common saying among them, that the devil holds the hundreth part for his own family, as there is nowhere else to be found a family of men equal to any of the ninety-nine. It has been sometimes connected with Gojam, oftener with Damot and the Agows, who were at this time under the government of Fasil.
The houses in Maitsha are of a very singular construction: the first proprietor has a field, which he divides into three or four, as he pleases, (suppose four) by two hedges made of the thorny branches of the acacia-tree. In the corner, or intersection of the two hedges, he begins his low hut, and occupies as much of the angle as he pleases. Three other brothers, perhaps, occupy each of the three other angles; behind these their children place their house, and inclose the end of their father’s by another, which they make generally shorter than the first, because broader. After they have raised as many houses as they please, they surround the whole with a thick and almost impenetrable abbatis, or thorny hedge, and all the family are under one roof, ready to assist each other on the first alarm; for they have nothing to do but every man to look out at his own door, and they are close in a body together, facing every point that danger can possibly come from. They are, however, speedily destroyed by a stronger enemy, as we easily found, for we had only to set the dry hedge, and the canes that grew round it, on fire, which communicated at once to the houses, chiefly consisting of dry straw. Such is their terror of the small-pox, which comes here seldom more frequently than once in fifteen or twenty years; that when one of these houses is tainted with the disease, their neighbours, who know it will infect the whole colony, surround it in the night, and set fire to it, which is consumed in a minute, whilst the unfortunate people belonging to it (who would endeavour to escape) are unmercifully thrust back with lances and forks into the flames by the hands of their own neighbours and relations, without an instance of one ever being suffered to survive. This to us will appear a barbarity scarcely credible: it would be quite otherwise if we saw the situation of the country under that dreadful visitation of the small-pox; the plague has nothing in it so terrible.
The river Kelti has excellent fish, though the Abyssinians care not for food of this kind; the better people eat some species in the time of Lent, but the generality of the common sort are deterred by passages of scripture, and distinctions in the Mosaic law, concerning such animals as are clean and unclean, ill understood; they are, besides, exceedingly lazy, and know nothing of nets; neither have they the ingenuity we see in other savages of making hooks or lines: in all the time I staid, I never saw one Abyssinian fisher engaged in the employment in any river or lake.
At Kelti begins the territory of Aroossi: it is in fact the southmost division of Maitsha, on the west-side of the Nile: it is not inhabited, however, by Galla, but by Abyssinians, a kindred of the Agow. When therefore we passed the river Kelti, we entered into the territory of Aroossi, bounded on the north by that river, as it is on the south by the Assar, the Aroossi running through the midst of that district.
My anxiety to lose no time in this journey had determined me to set out this afternoon. I had for this purpose dispatched Ozoro Esther’s servant, but when we began to strike our tents, we were told neither beast nor man was capable of going farther that day; in a word, the forced march that we had made of 29 miles without rest, and with but little food, had quite jaded our mules; our men, too, who carried the quadrant, declared, that, without a night’s rest, they could proceed no farther; we were then obliged to make a virtue of necessity, and to confess, that, since we could go no farther, we were in the most convenient halting place possible, having plenty of both food and water, and as to protection, we had every reason to be satisfied that we were masters of the country in which we were encamped. It was generally agreed therefore to relax that day. I set aside an hour to put these memoirs in order, and then joined our servants, who, on such occasions, are always our companions, and who had provided a small horn full of spirits, and a jar full of beer, or bouza, by offering some trifling present to our commandant the Jumper, who was much more tenacious of his drink than his meat: we swam and dabbled with great delight in the Kelti, where are neither crocodiles nor gomari; slept a little afterwards, and retired into the tent to a supper, which would have been a chearful one could I have forgot that Ozoro Esther was suffering.
We now began to discuss the motive that had induced our friend Strates again to tempt the danger of the ways. This singular fellow, as we learned from Guebra Mariam, as well as from his own confession, repented of his resolution as soon as we were gone, and had determined on foot to follow us, when he heard of this opportunity of Ozoro Esther’s servant being sent on a message, and that princess was so well pleased with his anxiety that she gave him a mule that he might not retard her servant.
This Greek had known Fasil intimately, both when he was a private man in Kasmati Eshté’s time, and afterwards, when he was governor of Damot, for he was a servant in the palace when Joas was king, as all the Greeks were; had a company of fusileers, and one or two other small appointments, all of which were taken from him, and from most of the other Greeks, upon the death of the dwarf, who, I before mentioned, was shot on the side of Ras Michael by an unknown hand upon his first arrival at Gondar. He now lived upon the charity of the queen-mother, and what he picked up by his buffoonery among the great men at court. We found that in Shalaka Woldo we had got a man of more understanding than our friend Strates, but much about his equal in mimicry and buffoonery.