The same may be said of Arkeeko, a large town on the bottom of the bay of Masuah, which has indeed water, but labours under the same scarcity of provisions; for the tract of flat land behind both, called Samhar, is a perfect desert, and only inhabited from the month of November to April, by a variety of wandering tribes called Tora, Hazorta, Shiho, and Doba, and these carry all their cattle to the Abyssinian side of the mountains when the rains fall there, which is the opposite six months. When the season is thus reversed, they and their cattle are no longer in Samhar, or the dominion of the Naybe, but in the hands of the Abyssinians, especially the governor of Tigré and Baharnagash, who thereby, without being at the expence and trouble of marching against Masuah with an army, can make a line round it, and starve all at Arkeeko and Masuah, by prohibiting any sort of provisions to be carried thither from their side. In the course of this history we have seen this practised with great success more than once, especially against the Naybe Musa in the reign of Yasous I.
The friendship of Abyssinia once secured, and the power of the Turks declining daily in Arabia, the Naybe began by degrees to withdraw himself from paying tribute at all to the basha of Jidda, to whose government his had been annexed by the porte. He therefore received the firman as a mere form, and returned trifling presents, but no tribute; and in troublesome times, or a weak government happening in Tigrè, he withdrew himself equally from paying any consideration, either to the basha in name of tribute, or to the king of Abyssinia, as share of the customs. This was precisely his situation when I arrived in Abyssinia. A great revolution, as we have already seen, had happened in that kingdom, of which Michael had been the principal author. When he was called to Gondar and made minister there, Tigré remained drained of troops, and without a governor.
Nor was the new king, Hatzè Hannes, whom Michael had placed upon the throne after the murder of Joas his predecessor, a man likely to infuse vigour into the new government. Hannes was past seventy at his accession, and Michael his minister lame, so as scarcely to be able to stand, and within a few years of eighty. The Naybe, a man of about forty-eight, judged of the debility of the Abyssinian government by those circumstances, but in this he was mistaken.
Already Michael had intimated to him, that, the next campaign, he would lay waste Arkeeko and Masuah, till they should be as desert as the wilds of Samhar; and as he had been all his life very remarkable for keeping his promises of this kind, the stranger merchants had many of them fled to Arabia, and others to Dobarwa[1], a large town in the territories of the Baharnagash. Notwithstanding this, the Naybe had not shewn any public mark of fear, nor sent one penny either to the king of Abyssinia or the basha of Jidda.
On the other hand, the basha was not indifferent to his own interest; and, to bring about the payment, he had made an agreement with an officer of great credit with the Sherriffe of Mecca. This man was originally an Abyssinian slave, his name Metical Aga, who by his address had raised himself to the post of Selictar, or sword-bearer, to the Sherriffe; and, in fact, he was absolute in all his dominions. He was, moreover, a great friend of Michael governor of Tigré, and had supplied him with large stores of arms and ammunition for his last campaign against the king at Gondar.
The basha had employed Metical Aga to inform Michael of the treatment he had received from the Naybe, desiring his assistance to force him to pay the tribute, and at the same time intimated to the Naybe, that he not only had done so, but the very next year would give orders throughout Arabia to arrest the goods and persons of such Mahometan merchants as should come to Arabia, either from motives of religion or trade. With this message he had sent the firman from Constantinople, desiring the return both of tribute and presents.
Mahomet Gibberti, Metical Aga’s servant, had come in the boat with me; but Abdelcader, who carried the message and firman, and who was governor of the island of Dahalac, had sailed at same time with me, and had been spectator of the honour which was paid my ship when she left the harbour of Jidda.
Running straight over to Masuah, Abdelcader had proclaimed what he had seen with great exaggeration, according to the custom of his country; and reported that a prince was coming, a very near relation to the king of England, who was no trader, but came only to visit countries and people.
It was many times, and oft agitated (as we knew afterwards) between the Naybe and his counsellors, what was to be done with this prince. Some were for the most expeditious, and what has long been the most customary method of treating strangers in Masuah, to put them to death, and divide every thing they had among the garrison. Others insisted, that they should stay and see what letters I had from Arabia to Abyssinia, lest this might prove an addition to the storm just ready to break upon them on the part of Metical Aga and Michael Suhul.
But Achmet, the Naybe’s nephew, said, it was folly to doubt but that a man, under the description I was, would have protections of every kind; but whether I had or not, that my very rank should protect me in every place where there was any government whatever; it might do even among banditti and thieves inhabiting woods and mountains; that a sufficient quantity of strangers blood had been already shed at Masuah, for the purpose of rapine, and he believed a curse and poverty had followed it; that it was impossible for those who had heard the firing of those ships to conjecture whether I had letters to Abyssinia or not; that it would be better to consider whether I was held in esteem by the captains of those ships, as half of the guns they fired in compliment to me, was sufficient to destroy them all, and lay Arkeeko and Masuah as desolate as Michael Suhul had threatened to do; nor could that vengeance cost any of the ships, coming next year to Jidda, a day’s sailing out of their way; and there being plenty of water when they reached Arkeeko at the south-west of the bay, all this destruction might be effected in one afternoon, and repeated once a-year without difficulty, danger, or expence, while they were watering.