It would be difficult to point out a more striking contrast than what is presented in the sedentary life of the negro or Cushite of Abyssinia, compared with the wandering habits of his neighbour the shepherd. The former, whether he lives in a tent or in a cave, moves only to avoid the zimb or the rain; the latter is constantly migrating from one side of the mountain to the other, or else driving camels laden with merchandise across the burning deserts of Africa.
Although the Shangalla live in separate tribes, yet they are in the habit of joining together, and of forming alliances offensive and defensive, but principally to assist each other in repelling the barbarous attacks which are made upon them by the Abyssinians and Arabs.
Mothers, who stand most in need of protection, naturally look for it to their own offspring; and it is a habit among these women, as among the Galla tribes, to entreat their husbands to maintain a plurality of wives, that, by the number of children in the family, the means of safety may be proportionally increased. Their moral character is, nevertheless, defended by Bruce with so much good feeling, that we must give it to the reader in his own words:
"I will not fear to aver, as far as concerns these Shangalla, or negroes of Abyssinia (and, I believe, most others of the same complexion, though of different nations), that the various accounts we have of them are very unfairly stated. To describe them justly, we should see them in their native purity of manners, among their native woods, living on the produce of their own daily labours, without other liquor than that of their own pools and springs, the drinking of which is followed by no intoxication, or other pleasure than that of assuaging thirst. After having been torn from their own country and connexions, reduced to the condition of brutes, to labour for a being they never before knew; after lying, stealing, and all the long lists of European crimes have been made, as it were, necessary to them; and the delusion occasioned by drinking spirits is found, however short, to be the only remedy that relieves them from reflecting on their present wretched situation, to which, for that reason, they most naturally attach themselves; then, after we have made them monsters, we describe them as such! forgetful that they are now not as their Maker created them, but such as, by teaching them our vices, we have transformed them into, for ends which, I fear, one day will not be found a sufficient excuse for the enormities they have occasioned."
It would be well for the character of human nature if we could here close the history of the Shangalla; but, as yet, nothing has been offered but a sketch of their lives: the account of their death, or, what is even worse, of their slavery, remains still to be told.
On the accession of every new king to the throne of Abyssinia, and on many other occasions, it has been the custom to amuse the country by a great hunting match, which lasts several days; and in this pastime rewards are given, according to a fixed scale, for each of the wild beasts that are killed.
As soon as the hunting of the animals is concluded, license is granted for a general hunt after the Shangalla; and exactly the same reward is offered for the murder of one of them as for slaying an elephant, a rhinoceros, or any other of the larger species of beasts.
The moment usually preferred for the persecution of these ill-fated people is just before the rains, while they are yet living in their vegetating tents, and before the soil of their country, by dissolving into mire, obliges them to seek refuge in their winter-quarters.
In order to hunt these people, the Abyssinians, in overpowering numbers, and armed with every sort of weapon they can collect, enter the forest, and then, like hounds, they regularly draw the covers which contain their game. The men of the Shangalla being extremely active, intelligent, and accustomed to the intricacies of their native woods, could easily evade their pursuers; but each man, tethered by his affections to his own little family, can only retreat at the rate of the weakest, and they are consequently very soon overtaken by the Abyssinians. In the hot, gloomy, unhealthy recesses of the forest, far beyond the regions of civilization, out of the hearing of mercy, out of the sight of every people that would rush forward to prevent such enormities, the sport or slaughter begins. The grown-up men are all killed and then mutilated, parts of their bodies being carried away as trophies: several of the old mothers are also killed, while others, frantic with fear and despair, kill themselves. The boys and girls of a more tender age are then carried off in brutal triumph; the former are afterward to be found as servants in all the great houses in Abyssinia; while the latter, the weaker sex, are dragged into more remote and distant countries, to be sold as attendants to the Turks, who profess to admire the Ethiopians in summer, because, as they say, like toads, they have a cold skin.
Any one who has ever had the misfortune to witness an African slave-market, and for a moment to stand surrounded by its wretched, emaciated victims, must, after his first feelings have subsided, have found himself filled with astonishment that human nature could ever be induced deliberately to continue so guilty a traffic! To account for it, or, rather, to excuse it, it has often been urged that negroes are a race of inferior beings, whose minds are not susceptible of those painful sensations which we should suffer were we to be placed in their unfortunate condition. In short, to explain the problem, we paint the map of the world in our own way, and then gravely say, "the inhabitants of these (our countries) have acute feelings, and those who dwell in that have none!"[24] But this strange assertion is most curiously contradicted by the history of the negroes or Shangalla of Abyssinia; for they and their enemies, the persecuted and the persecutors, absolutely live under the same sun, in the same country, and separated only by a few hundred feet of elevation. No one can therefore rationally maintain that these children of one family can be divided by feelings of such different degrees of susceptibility; for the Shangalla must surely enjoy freedom and independence in the valley, as much as the Abyssinians can enjoy them on the higher ground.