Bruce found it so impossible to satisfy them, that, with great artifice and difficulty, he managed to send a letter by one of the natives to Janni, the head of the custom-house at Adowa, to inform him of his detention. On the morning of the fourth day an officer from Janni arrived with a violent mandate in the name of Ras Michael, which produced an immediate effect, and on the 4th of December Bruce was again enabled to proceed.
He now passed a river called Angueah, the largest he had seen in Abyssinia. This river receives its name from a beautiful tree which covers its banks. A variety of flowers, particularly yellow, white, and party-coloured jasmine, fill the plain which lies between the mountains and this stream. The air was fresh, fragrant, and agreeable. "We now first began to see," says Bruce, "the high mountains of Adowa, nothing resembling in shape those of Europe, nor, indeed, any other country. Their sides were all perpendicular rocks, high, like steeples or obelisks, and broken into a thousand different forms." However, after travelling on a very pleasant road, over easy hills, and through hedgerows of jasmine, honeysuckle, and many other kinds of flowering shrubs, they arrived on the 6th of December at Adowa, the town in which Ras Michael had used to reside.
Adowa is situated at the foot of a hill, on the west side of a small plain, watered by three streams, and surrounded on all sides by mountains. It is the pass through which every one must go in travelling from Gondar to the Red Sea, and, indeed, its name signifies "pass or passage." The town consisted of about three hundred houses, each dwelling being enclosed by hedges and trees. Adowa was not formerly the capital of Tigré, but at the time of Bruce's arrival it was considered as such, because the property of Ras Michael surrounded it. His house was on the top of a small hill, and was not remarkable for its size. It was inhabited during the ras's absence by his deputy, and resembled a prison rather than a palace; for in and about it more than three hundred persons were confined in irons, the object of their imprisonment being to extort money from them. Many of these unhappy individuals had been there twenty years; they were kept in cages, and in every way treated like wild beasts.
Bruce had scarcely arrived at Adowa before Janni, the Greek officer of the customs to whom he had written on his arrival at Masuah, waited upon him. "He had," says Bruce, "sent servants to conduct us from the passage of the river, and met us himself at the outer door of his house. I do not remember to have seen a more respectable figure. He had his own short white hair, covered with a thin muslin turban, and a thick, well-shaped beard, as white as snow, down to his waist. He was clothed in the Abyssinian dress, all of white cotton, only he had a red silk sash, embroidered with gold, about his waist, and sandals on his feet: his upper garment reached down to his ankles. He had a number of servants and slaves about him of both sexes; and, when I approached him, seemed disposed to receive me with marks of humility and inferiority, which mortified me much, considering the obligations I was under to him, the trouble I had given, and was unavoidably still to give him. I embraced him with great acknowledgments of kindness and gratitude, calling him father: a title I always used in speaking either to him or of him afterward, when I was in higher fortune, which he constantly remembered with great pleasure.
"He conducted us through a courtyard planted with jasmine, to a very neat, and, at the same time, large room, furnished with a silk sofa: the floor was covered with Persian carpets and cushions. All round, flowers and green leaves were strewed upon the outer yard: and the windows and sides of the room stuck full of evergreens, in commemoration of the Christmas festival that was at hand. I stopped at the entrance of this room: my feet were both dirty and bloody; and it is not good breeding to show or speak of your feet in Abyssinia, especially if anything ails them, and at all times they are covered. He immediately perceived the wounds that were upon mine. Both our clothes and flesh had been torn to pieces at Tarenta and several other places; but he thought we had come on mules furnished us by the naybe; for the young man I had sent to him from Kella, following the genius of his countrymen, though telling truth was just as profitable to him as lying, had chosen the latter, and, seeing the horse I had got from the Baharnagash, had figured in his own imagination a multitude of others, he told Janni that there were with me horses, asses, and mules in great plenty; so that, when Janni saw us passing the water, he took me for a servant, and expected for several minutes to see the splendid company arrive, well-mounted upon horses and mules caparisoned.
"He was so shocked at my saying that I had performed this terrible journey on foot, that he burst into tears, uttering a thousand reproaches against the naybe for his hard-heartedness and ingratitude, as he had twice, as he said, hindered Michael from going in person, and sweeping the naybe from the face of the earth. Water was immediately procured to wash our feet; and here began another contention. Janni insisted upon doing this himself, which made me run out into the yard, and declare I would not suffer it. After this, the like dispute took place among the servants. It was always a ceremony in Abyssinia to wash the feet of those that came from Cairo, and who are understood to have been pilgrims to Jerusalem.
"This was no sooner finished than a great dinner was brought, exceedingly well dressed. But no consideration or entreaty could prevail upon my kind landlord to sit down and partake with me: he would stand all the time with a clean towel in his hand, though he had plenty of servants, and afterward dined with some visiters, who had come, out of curiosity, to see a man arrived from so far. Among these were a number of priests, a part of the company which I liked least, but who did not show any hostile appearance. It was long before I cured my kind landlord of these respectful observances, which troubled me very much; nor could he ever wholly get rid of them: his own kindness and good heart, as well as the pointed and particular orders of the Greek patriarch, Mark, constantly suggesting the same attention."
In the afternoon Bruce had a visit from the Governor of Adowa, a tall, fine-looking man of about sixty years of age. He had just returned from an expedition against the inhabitants of some villages, having slain about a hundred and twenty men, and driven off a quantity of cattle. He told Bruce he much doubted whether he would be able to proceed, unless some favourable news came from Ras Michael, as the inhabitants of Woggora were plundering all descriptions of people going to Gondar, in order to distress the king and the troops of Ras Michael.
The houses of Adowa are of rough stone, cemented with mud instead of mortar. The roofs, which are in the form of cones, are thatched with a sort of reedy grass, rather thicker than wheat straw. In the surrounding country there are three harvests annually. The first seedtime is in July and August, in the middle of the rains, at which time they sow wheat, tocusso, teff, and barley. About the 20th of November they begin to reap, first the barley, then the wheat, and lastly the teff. Without any manure, they then sow barley alone, which they reap in February; and, lastly, they sow teff or vetches, which are cut down before the first rains in April.
The country is sometimes completely overrun with rats and field-mice; and, to destroy these creatures, they set fire to the straw, the only use to which they apply it. This is generally done just before the rains, and astonishing verdure immediately follows.