The Life and Adventures of Bruce, the African Traveller

by Sir Francis Bond Head

The following sentence was therefore pronounced upon him by the king: "He is guilty, and shall die the death. The hangman shall hang him upon a tree to-day." The unfortunate Acab Saat was immediately hurried away by the guards to the place of execution, which is a large tree before the king's gate; where, uttering, to the very last moment, curses against Ras Michael, the king, and the abuna, he was hanged in the very robes in which he used to sit before the king, without one badge of his civil or sacerdotal pre-eminence having been taken off from him. In going to the tree, he recollected that he had four hundred cows, which he bequeathed to priests who were to say prayers for his soul; but the old ras ordered them to be brought to Gondar and distributed among the soldiers.

Socinios's brother was next called; and, half dead with fear, he also was sentenced to be hanged. "I went home," says Bruce, "and my house being but a few yards from the palace, I passed the two unfortunate people hanging upon the same branch."

The next morning came on the trials of Guebra Denghel, Sebaat Laab, and Kefla Mariam: the ras claimed his right of trying these three at his own house, as they were all subjects of his government of Tigré. Guebra Denghel behaved with great unconcern, declaring that his only reason for taking up arms against the king was, that he saw no other way of getting rid of Michael's tyranny, and his insatiable thirst of money and power. He wished the king to know that this was his sole motive for rebellion; and declared that, unless it had been to make this declaration, he would not have opened his mouth before so partial and unjust a judge as Michael.

Welleta Selasse, his only daughter, hearing the danger her father was in, broke suddenly out of Ozoro Esther's apartment, which was contiguous, and rushing into the council-room at the instant he was condemned to die, she threw herself at the ras's feet in an attitude and with an expression of the utmost distress; but the old tyrant spurned her away with his foot, and then ordered her father to be instantly hanged. Welleta Selasse fell speechless to the ground. The father, forgetful of his own situation, flew to his daughter's assistance, and they were both dragged out at separate doors—the one to death, the other to after sufferings more dreadful than death itself; for, though not seventeen, the ras, who was her grandfather, after having deprived her of her parent, so alarmed her by his brutality, that, in despair and agony of mind, she swallowed poison! "I saw her," says Bruce, "in her last moments, but too late to give her any assistance; and she had told her women-servants and slaves that she had taken arsenic, having no other way of escaping from the persecution of the murderer of her father."

The next to be tried were Kefla Mariam and Sebaat Laab, who were condemned by the ras to lose their eyes—a very common punishment in Abyssinia to this day.

To avoid shocking the reader with any farther details of these horrid cruelties, it will only be observed, that blood continued to be spilt as water, day after day, till the Epiphany; priests, laymen, young men and old, noble and vile, daily found their end by the knife or the cord, while their bodies were hewn to pieces and scattered about the streets. "I was almost driven to despair," says Bruce, "at seeing my hunting dogs, twice let loose by the carelessness of my servants, bringing into the courtyard the heads and arms of slaughtered men, and which I could no way prevent but by the destruction of the dogs themselves; the quantity of carrion, and the stench of it, brought down the hyænas in hundreds from the neighbouring mountains; and, as few people in Gondar go out after it is dark, they enjoyed the streets by themselves, and seemed ready to dispute the possession of the city with the inhabitants. Often, when I went home late from the palace (and it was this time the king chose chiefly for conversation), though I had but to pass the corner of the market-place before the palace, had lanterns with me, and was surrounded with armed men, I heard them grunting by twos and threes, so near me as to be afraid they would take some opportunity of seizing me by the leg; a pistol would have frightened them, and made them speedily run, and I constantly carried two loaded at my girdle; but the discharging a pistol in the night would have alarmed every one that heard it in the town, and it was not now the time to add anything to people's fears. I at last scarcely ever went out, and nothing occupied my thoughts but how to escape from this bloody country by the way of Sennaar, and how I could best exert my power and influence over my faithful friend Yasine, at Ras el Feel, to pave my way, by assisting me to pass the desert into Atbara."

The king, missing Bruce for some days at the palace, and hearing he had been at Ras Michael's, began to inquire who had been with him. Ayto Confu soon found Yasine, who informed him of the whole matter; upon which Bruce was sent for to the palace, where he found the king, with no one about him but menial servants. He immediately remarked to Bruce that he looked very ill, which was indeed the case, as he had scarcely ate or slept since the king saw him last, or even for some days before. The king asked him, in a condoling tone, "What ailed him?" observing that, "besides looking sick, he seemed as if something had ruffled him, and put him out of humour." Bruce replied, that what he observed was true: that, coming across the market-place, he had seen Za Mariam, the ras's doorkeeper, with three men bound, one of whom he hacked to pieces in his presence; that, as he was running across the place with his hand to his nose, Mariam called to him to stop till he should despatch the other two, as he wanted to speak to him; that the soldiers immediately fell upon the two men, whose cries, he said, were still remaining in his ears; that the hyænas at night would scarcely suffer him to pass in the streets as he returned from the palace; and that the dogs fled into his house to eat pieces of human flesh at leisure.

"Although," says Bruce, "the king's intention was to look grave, I saw it was all he could do to stifle a laugh at grievances he thought very little of." "The men you saw with Za Mariam just now," says he, "are rebels, sent by Kefla Yasous for examples: he has forced a junction with Tecla and Welleta Michael in Samen, and a road is now open through Woggora, and plenty established in Gondar. The men you saw suffer were those that cut off the provisions from coming into the city; they have occasioned the death of many poor people: as for the hyæna, he never meddles with living people; he seeks carrion, and will soon clear the streets of these encumbrances that so much offend you. People say they are the Falasha of the mountains, who take that shape of the hyæna, and come down into the town to eat Christian flesh in the night." "If they depend upon Christian flesh, and eat no other," said Bruce, "perhaps the hyænas of Gondar will be the worst fed of any in the world!" "True," said the king, bursting out into loud laughter, "that may be; few of those that die by the knife anywhere are Christians, or have any religion at all; why then should you mind what they suffer?" "Sir," said Bruce, "that is not my sentiment; if you were to order a dog to be tortured to death before me every morning, I could not bear it. The carcasses of Abba, Salama, Guebra Denghel, and the rest, are still hanging where they were upon the tree; you smell the stench of them at the palace gate, and will soon, I apprehend, in the palace itself. This cannot be pleasant, and I do assure you it must be very pernicious to your health, if there was nothing else in it. At the battle of Fagitta, though you had no intention to retreat, yet you went half a day backward, to higher ground and purer air, to avoid the stench of the field; but here in the city you heap up carrion about your houses, where is your continual residence." "The ras has given orders," said the king, gravely, "to remove all the dead bodies before the Epiphany, when we go down to keep that festival, and wash away all this pollution in the clear-running water of the Kahha; but tell me, Yagoube, is it really possible that you can take such things as these so much to heart? You are a brave man: we all know you are, and have seen it: we have all blamed you, stranger as you are in this country, for the little care you take of yourself; and yet about these things you are as much affected as the most cowardly woman, girl, or child could be."

"Sir," said Bruce, "I do not know if I am brave or not; but if to see men tortured or murdered, or to live among dead bodies without concern, be courage, I have it not, nor desire to have it."

In the eager expression of these manly sentiments, which sparkle in the moral darkness amid which they appear, Bruce was interrupted by the arrival of a young nobleman, who, according to custom, threw himself on his face before the king.