Each moment rendered the treacherous passage more and more impracticable; and it was not difficult to understand how, in the month of June the preceding year, the spot should have proved the grave of eight hundred of the Amhára cavalry. At that season the country, flooded for many miles around, becomes one great quagmire, which is not to be crossed without extreme caution. Before the king had passed with the main body of the victorious troops escorting immense plunder, the Sertie Galla, taking advantage of superior knowledge of the locality, completely cut off the van of the army, consisting of the Mentshar and Bulga detachments. They had become entangled in the mazy labyrinth, and were massacred to a man ere assistance could be rendered by the matchlock-men of the bodyguard, who did not reach the ground until the enemy were in full retreat.
His Majesty’s object in now revisiting the scene of this catastrophe was sufficiently obvious. No sooner had the imperial cavalcade halted among the bleached skeletons of the fallen warriors, than champions, whose steeds were distinguished by greasy garments stripped from the bodies of Galla victims, caracoled proudly in front of the state umbrellas, brandishing their bright weapons aloft—exhibiting the human fragments that had been won during the recent bloody foray—and after a detail of their individual exploits, shouting defiance to the humbled Sertie. The wild triumphal exhibition concluding after half an hour, a band of music advanced, and continued to play until the pavilion had been prepared for the royal reception.
Early the ensuing morning the king sent confidentially to my tent, to inquire if none of his guests could divine whether the day were propitious to the advance of the army—a point upon which he felt somewhat dubious. Our confession of lamentable want of skill in augury was succeeded by a march of sixteen miles to Ellulee Jidda over a monotonous landscape of swelling downs and shallow valleys, intersected by streamlets that had scooped deep channels in the loose black soil. The stately relict of a deceased Galla chieftain rode through the ranks with her tribute in horses and kine, and experienced a most gallant reception at the hands of the monarch. She might have sat for the portrait of La Belle Sauvage, but the grease wherein the person of the handsome dame was embedded, tended unfortunately to destroy the romance inseparable from her Amazonian appearance and feudal condition.
Various triumphant detachments also met the royal cortege en route, the chiefs and victorious warriors careering in succession before the van of the army, with green sprigs of asparagus waving above their dishevelled and newly-dressed locks. Prisoners were seated behind the cruppers of some of the more merciful, and the flank of each grey steed was dyed with clotted human gore. A short rambling recitative, expressive of loyalty and devotion in the field, was followed by savage yells and whoops, twice or thrice re-echoed by their marshalled band of followers, when they vaulted lightly from the saddle, prostrated themselves on the ground, and galloped off, each in his turn, to make way for some new squadron, whose war chorus came pealing over the hills—
“The combat’s past, the fight is won,
Then triumph o’er the prostrate foe;
The heathen blood has freely run,
Raise high the chaunt, Wokó, Wokó.
“Let hill and dale return the note,
Wokó, Wokó, ayah Wokó;
Loud ring from every Christian throat
The shout of death, Wokó, Wokó.”
Whilst the army was encamping, the legion of Ayto Shishigo, rejoining the royal division with three thousand head of oxen, in like manner reported their successful exploits to the king, who, as usual, occupied the summit of an adjacent eminence. Tribute was still in a course of diligent collection, and Galla chieftains, with their hair plaited after the model of the lotus-flower, were flocking with their dues from all directions. One refractory village only, of the Jidda tribe, withholding its impost of a single horse, paid the penalty of its folly. The inhabitants fled, but their deserted houses were sacked and consigned to the flames, the stakes and palisades by which, in common with every hamlet in this direction, it was strongly fortified, affording fuel for the royal kitchen, and subsequently a scramble to one half of the army.