The Highlands of Ethiopia - Sir William Cornwallis Harris

There were not wanting certain sapient sages who gravely shook the head of disapproval at this fresh proof of foreign influence and ascendency, and who could in nowise comprehend how the venerable custom of ages could be thus suddenly violated. The introduction of great guns, and muskets, and rockets, had not been objected to, although, as a matter of course, the spear of their forefathers was esteemed an infinitely superior weapon. Musical clocks and boxes had been listened to and despised, as vastly inferior to the jingling notes of their own vile instruments; and the Gothic cottage, with its painted trellises, its pictures, and its gay curtains, although pronounced entirely unsuited to Abyssinian habits, had been partially forgiven on the grounds of its beauty.

But this last innovation was beyond all understanding; and many a stupid pate was racked in fruitless endeavours to extract consolation in so momentous a difficulty. The more liberal party were loud in their praises of the king and of his generous intentions; and the royal gaze was with the rest strained wistfully towards the wicket, where he should behold once again the child of his mother, whom he had not seen since his accession, and should make the first acquaintance with his uncles, the brothers of his warrior sire, who had been incarcerated ere he himself had seen the light.

Stern traces had been left by the constraint of one-third of a century upon the seven unfortunate descendants of a royal race, who were shortly ushered into the court by the state-gaoler. Leaning heavily on each other’s shoulders, and linked together by chains, bright and shining with the friction of years, the captives shuffled onward with cramped steps, rather as malefactors proceeding to the gallows-tree, than as innocent and abused princes, regaining the natural rights of man. Tottering to the foot of the throne, they fell as they had been instructed by their burly conductor, prostrate on their faces before their more fortunate but despotic relative, whom they had known heretofore only through his connection with their own misfortunes, and whose voice was yet a stranger to their ears.

Rising with difficulty at the bidding of the monarch, they remained standing in front of the balcony, gazing in stupid wonder at the novelties of the scene, with eyes unaccustomed to meet the broad glare of day. At first they were fixed upon the author of their weary captivity, and upon the white men by his side who had been the instruments of its termination—but the dull, leaden gaze soon wandered in search of other objects; and the approach of freedom appeared to be received with the utmost apathy and indifference. Immured since earliest infancy, they were totally insensible to the blessings of liberty. Their feelings and their habits had become those of the fetter and of the dark dungeon. The iron had rusted into their very souls; and, whilst they with difficulty maintained an erect position, pain and withering despondency were indelibly marked in every line of their vacant and care-furrowed features.

In the damp vaults of Góncho, where heavy manacles on the wrists had been linked to the ankles of the prisoners by a chain so short as to admit only of a bent and stooping posture, the weary hours of the princes had for thirty long years been passed in the fabrication of harps and combs; and of these relics of monotonous existence, elaborately carved in wood and ivory, a large offering was now timidly presented to the king. The first glimpse of his wretched relatives had already dissipated a slight shade of mistrust which had hitherto clouded the royal brow. Nothing that might endanger the security of his reign could be traced in the crippled frames and blighted faculties of the seven miserable objects that cowered before him; and, after directing their chains to be unriveted, he announced to all that they were Free, and to pass the residue of their existence near his own person. Again the joke and the merry laugh passed quickly in the balcony—the court fool resumed his wonted avocations; and, as the monarch himself struck the chords of the gaily-ornamented harp presented by his bloated brother Amnon, the buffoon burst into a high and deserved panegyric upon the royal mercy and generosity.

“My children,” exclaimed His Majesty, turning towards ourselves, after the completion of this tardy act of justice to those whose only crime was their consanguinity to himself—an act to which he had been prompted less by superstition than by a desire to rescue his own offspring from a dungeon, and to secure a high place in the opinion of the civilised world—“My children, you will write all that you have now seen to your country, and will say to the British Queen, that, although far behind the nations of the white men, from whom Ethiopia first received her religion, there yet remains a spark of Christian love in the breast of the king of Shoa.”