We left Axum on January 20, and on the same day we saw three travellers cutting three pieces of flesh, thicker and longer than our ordinary beefsteaks, from the higher part of the buttock of a cow. The beast was thrown on the ground, and one man held the head, while two others were busy in cutting out the flesh.
I have been told that my friends have disbelieved this statement. I pledge myself never to retract the fact here advanced, that the Abyssinians do feed in common upon live flesh, and that I myself for several years have been a partaker of that disagreeable and beastly diet.
Travelling pleasantly enough, though finding it difficult to get food from the natives, we came on February 4 to the foot of Debra Toon, one of the highest mountains of the romantic range of Hanza. The toilsome ascent of Lamalmon, an extensive table-land of great fertility, was begun on February 8, and on the 14th we arrived at Gondar, the metropolis of Abyssinia.
II.—Savage Native Practices
Gondar is situated on the flat summit of a hill of considerable height, and consists of 10,000 families in time of peace. The houses are chiefly of clay, with roofs thatched in the form of cones. The king's palace is a square building on the west side of the town, flanked with towers, and originally four stories high, but now only two. The audience chamber is 120 feet long, and the upper windows command a magnificent view of the great lake Tzana. The palace and contiguous buildings are surrounded by a stone wall 30 feet high, 1½ miles in circumference. A little way from Gondar to the north is Koscam, the palace of the iteghé and the king's other wives. Tecla Haimanout was at this time king, and Suhul Michael was ras, or prime minister. They were absent at the time of my arrival.
Petros, an important Greek, who was the only one in Gondar to whom I had recommendations, came in a state of great dread to me, saying that he had seen at Michael's encampment, a few miles from Gondar, the stuffed skin of an intimate friend of his own swinging upon a tree, and drying in the wind beside the tent of the ras. The iteghé and Ozoro Esther, wife of Ras Michael, sent for me to the palace at Koscam to attend, as a medical man, the royal families, because small-pox was then raging in the city and surrounding districts. I saved the life of Ayto Confu, the favourite son of Ozoro Esther, and others; and thereafter became friends of the queen and her suite in the palace.
I rode out on March 8 to meet Ras Michael at Azazo, the scene of a great battle which had been fought with Fasil, a Galla chief, who had broken out in rebellion. The first horrid spectacle exhibited by him consisted of pulling out the eyes of twelve Galla chiefs, who had been taken prisoners. They were then turned out into the fields to be devoured by hyenas. Next day the army of 30,000 men marched in triumph into Gondar. On March 14, I had an interview with the ras, and he said that to prevent my being murdered for my goods and instruments, and being bothered by the monks about religious matters, the king, on his recommendation, had appointed me baalomaal, the commander of the Koccob Horse.
In the course of the campaign between the king and his rebel governors, I joined his majesty's forces, and on May 18, 1770, I found myself at Dara, fourteen miles from the great cataract of the Nile, which I obtained permission to visit. The shum, or head of the people of the district, took me to a bridge, which consisted of one arch of twenty-five feet in breadth, with the extremities firmly based on solid rock on both sides. The Nile is here confined between two rocks, and runs in a deep channel with great, roaring, impetuous velocity. The cataract itself was the most magnificent sight that ever I beheld. Its height is forty feet. The river had been increased by the rains, and fell in one sheet of water half a mile in breadth, with a noise that was truly terrible, and made me for a time perfectly dizzy.
Returning to the king's army, I rode through a country of smoking ruins and awful silence. The miserable natives, though Christians, were being hunted to be sold into slavery to the Turks. I found that the campaign was finished, and that we were to return to Gondar, on reaching which, on May 30, Fasil returned to his allegiance. Having successfully prescribed for Fasil's principal general, the king was so pleased that he promised me any favour. I asked the village of Geesh at the source of the Nile. Whereupon the king said:
"I do give the village of Geesh and its fountains to Yagoube (which was my name) and his posterity for ever, never to appear under another name in the Deftar (land register), and never to be taken from him, or exchanged in peace or war."