Some interesting sporting anecdotes follow (they abound in Mr Parkyns’ book), told in off-hand characteristic style—encounters with wild pigs, rather dangerous animals to deal with—and then we take the road to Kiaguor. A night’s rest there, and we are off to Adoua. Hereabouts Mr Parkyns gives a sketch of “Abyssinian Travelling.” We presume that he himself, somewhat tanned by the climate, is the gentleman mounted on a jackass, with bare head and legs, and a parasol for protection from the sun. Suppress the donkey and supply a parrot, and he might very well pass for the late Mr R. Crusoe.
Vague ideas of columns and obelisks, Moorish architecture and the like, floated in Mr Parkyns’ fancy as he drew near to the capital city of the kingdom of Tigrè, one of the most powerful of all Ethiopia. He found a straggling village of huts, most of them built of rough stones, and thatched with straw. The customhouse—they possess that civilised nuisance even in Abyssinia—gave him trouble about his baggage, which it found exorbitant in quantity, and suspected him of smuggling in goods on account of merchants. He explained that he had a supply of arms, powder, lead, &c., for two or three years’ consumption, besides presents for the prince, but the Tigrè douaniers insisted on examining all his packages. He would not submit, and set off to make an appeal to Oubi—nominally the viceroy, but in reality the sovereign of the country—who was then at a permanent camp, at a place entitled Howzayn. During this part of his travels, Mr Parkyns was in company with Messrs Plowden and Bell; and on reaching Howzayn, which they did in a heavy shower of rain, they went at once to the habitation of Càfty, the steward of Oubi’s household, who had been Mr Bell’s balderàbba on a former visit. “It is customary for every person, whether native or foreigner, after his first audience with the prince, to ask for a ‘balderàbba,’ and one of his officers is usually named. He becomes a sort of agent, and expects you to acknowledge, by presents, any service he may render you—such as assisting you out of difficulties in which you may be involved, or procuring for you admission to his master when you may desire it. Càfty was absent on an expedition. His brother, Negousy, was acting for him, and he volunteered to procure us an audience of the prince without delay.” Meanwhile the travellers were not very comfortable. Some poor fellows were turned out of their huts into the rain to make room for them; but the huts let in water so freely, that the new occupants were scarcely better off than those who had been ejected. Only one hut, about 7 feet in diameter, and 5½ feet high, had a water-tight roof. Imperfect shelter was but one of their annoyances, and a minor one. It is a custom of that country for the king to send food to travellers as soon as he hears of their arrival, and our three Englishmen, aware of this, had brought no provisions. This was unfortunate, for Oubi neglected to observe the hospitable custom, and they were half starved. Instead of obtaining for them an immediate interview with the prince, Negousy, who was fishing for presents, put them off from day to day. They were obliged to send a servant round the camp, crying out, “Who has got bread for money?” and offering an exorbitant price; but even thus they could not obtain a tithe of what they needed. To add to their vexations, Mr Parkyns’ servant, Barnabas, a negro whom he had engaged at Adoua, was claimed as a slave by a man in authority, to whose uncle he had formerly belonged. At last, on the fourth evening after their arrival, Oubi sent them a supper. “It consisted of forty thin cakes, thirty being of coarser quality for the servants, and ten of white ‘teff’ for our own consumption. These were accompanied by two pots of a sort of sauce, composed of common oil, dried pease, and red pepper, but, it being fast time, there was neither meat nor butter. To wash all down there was an enormous horn of honey beer.” On the morning of the sixth day Oubi sent for them, and, escorted by Negousy, they hastened to the Royal Hovel. They had to wait some time for admission, amidst the comments of a crowd of soldiers—comments then unintelligible to Mr Parkyns, but which he afterwards ascertained to be far less complimentary to the personal appearance of himself and companions than he at the time imagined—their eyes being compared to those of cats, their hair to that of monkeys, and their skin, to which the sun had given a bright capsicum hue, being greatly coveted for red morocco sword-sheaths.
Oubi was reclining on a stretcher, in a circular earthen-floored hut, thirty feet in diameter. Although it was the middle of August there was a fire in the apartment, and Mr Parkyns was almost blinded by the wood smoke. When he was able to see, he beheld “a rather good-looking, slight-made man, of about forty-five years of age, with bushy hair, which was fast turning grey. His physiognomy did not at all prepossess me in his favour. It struck me as indicative of much cunning, pride, and falsity; and I judged him to be a man of some talent, but with more of the fox than the lion in his nature. Our presents were brought in, covered with cloths, and carried by our servants. They consisted of a Turkey rug, two European light-cavalry swords, four pieces of muslin for turbans, and two or three yards of red cloth for a cloak. He examined each article as it was presented to him, making on almost every one some complimentary remark. After having inspected them all, he said, ‘God return it to you,’ and ordered his steward to give us a cow.” The cow proved to be what a Far West trapper would call very “poor bull”—a mere bag of bones, which would never have fetched two dollars in the market (the value of a fat cow in Abyssinia varies from 8s. to 12s. 6d.); but, such as it was, the taste of meat was welcome to the hungry travellers, who devoured the beast the same day they received it, so that by nightfall not an eatable morsel was left. Oubi made a better acknowledgment of their gifts by settling their difficulty with the chief of the customhouse, and not long after this Mr Parkyns parted from Messrs Bell and Plowden, their routes no longer lying together. “I prepared for a journey into Addy Abo, a province on the northern frontier of Tigrè, then so little known as not to be placed on any map. My principal object in going there was the chase, and if possible to learn something of the neighbouring Barea or Shangalla—a race totally unknown, except by the reputation they have gained in many throat-cutting visits paid to the Abyssinians.” When recording his parting from his two friends, both of whom he believes to be still in Abyssinia, he intimates his intention of revisiting that country. “It is not improbable,” he says, “that we three may meet again, and do what we have often done before—eat a raw beef-steak, and enjoy it for the sake of good company.”
The road to Addy Abo took Mr Parkyns through Axum, the capital of that part of Abyssinia until supplanted by Adoua. Axum contains a tolerably well-built church, probably of Portuguese construction, and some neatly-built huts, whilst broken columns and pedestals tell of the civilisation of former ages. It possesses, moreover, a beautiful obelisk and a very remarkable sycamore tree, “both of great height, the latter remarkable for the extraordinary circumference of its trunk, and the great spread of its branches, which cast their dark shade over a space of ground sufficient for the camp of the largest caravan. The principal obelisk is carved on the south side, as if to represent a door, windows, cornices, &c.; whilst, under the protecting arms of the venerable tree, stand five or six smaller ones, without ornament, most of which have considerably deviated from the perpendicular. Altogether they form a very interesting family party.” Judging from the present book, antiquarian researches have not much interest for Mr Parkyns, whose sympathies are with the living, his pleasures in the field and forest, and who seems more of a sportsman than of a student. It would be unfair, however, not to mention, that whilst enjoying himself in his own peculiar ways (and some of his ways certainly were extremely peculiar), he kept less selfish aims in view, and exerted himself to make collections of objects of natural history, of costumes, arms, and other curiosities, besides investigating the history and geography of the country. His collections were on a very large scale: unfortunately some went astray upon the road; others, left for years in warehouses, and ill cared for by those to whom they were consigned, were plundered of their most precious specimens. The latter was the case with his first great shipment, of more than twelve hundred birds, sent to England by way of Hamburg. Rats and moths destroyed the contents of another case, left by mistake for four years at Aden; and another, containing arms, silver-mounted ornaments, and zoological specimens, its owner supposes to be either at Bombay, Calcutta, or in some warehouse of the Transit Company in Egypt. These losses are the more to be deplored, that they comprised that of many extremely rare specimens of birds and monkeys, some of them from regions into which it is probable that no European traveller ever before penetrated. To make sure of not losing his collection made in Nubia and on the White Nile, Mr Parkyns himself went out to fetch it, and never lost sight of it till he had it safe at home. It consisted of six hundred birds, and of about a ton weight of negro arms and implements. He was still more unfortunate in geographical than in zoological matters, having lost the whole of the observations, maps, &c. made during his long residence in Tigrè.
The Great Gondar road, along which Mr Parkyns travelled for some distance after quitting Axum, bears about the same resemblance to a civilised European highway that Oubi’s smoky cabin bears to the Louvre or the Escurial. High-roads in Abyssinia are mere tracks worn by passage. “The utmost labour bestowed on any road in that country is, when some traveller, vexed with a thorn that may happen to scratch his face, draws his sword and cuts off the spray. Even this is rarely done. An Abyssinian’s maxim is, ‘I may not pass by this way for a year again; why should I give myself trouble for other people’s convenience?’ The road, however, here as in many parts of Tigrè, is abundantly watered by several tolerably copious streams, which flow all the year round. These are most useful to the numerous merchants who pass constantly between Gondar, Adoua, and the Red Sea, with large caravans of laden animals, offering not only ready means for watering their cattle, but often green food for them near the banks, when all the rest of the country is parched up and dry, and a cool grassy bed for their own weary limbs to repose upon.” Hereupon Mr Parkyns breaks out into rapturous laudation of life in the wilderness, and advises his readers to shoulder their rifles, abandon civilised diggings, and take a few months’ roughing and hardship in a hot climate. Only in such a life, he maintains, is real happiness and enjoyment to be found. His arguments are as original as his book. The principle that he goes upon is, that one enjoys nothing thoroughly until one has suffered from privation of it. Shade, a patch of grass, a stream of water, a cloud, are treasures in Africa, whilst in England they are unheeded, because easily obtainable. A draught of water in the desert, albeit dirty or tar-flavoured, is more precious than the choicest Tokay in epicurean blasé Europe; a piece of scorched gazelle and an ill-baked loaf, made by putting a red-hot stone into the middle of a lump of dough, form a repast more luxurious, when hunger and exercise supply the sauce, than ever was placed before royal gourmet by the most renowned of France’s cooks. There is not much fruit in Abyssinia—but, oh! for a good raw onion for luncheon! Scenting some of those fragrant bulbs, greedy Parkyns, during his residence in the “Happy Valley” of Rohabaita, once ran two miles up a hill, in the heat of the day. How he enjoyed himself in that pleasant province of Rohabaita, hard by the banks of the Mareb, where he abode nine months, and to which he feels disposed to devote many chapters! He had the good fortune, he says, during his long stay, to become considered as one of the country, and to be offered the government of that and another province by H.R.H. Dejatch Lemma, Oubi’s eldest son, who held authority in the north-western districts of Tigrè, but who had been unable to acquire much influence over the Rohabaitese—rough border-men, particularly averse to tax-paying, and who, when pressed for the impost, fled with their movables across the frontier. For, in Abyssinia, inattention to the tax-gatherer’s claim is terribly punished. In the first instance, the offender is subjected to a sort of dragonnade; soldiers are sent to live upon him, waste his substance, and treat him brutally; so that, if he cannot at once borrow money to pay his debt, he is speedily ruined. Another means of extortion is still more barbarous: the insolvent is cast into prison, and chained by the arm. “The iron round his wrist is not clasped, but is merely a strong hoop, opened by force to allow the hand to enter, and then hammered tight between two stones. At first it is only made tight enough to prevent any possibility of the prisoner’s escape. After some time, however, if the sum required be not forthcoming, it is knocked a little tighter, and so, by degrees, the hand dies, the nails drop out, and the poor prisoner is at best maimed for life. Death sometimes ensues from this treatment.” Rather savage work, Mr Parkyns is fain to admit, whilst assuring us that this torture is not often practised, and that his Tigrine friends, with all their faults, have many good qualities. Lofty were the castles he built in Rohabaita (aërial ones, of course, castles of more solid structure being rare in a land whose sovereign is lodged as we have described) whilst waiting for Oubi’s permission, for which Lemma was obliged to apply before installing the Englishman in his government. Besides the payment of a tribute to Lemma, Mr Parkyns undertook to keep in order the neighbouring tribe of the Bàza, whom he more frequently speaks of as the Barea or slaves, that being the name given to them in Abyssinia. He was very desirous to visit that brave and hardy tribe of savages, and had made all his arrangements to do so, when Oubi unfortunately determined on a razzia, in retaliation of numerous recent murders and robberies perpetrated by them in his dominions. In the last of their forays they had pillaged monasteries, and slain their holy occupants, whose blood cried aloud for vengeance. His project of a pacific ramble amongst the Barea being thus knocked on the head, Mr Parkyns hoped that the campaign itself would give him opportunities of obtaining an insight into their manners. He was disappointed. Little or nothing was seen of the natives except at the sword’s point. They appear to be bold and wary warriors, skilled in the stratagems of savage warfare. Mr Parkyns, when at Rohabaita, received a visit and presents from a friend of his, one Obsabius, a hospitable old cock, and man in authority, whom, on his departure, he accompanied for some distance with a small escort, Obsabius, when coming, having seen Barea sign upon the road. He was convinced that the blacks were outlying, and that he had escaped attack only by having joined a number of other travellers.
“Scarcely had we passed the brook of Mai-Chena when one of our men, a hunter, declared that he saw the slaves. Being at that time inexperienced in such matters, I could see nothing suspicious. He then pointed out to me a dead tree standing on an eminence at a distance of several hundred yards, and charred black by last year’s fire. To explain this, I should remark that the rains cause to spring up a thick jungle of grass, canes, and bushes, which cover the whole surface of the country, growing to a height of several feet. When this becomes dry, it is set fire to—in some places by the farmers, as the readiest means of clearing the ground; in others by hunters, to enable them to get at their game with greater facility; and often accidentally.... However, all that I saw was a charred stump of a tree, and a few blackened logs or stones lying at its foot. The hunter declared that neither tree nor stones were there the last time he passed, and that they were simply naked Barea, who had placed themselves in that position to observe us, having no doubt seen us for some time, and prepared themselves.... So confident was I of his mistake, that, telling the rest to go on slowly, as if nothing had been observed, I dropped into the long grass and stalked up towards them. A shot from my rifle, at a long distance (I did not venture too close), acted on the trees and stones as powerfully as the fiddle of Orpheus, but with the contrary effect; for the tree disappeared, and the stones and logs, instead of running after me, ran in the opposite direction. I never was more astonished in my life; for so complete was the deception, that even up to the time I fired, I could have declared the objects before me were vegetable or mineral—anything, indeed, but animal. The cunning rascals who represented stones were lying flat, with their little round shields placed before them as screens.”
The presents brought by the obliging Obsabius were a supply of food—corn and honey—for there was considerable hunger in the Happy Valley just then, the chase being unproductive, and the natives having fled from the apprehension of a tax-gathering visit from the troops of the extortionate Oubi. Abstinence, however, is a good thing in that climate, and Mr Parkyns never felt himself better than during this tolerably long period of semi-starvation. He was never fatigued, and wounds of all kinds healed with wonderful rapidity. He led a rough life in that frontier country, and wounds were common enough. “Once, in running down the stony and almost precipitous path leading to the Mareb, I struck my bare foot against an edge of rock, which was as sharp as a razor, and a bit of flesh, with the whole of the nail of my left foot little toe, was cut off, leaving only the roots of the nail. This latter I suppose to have been the case, for it has grown all right again. I could not stop longer than to polish off the bit which was hanging by a skin, for we were in chase of a party of Barea, who had cut the throats of three of Waddy Hil’s nephews the night before, but was obliged to go on running for about twenty miles that afternoon, the greater part of the way up to our ankles in burning sand. Whether this cured it, I know not, but I scarcely suffered at all from it the next day, and forgot it the day after.” Thorns in the feet—no trifling prickles, but three or four inches long—were picked out by the half-dozen at a time; and such, says Mr Parkyns, is the force of habit and the thickness of skin one acquires, that such an operation is thought no more of than an English sportsman would of kicking away a clod of clay clinging to his shooting-shoes. But to return to the Barea. Oubi remained nearly two months in their country, which he completely traversed—so completely, indeed, as to have unintentionally (?) committed depredations on certain tribes to the north, claimed as tributary by the Egyptians. Although good fighting men, the Bàza have too little idea of united action, and are too ignorant of modern improvements in the art of slaughter, to make head against their Abyssinian enemies when these take the field in force. Their idea of cavalry is very ludicrous. They imagine them to be old or infirm men, carried by horses because they cannot keep up with their comrades on foot! “So in their campaigns, whenever the Bàza are met by cavalry, they amuse themselves at their expense by facetiously plucking handfuls of grass and holding them towards the horses, and calling them ‘Tish, Tish,’ &c. They appear never able to understand how the firearms of their adversaries kill them. Occasionally it has been noticed that when a man has fallen among them by a gun-shot wound, his neighbours will assist him up, imagining him to have stumbled; should life be extinct, they manifest their astonishment at finding him dead from some unseen cause, and when, on examining his body, they discover the small round hole made by the ball, they will stare at it, poke their fingers into it, and absolutely laugh with surprise and wonder.” Notwithstanding these artless ways, the Bàza are ugly customers in a hand-to-hand tussle—one of them usually proving more than a match for two Abyssinians, and Mr Parkyns relates several anecdotes illustrative of their physical superiority. But we feel desirous to take a glance at his town life, which has even greater novelty than his chapters of wild adventure, and so we return with him to Adoua, whither he went to pass the rainy season when he left Rohabaita. He waited several months for Oubi’s consent to his installation as governor; but before it arrived he received long-expected supplies from England, and abandoned his ambitious and philanthropical schemes—unfortunately for the Rohabaitese, to the improvement of whose physical and moral condition they tended, and fortunately for the Barea, against whom he proposed to organise a system of moss-trooping, to result in much profit in ivory and buffalo hides.
The delay of remittances from Europe rendering it probable that Mr Parkyns would be detained for some time in Abyssinia, he resolved completely to domesticate himself with the natives, as the best way of studying their habits and mode of life. This he seems to us to have done from the very commencement; for, as he justly observes, “there is nothing like a civil tongue, and quiet unpretending manners, to get one on in those countries;” so, upon principle, he always showed himself ready to answer questions, and to do the amiable, and even to put up with savage familiarities and intrusions, which he would gladly have dispensed with: as, for instance, during his stay at Addaro, a village of Addy Abo, formerly an important market, but now decayed and almost deserted. It was there that he first saw the snake-killing secretary bird, called Farras Seytan, or the Devil’s Horse, from the astonishing swiftness with which it runs. He was the first white man who had ever entered the place, with the exception of two French medical men, who had passed through some years previously on their way to the Mareb, and one of whom was carried off by fever, and the other by a crocodile, “picked out by the voracious animal from the colour of his skin, whilst swimming between two guides.” So a white skin was a great curiosity in Addaro; and here we come to a plate representing Mr Parkyns reclining on a settle, receiving perpetual visitors, whilst he jots down in his journal the following memoranda:—“Blessed with a swarm of bees that have lodged in the house. They have stung me several times; but I can bear that, especially as they have also stung some of my importunate visitors, who, by this means, are kept away. In fact, the only method I have to rid myself of my friends is to stir up the bees—to rid myself of the bees, I am obliged to stir up the fire, which is kept burning all day for the cooking; but, by the time the bees are gone, the hut is intolerable. Fancy a roaring fire, and lots of smoke, at noon in one of the hottest places in Abyssinia.” His visitors were of a mixed description, and not all of agreeable aspect; and, upon the whole, they bothered him no little with their interminable questionings, attempts to extort presents, and squabbles amongst themselves; but it would have been impolitic to turn them out, except by the indirect agency of the bees; and, moreover, he seems to possess one of those even, insouciant tempers, hard to ruffle, which we take to be a prime requisite for a man who sojourns amongst savages, and without which he certainly would not have been able to say, at the end of his second volume, that, during nine years’ travel, he never met with a companion, of whatsoever colour, station, or religion, who gave him a moment’s cause to quarrel with him, or from whom he parted otherwise than with regret. Far be it from us to doubt the word of Mr Parkyns; but we would ask him if he really grieved at relinquishing the society of an elderly warrior—his “friend,” he calls him—who sat close to him at Addaro, looking over him as he wrote, and begging to be set down in his book? “His name is Welda Georgis. He is naturally very ugly; nor is his appearance at all improved by the want of his nose, which he says he lost in battle. He cannot speak at all without stopping the holes with his fingers; hence his voice, especially when he speaks loud, is, as may be judged, not the most harmonious; and just now he is raising it to a considerable pitch, being excited to wrath by one of his companions insinuating that he was never but in one battle, and that then he ran away before a blow had been struck.” An imputation not to be borne; and, accordingly, in the plate we see Welda Georgis and the other gentleman engaged in single combat upon the floor. Presently Mr Parkyns is disturbed in his writing by a bang, by a scream from a woman who is boiling a pot (a child in a bag on her back), and by a “Wa!” from Welda Georgis, who, ignorant of the dangers of a little knowledge, has been retailing to his friends instructions he had received the day before in the art of cocking double-barrelled pistols. He had cocked both barrels, but had pulled the left trigger whilst holding the right hammer. A gourdful of capsicum paste and a corn-jar were mortally wounded, but no other damage was done. Welda laid down the weapon, which he evidently suspected of foul play, looked gravely at it, and apostrophised it as “a naughty devil!” Easy-going Mr Parkyns took all these trifles with an excellent grace, as became a man of strong nerves, who had gone out to rough it, and who had no desire to leave his bones in Abyssinia, or to have his physical integrity in any way deteriorated. He smilingly put up with intruders, and even with spies. He could not go out for a walk without being followed. There is a notion abroad in those parts that Europeans make money. This was confirmed, in the case of Mr Parkyns, by his happening to have a great many new dollars. When he put one in circulation, the receiver would exclaim, “Wa! this is only just made; see how it shines!” So somebody always accompanied him, when he strolled out with his gun, under pretence of showing him game, but in reality to watch his motions, thinking to catch him in the very act of coining. It does not appear that these scouts took much by their curiosity. “I often retire to the neighbouring hills” (thus runs one of the brief verbatim quotations from his journal, occasionally given by Mr Parkyns) “when about to take an observation, or for some other reason wishing to be undisturbed, and seek out some snug little nook or corner amongst the rocks. Scarcely, however, have I time to make my preliminary arrangements, when, looking up, I find two or three heads curiously peering into my retreat, fully persuaded that they are about to behold the entire process of extracting dollars from the earth, ready stamped with the august head of her Imperial Majesty. Sometimes they were most laughably disappointed in their expectations.” All this was at an early period of Mr Parkyns’ abode in the country; the natives had not got used to him, and he had not yet become a complete Abyssinian; and, as we have already seen, Addaro is an out-of-the-way place, where whites are rare. To see him to advantage, we must accompany him to Adoua, notwithstanding that he tells us he was less happy there, and exerted himself less to write down what he observed, than “in the more genial solitude of the backwoods;” the reason being, that “Adoua is a capital (!), though a small one; and in all capitals, whether great or small, I feel out of my element, losing at once my health, spirits, and energy and disposition for work.” The force of imagination, the magic of a name, can hardly farther go. Let us see what were the employments and pursuits of this wild man of the woods in the village metropolis of Tigrè, in which the houses of the wealthy are square and flat-roofed, whilst those of the poorer classes have a conical thatch of straw. They seem to have consisted in noting native peculiarities, in taking part in native banquets and merry-makings, and in setting the fashion to Young Abyssinia. It is time, by the by, that we should say a word of his intimate friend, Shetou, a fine fellow and daring soldier, but no favourite with his father, Oubi, who took every opportunity of snubbing him, and showed a marked preference for his puny elder brother, Lemma. “Shetou has rather a slang way of dressing, which greatly offends his father. Sometimes he comes in with one leg of his trousers drawn up in the proper manner above his calf, and the other dangling down about his ankle. On such an occasion, it would not be at all extraordinary should Oubi, after looking at him fixedly, and in his usual quiet smiling manner, begin, in the presence of all assembled, ‘Well done, son of a Mahommedan mother! Pretty way of wearing your breeches, isn’t it? Some new fashion of your own, eh?’ And, turning to the agafari (doorkeepers), ‘Turn him out! turn him out!’ The poor lad is put out in the most neck-and-crop manner, and, returning to his tent, he broods over this treatment, and vows vengeance on his brother, Lemma, who, from being the favourite, is partly the cause of it.” A prince of the blood-royal must naturally feel incensed at being ignominiously ejected from the court of his despotic dad, for no greater offence than the fanciful sit of his breeks. But whose fault is it? No one’s, if not that of Mr Parkyns, the Brummel of that foreign court, the promoter of all manner of sartorial extravagances and innovations. “This” (a particular cut of trouser) “was considered so very ultra-fashionable that, except Dejatch Shetou, myself, and one or two others, few dared attempt it. It was I and my friend Shetou who first introduced the habit of allowing the sword to swing perpendicularly from the side, instead of its sticking out horizontally, like a dog’s tail; as well as of wearing the belt over the hips, instead of round the waist, and up to the armpits, as it was worn when I first arrived. These, with the increased length of trousers, reaching, as we wore them, nearly to the ankle, and so tight below that it took an hour to draw them over the heel, gave a very ‘fast’ look.” Mr Parkyns has immortalised his name in Tigrè, and will be spoken of with admiration by future generations, to whom his fame will be handed down by the dandies to whom he set so bright an example. The incompatibility of cleanliness and elegance in Abyssinia rather shocks our European prejudices. The great “go,” we are told, amongst the dandies in those parts, is “to appear in the morning with a huge pot of butter (about two ounces) placed on the top of the head, which, as it gradually melts in the sun, runs over the hair, down the neck, over the forehead, and often into the eyes, thereby causing much smarting.” The grease is wiped from the brow and eyes with the quarry or cloth, a garment compared by Mr Parkyns to the Roman toga, and which it is the fashion to wear dirty, a clean one being considered “slow.” But the town life of the young fashionables of rank in the chief cities of Abyssinia, may best be summed up and exhibited in an extract from Mr Parkyns’ thirty-eighth chapter, where he shows himself to us in all his glory as the D’Orsay of Adoua.
“I was leading,” he says, “the life of an Abyssinian gentleman ‘about town,’ my hair well tressed, my pantaloons always of the newest, frequently of an original cut; in dull weather setting fashions, disputing and deciding on the merits and demerits of shields and spears; in fine weather swelling about the town with a quarter of a pound of butter melting on my head, face, neck, and clothes, and with a tail of half a dozen well-got-up and equally greasy soldiers at my heels; doing the great man, with my garment well over my nose, at every festival and funeral worth attending; ‘hanging out’ extensively when I had a few shillings to spend; sponging on my neighbours when, as was oftener the case, I had nothing;—in fact, living a most agreeable life on a very limited income. I cannot deny that I look back to those times with a certain feeling of regret. It was the only period of my life in which I ever felt myself a really great man. I ‘cry very small’ in England, with a much greater expenditure. The men will not look after me with admiration, nor the girls make songs about me here.”
Poor Parkyns! fallen from your high estate, dwindled from an African savage into an English gentleman! We wretched, civilised Europeans are rather in the nil admirari vein, but we will answer for your being “looked after” with curiosity and wonderment, by all who have read your book, if you will but adopt some distinguishing mark by which you may be recognised when you walk abroad. As to the songs, whose absence you deplore, we can only say that if you are not taken for the subject of romantic ditties by the poetesses of England, as you were by those of Tigrè, it will certainly not be because the theme is unsuggestive. Innumerable incidents in your Abyssinian career deserve to be commemorated in flowing metre, and sung by Ethiopian serenaders to banjo accompaniment, and to the ancient and pathetic melody of “The King of the Cannibal Islands.” And this reminds us to accompany you to one of the festivals you above allude to—a dinner party at Adoua—first advising ladies to have their salts at hand, and permitting squeamish readers to pass over a page if it so please them. Here are a score of Abyssinian gentlemen squatted, sword in hand, on cut grass round a low table. It is perhaps unnecessary to mention that the tablecloth has been forgotten, and that napkins are absent, their place being supplied by cakes of bread, on which the guests wipe their fingers after dipping them in the dish or smearing them with the blood of the raw meat. The cooked dishes are first brought in and their contents distributed by waiters, who cut the meat or tear it with their fingers into pieces of a convenient size. They also take a piece of bread from before each person, sop it in the sauce, and return it to him. “The guests take their bread and sauce and mix them together into a sort of paste, of which they make balls, long and rounded like small black puddings (black enough, we doubt not); these they consider it polite to poke into their neighbours’ mouths; so that, if you happen to be a distinguished character, or a stranger to whom they wish to pay attention, which was often my case, you are in a very disagreeable position; for your two neighbours, one on each side, cram into your mouth these large and peppery proofs of their esteem so quickly, one after the other, that, long before you can chew and swallow the one, you are obliged to make room for the next.” Surely these can hardly be included amongst the “happy moments” Mr Parkyns so pathetically regrets, when recording, towards the close of his work, his tearful parting from his Adoua friends—the first time, he says, since his arrival in the country, that he felt the want of a pocket-handkerchief. Let us, however, proceed with our repast, after a glance at the accompanying plate of the “Dinner Party,” where a favoured guest, with distended jaws, is undergoing the cramming process. This first course, of cooked dishes, is usually mutton; whilst it is being gobbled up, a cow is killed and flayed outside, and as soon as the first course is removed, in comes the raw meat—the broundo, as it is called—brought in by servants in quivering lumps.