“There is usually a piece of meat to every five or six persons, among whom arises some show of ceremony as to which of them shall first help himself; this being at length decided, the person chosen takes hold of the meat with his left hand, and with his sword or knife cuts a strip a foot or fifteen inches long from the part which appears the nicest and tenderest. The others then help themselves in like manner. If I should fail in describing properly the scene which now follows, I must request the aid of the reader’s imagination. Let him picture to himself thirty or forty Abyssinians, stripped to their waists, squatting round the low tables, each with his sword or knife or ‘shotel’ in his hand, some eating, some helping themselves, some waiting their turn, but all bearing in their features the expression of that fierce gluttony which one attributes more to the lion or leopard than to the race of Adam. The imagination may be much assisted by the idea of the lumps of raw pink-and-blue flesh they are gloating over.”
Some still more full-flavoured details follow, which we abstain from extracting, thinking we can fill up the space remaining to us better than by their transcription, and referring those curious in such matters to chapter xxvii., “Manners and Customs,” where they will see how the pepperballs already spoken of are got rid of by those into whose mouths they are thrust, how boys lie under the table and act as scavengers, and how Mr Parkyns expresses his belief that raw meat, eaten whilst yet warm, would be preferred to cooked meat by any man who from childhood had been accustomed to it. In the chapter headed “Religion, &c.,” which “&c.” comprises a variety of strange things, we are told of “a small entertainment” he gave to a select party of friends on the occasion of the great festival of Mascal or the Cross, a season celebrated, like Christmas in England, by hospitality and good cheer. He sent out his cards for an early hour, knowing that his guests would have several other feeds to attend in the course of the day. But when he had done this, his conscience smote him, for he reflected that, with half a dozen other breakfasts and dinners in view, his friends would but take the sharp edge off their appetites in his wigwam, and husband their masticatory and digestive powers for the subsequent banquets. “My rather savage feelings of hospitality,” he says, “were piqued at the idea of their leaving me without being well filled. But truly I was agreeably disappointed; for a fine fat cow, two large sheep, and many gallons of mead, with a proportionate quantity of bread, disappeared like smoke before the twelve or fourteen guests, leaving only a few pickings for the servants.” Mr Parkyns met several of these hungry gentlemen at other dinners in the course of the same day, and was utterly confounded to observe that most of them played as good a knife and fork (we mean sabre and fingers) at every ensuing repast as they had done at his. The capacity of an Abyssinian stomach is evidently incalculable.
The 19th and 37th chapters of Mr Parkyns’ work are amongst those that please us best. In the earlier of the two he is on his way from Axum to Addàro, across a vast open plain, embellished with a great variety of flowers; amongst them a kind of scarlet aloe, met with in most parts of Tigrè, and flowering at all seasons, and countless mimosas, pink, yellow, and white, some of them so fragrant as to scent the whole neighbourhood, adding their perfume to that of a profusion of jessamine. “There is also a beautiful parasitical creeper, growing, like the mistletoe, from the bark of other trees. It has a bright dark-green fleshy leaf, with brilliant scarlet flowers.” But Mr Parkyns is not much of a botanist; zoology, and especially ornithology, are his favourite pursuits, and, a capital shot, he bagged as many specimens as he chose. “Rifle-shooting,” he modestly says, “was about the only thing in the world I could do well.” The was is to be deplored. It is thus accounted for. Near Addàro, a hunter, either accidentally or mischievously, set fire to the jungle. Mr Parkyns was then staying in a hamlet, situated on a small hill. It consisted but of three compounds, one of which he and his servants occupied; another was inhabited by a farmer named Aito Hablo, with his wife and family; and in the third dwelt a cast-off wife and children of the same Aito. Divorces are not difficult to obtain in that country. One morning, all hands were roused by the crackling of flames close at hand. The hillock was surrounded by fire, gradually creeping up the slope. The huts were roofed with sticks and straw, and the ground was covered with long dry grass. There was no time to lose. Tearing down green boughs from the trees, the men, whilst the women and children lit counterfires upon the plan usually adopted in such cases, “made rushes at the flames, whenever a lull of the wind allowed them to approach them, and, by beating them with the boughs, in some measure impeded their progress till the space was cleared and the huts were out of danger. I and one of my servants happened to rush at the fire at an unlucky moment; for a breeze rising drove the flames towards us just as we got near them, and we were badly scorched.” Besides other injuries, the optic nerve of Mr Parkyns’ right eye was damaged, and this spoiled his rifle-shooting. “Formerly,” he says, “I managed occasionally to shoot from my left shoulder—a habit which I found useful in stalking, as in some positions you must necessarily expose yourself before you can bring your right shoulder forward. Now that I am obliged to trust to my left alone, I find it a very poor substitute for the right.” Even after this unlucky accident, however, we find Mr Parkyns very dexterously picking off bird and beast, to supply his table or enrich his collection. He tells some capital sporting anecdotes, and others, equally good, of his queer pets, and of his experience amongst the monkeys. About half-way across the mimosa-scented plain, he came to a well-wooded ravine, the trees in which swarmed with the “tota” or “waag,” a beautiful little greenish-grey monkey, with black face and white whiskers, which allows men to approach very near to it. But the cleverest of this class of animals met with in Abyssinia is the Cynocephalus, or Dog-faced Baboon, a formidable animal, of extraordinary sagacity, to which it is really difficult to refuse the possession of reasoning powers. Mr Parkyns sketches these creatures on a foray. “Arrived at the corn-fields, the scouts took their position on the eminences all around, whilst the remainder of the tribe collect provisions with the utmost expedition, filling their cheek-pouches as full as they can hold, and then tucking the heads of corn under their armpits. Now, unless there be a partition of the collected spoil, how do the scouts feed? for I have watched them several times, and never observed them to quit for a moment their post of duty till it was time for the tribe to return, or till some indication of danger induced them to take to flight.” Outlying one night on the frontier, Mr Parkyns was roused by most awful noises, and started up in alarm, thinking the Barea were upon him. It was but the baboons. A leopard had got amongst them. They habitually dwell in lofty clefts of the rock, whither few animals can follow them; but the leopard is a good climber, and sometimes attacks them. The Abyssinians say that he seldom ventures to attack a full-grown ape—and, judging from the formidable canine teeth displayed in the skull sketched by Mr Parkyns, the leopard is in the right. Driven to stand at bay, these baboons are dangerous opponents, but they have not sufficient courage to act on the offensive. “Were their combativeness proportioned to their physical powers, coming as they do in bodies of two or three hundred, it would be impossible for the natives to go out of the village except in parties, and armed; and, instead of little boys, regiments of armed men would be required to guard the corn-fields. I have, however, frequently seen them turn on dogs, and have heard of their attacking women whom they have accidentally met alone in the roads or woods. On one occasion I was told of a woman who was so grievously maltreated by them, that, although she was succoured by the opportune arrival of some passers-by, she died a few days after, from the fright and ill-treatment she had endured.” We are reminded of Sealsfield’s striking Mexican sketch of the zambos. Mr Parkyns had a female dog-face as a pet. She was young when he got her; and, from the first, her affection for him was ludicrously annoying. As she grew older she was less dependent, and cared less about being left alone. The master of a German brig who went up the country for a cargo of animals, gave Mr Parkyns a copy of “Peter Simple.” Besides the Bible and the “Nautical Almanack,” this, he says, was the first English book he had seen for two years, and he sat down greedily to devour it. “‘Lemdy’ was as usual seated beside me, at times looking quietly at me, occasionally catching a fly, or jumping on my shoulder, endeavouring to pick out the blue marks tattooed there.” The group is suggestive for a sculptor; a thousand pities no Abyssinian Canova was at hand to model it. Mr Parkyns went to light his pipe, imprudently leaving the book and the monkey together. On his return he found the latter seated in his place, and gravely turning over the leaves of Marryat’s novel; but, not understanding English, she turned them too quickly, and had torn out half the volume. “During my momentary absences she would take up my pipe and hold it to her mouth till I came back, when she would restore it with the utmost politeness.” At Khartoum, some time after the termination of his Abyssinian wanderings, Mr Parkyns became very intimate with three large monkeys of this intelligent species, and with their showman—“so much so, that I travelled with them for some days, acting as his assistant, my duty being to keep the ring, which I did by gracefully swinging round me two wooden balls covered with red cloth, and fastened, one at each end, to a rope similarly ornamented—and occasionally to assist the monkeys in collecting coppers. I passed a very agreeable time with him, and he told me many anecdotes of monkeys, as well as the usual tales of ghouls, fire-worshippers, &c., for which all Egyptians, especially of his erratic habits, are celebrated.” If this be not a joke—and there is no reason to take it for one, since Mr Parkyns, who is a sort of African Gil Blas (only more scrupulous in certain respects than his Spanish prototype), was evidently, at that time of his life, eccentric and adventurous enough to adopt on the instant any wild freak that entered his head—we hope to have a more detailed account of his association with the showman when he favours us with the narrative of his post-Abyssinian travels, not forgetting the anecdotes of monkeys (he tells two or three very good ones), and the traditions of ghouls and fire-worshippers. We are sure that he must there have materials for at least one long chapter; and we feel particular curiosity about the traditions, because the supernatural seems to partake, in tropical Africa, of the strange, fantastical, exaggerated character of the animal and vegetable productions of the country. Extraordinary stories are there current of tribes of monsters, semi-human, dwelling in the unexplored parts of the country—such as the Beni-Kelb or Dog-men (mentioned by Werne), “whose males are dogs, and females beautiful women; and the Beni-Temsah (sons of the crocodile), who have human bodies, but heads like those of their ancestor’s family. I have heard of the former of these nations in almost every country I have visited in Africa, from Egypt to the White Nile, including Kordofan and Abyssinia, and even in Arabia, whither their fame has been carried, doubtless, by pilgrims. They are, by most, believed to exist near the Fertit country (south of Darfour), where there are copper-mines, and the people of which file their teeth to points, saw-fashion.... There is no tribe in this part of Africa, indeed scarcely an individual, but believes in the existence of a race of men with tails. For my own part, I have heard so much of them that I can scarcely help fancying there must be some foundation for such very general belief.” Great diversity of opinion exists as to the whereabouts of these tail-bearers, some placing them to the north, others to the south of Bàza, and others in the centre of Africa—convenient, because unexplored. A black Fàky or priest, a speculative genius, whose acquaintance Mr Parkyns made in Abyssinia, gave him some information about his future route across Africa, and warned him against certain cannibal tribes south of Darfour, by whom white meat, being a rarity, is much esteemed, as having a fat delicate look. “He told me that a brown man, a Mahommedan priest, who went there from his country, in the hope of converting the people to Islamism, was—though protected from actual danger by his sanctity—a very tempting object among them, so much so, that whenever he went out the little children came about him, poking him with their fingers in the ribs, feeling his arms and legs, and muttering to one another, ‘Wa-wa, wa-wa!’ (meat, meat), with their mouths watering, and their features expressive of the greatest possible inclination to taste him.” We will back Mr Parkyns against the field for the humorous dressing-up of extravagant stories of this kind, and for an occasional dash of dry comical exaggeration, too obvious to mislead. His choice of pet animals was rather of the strangest. For some time he kept a “tokla” (Canis venaticus), which was as nearly tame as its wild vicious nature admitted.
“In appearance Tokla was more curious than beautiful. He had a little lean body, which no feeding could fatten, covered with a darkish brindly-spotted coat not unlike a hyena’s, and supported by legs as unlike those of any other animal as possible, being in colour white, with dark leopard spots, the hind-legs remarkably long, and so doubled under him that when walking, or rather prowling about, it was doubtful if he touched the ground oftenest with his feet or elbows.... To account for his perpetual thinness, it only requires to state his mode of feeding. He would take a huge piece of meat or offal, and put it into his stomach at once, seemingly entire, for he never appeared aware that his wonderfully muscular jaws and double row of teeth were at all available for mastication. Having thus bolted his dinner, his belly became distended till it nearly touched the ground; then he would go and lie down for twenty-four hours or more, according to the quantity he had eaten; after which he would return to be fed, as empty and starved-looking as ever.”
A useful, profitable, and agreeable inmate must the said Tokla have been. Mr Parkyns’ regard for him seems to have arisen from a sort of sympathetic feeling for the unflinching pluck and endurance displayed on various occasions by the ill-conditioned little brute. A friend of his, knowing his partiality to pet animals, made him a present of a young jackal, which he had knocked over with a stick, when it was labouring under the effects of a surfeit of locusts. Jackal was hospitably received, and a bed of cotton wool made up for him.
“Rising early one morning, I found that he and Tokla had entered into an alliance most offensive to the fowls, one of whom they had caught, and were dragging about the yard—the one holding by a foot, the other by a wing. The moment I appeared, Cobero (the jackal) let go the fowl and limped back to his corner. Tokla, more determined, I had to beat off, which I did with great difficulty, and not until the poor fowl was so lacerated that I was constrained to kill it. Excited by its death-struggles, he again laid hold; so I held up the fowl with him dangling to its wing until I was tired, and then swung him round and round, over and over, in hopes of his jaws tiring; but in this I was disappointed, for he held on till the wing breaking off threw him heavily on his back to a distance of several yards. Even in his fall he was great, for he neither uttered a sound of pain nor loosened his hold, but, getting up, stalked away quite proudly with the wing in his mouth. I was so much pleased with him that I gave him the body and all. In this, perhaps, I acted wrong, for we afterwards found that if we didn’t kill all the poultry he would, and so I gave up ever keeping any more. Poor little Tokla! I grew very fond of him, for, though rough and ugly, he had such pretty winning ways—he seemed always hungry, and would often bite people’s legs, occasionally my own, not at all from vice, but sheer appetite.”
Upon the whole, life in Abyssinia bears much resemblance to life in a menagerie, so familiar and intrusive are the wild beasts of the field. Hyenas prowl about the villages, and enter houses in quest of a supper. They are far from dainty in their diet, and will eat leathern bags and wearing apparel. “It once occurred to me,” says Mr Parkyns, “as it has often to people I have known, to be awakened by one of them endeavouring to steal my leathern bed from under me.” They are too cowardly to attack anything capable of defence, but occasionally they take a bite out of a sleeper and run away—first scratching him with their paw (so the Abyssinians assert) to be sure that he sleeps soundly, and then snatching their mouthful. As for lions, they frequently prowled around Mr Parkyns’ bivouacs, but were not aggressive, and it was not even necessary to light fires to keep them off. The buffalo-hunters of Rohabaita used, upon the contrary, to light their camp-fires in holes, and conceal their glare with branches of trees, that the blaze might neither scare the buffalo nor bring down the Barea.
“I never killed a lion during all my stay in Africa,” says Mr Parkyns, with meritorious candour—seeing that he might, without fear of contradiction, have set down to his own rifle any number of the kings of the forest. “I perhaps should have done so, had I known what a fuss is made about it at home; but in Abyssinia it is not an easy thing to accomplish.... At night I have often watched for them, but generally without success; and when they did come, it was next to impossible to shoot them. Besides, it is an awkward thing for a man, armed only with a single rifle of light calibre, to take a flying shot at a lion in the dark, especially when he has no one to back him on whose courage or shooting he can rely. You hear a lion roar in the distance; presently a little nearer; then you start up at hearing a short bark close by; and if there be a fire or moonlight, perhaps you may see a light-coloured object gliding quickly past from one bush to another. Before you are sure whether or no you saw anything, it is gone. You sit watching for a moment, rifle in hand, expecting him to appear again, when (how he got there you know not) his roar is heard at a considerable distance off in an opposite direction; and thus you go on for an hour or two, when, getting sleepy, you politely request him to take himself off to a certain warm place, and, returning your rifle between your legs, roll over and go to sleep.”
Long habit and strong reliance on the mansuetude of the Abyssinian lions must, we should think, be indispensable to slumber under such circumstances. We can hardly fancy a man’s being lulled to rest by a lion’s roar, and sinking into one of the deep and heavy sleeps common in that country, with the consciousness that when he awakes he may possibly behold a hyena gallopping off with his cheek in its mouth,[[2]] or find a few scorpions walking over his body, leisurely stinging him. “Scorpions are abundant everywhere in the hot districts; no house but is full of them. I have been stung several times by them, but without any serious consequences, though I have heard of many instances which have ended fatally.” Mr Parkyns, we presume, at once applied the keen blade and actual cautery recommended in his Introduction. What with incidental scars of this kind, his tattoo decorations, and the scars he voluntarily made upon his arm by an Abyssinian process similar to the moxa of European surgery, and which is done by those people partly as ornamental and partly to show their fortitude under pain, his epidermis must have rather a remarkable appearance when exposed by the scantiness of costume in which he informs us that he sometimes travelled—en cueros, namely, when on solitary roads, and with a piece of rag or hide round the loins when in populous districts. We certainly never met with or heard of any traveller who embraced savagery with such earnestness and hearty goodwill as Mr Parkyns; and we sincerely congratulate him upon his escape with trifling detriment from the perils and exposure he not only encountered but enthusiastically sought.
Tigrè is rich in reptiles. Of the extent of this undesirable wealth, a few lines, culled here and there from the chapter on Natural History, will give a vivid idea. “The crocodile is plentiful in every brook or hole where there is water enough to conceal him.” A poor German, who attached himself for a time to Mr Parkyns, and tended him carefully when he was laid up with a terrible attack of ophthalmia, imprudently walked into a river to cool himself, and suddenly disappeared, either sucked in by a whirlpool or carried off by a crocodile—the latter, Mr Parkyns thought, most probably the case; notwithstanding which, we come, a few pages afterwards, to a plate of the bold traveller crossing the same rapid and dangerous stream, aided by half a dozen swimming blacks, and apparently heedless of the fact that crocodiles, like the cannibals south of Darfour, show a decided preference for white meat. “There are many snakes, centipedes, and large venomous spiders, of the tarantula kind, in the hot low districts. There is a great variety in the smaller sort of snakes: the cerastes or horned viper, asp, a species of cobra, the puff adder, and many others of all sizes and colours, from a pale pink to the brightest emerald green, are met with in Abyssinia and the adjacent countries. I was told of a horned serpent that was killed some years ago, which appears to have been a monstrosity, either in reality or in the imagination of my informants. They describe it as about seven feet long, nearly two feet in circumference, with scarcely any diminution towards the tail, and wearing a pair of horns three inches in length. It is commonly reported that dragons, or rather flying lizards of very venomous nature, are to be met with in Walkait.” A pleasant country for pic-nics in the woods. Going one day to shoot at a mark in a long narrow gully close to Rohabaita, where the village wells were, Mr Parkyns had just paced off the distance, and was building a rough target of stones, when his servant started back, and pulled him with him, calling out, “Temen, temen!” (snake). There was a rustling in the jungle that rose abruptly on either side of the watercourse, which was only a few feet wide. Not knowing what temen meant, but supposing it was some wild animal, Mr Parkyns called loudly to his second attendant to bring the gun. “All this passed in a moment’s time; and although only one hundred and fifty yards off, long before the gun arrived I had seen two magnificent boa-constrictors, one about ten yards from the other, quietly leave their places, without attempting to molest us, and ascend the hill, till they were lost in jungle, whither I never cared to pursue them. The first thing I saw after the rustle was a head, which appeared for a moment above the canes, then a body, nearly as thick as my thigh, and then they disappeared, the movement of the canes alone marking the direction they had taken.” What Mr Parkyns says he himself saw we duly credit, whilst fully sharing his intimated incredulity with respect to the winged dragons, and the apocryphal horned monster. Before believing in them, we should like to see them—not, by any means, roaming at large in the state of vigour promoted by their own burning climate, but properly stuffed, or carefully wrapped in flannel and securely caged, in the gardens of the Zoological Society.