Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 by Various

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There are some strange remnants of Judaism still lingering amongst the
tribes of these highland regions. The Galla have a tradition, that their
whole nation will one day be called on to march, _en masse_, and reconquer
Palestine for the return of the Jews. The king of Shoa regards himself as
a direct descendant of the house of Solomon, calls himself king of Israel,
and the national standard bears the motto, "The Lion of the tribe of Judah
hath prevailed." They believe the 45th Psalm to be a prophecy of Queen
Magueda's visit to Jerusalem; whither she was attended by a daughter of
Hiram, king of Tyre. The Jewish prohibitions against the flesh of unclean
animals, are observed by the Abyssinians. The sinew which shrank, and the
eating of which was prohibited to the Israelite, is also prohibited in
Shoa. The Jewish Sabbath is strictly observed. The Abyssinians are said,
by Ludolf, to be the greatest fasters in the world. The Wednesdays and
Fridays are fasts; the forty days before Easter are rigidly observed as a
fast; and from the Thursday preceding Easter till the Sunday, no morsel of
meat is to enter the lips, and the prohibition against drink is equally
rigorous. St Michael and the Virgin Mary are venerated in the highest
degree; St Michael as the leader of the hosts of heaven, and the latter as
the chief of all saints, and queen of heaven and earth, and both as the
great intercessors of mankind.

Like the Jews of old, the Abyssinians weep and lament on all occasions of
death; and the shriek ascends to the sky, as if the soul could be recalled
from the world of spirits. As with the Jews, the most inferior garments
are employed as the weeds of woe; and the skin torn from the temples, and
scarified on the cheeks and breast, proclaims the last extremity of grief.
As the Rabbins believe that angels were the governors of all sublunary
things, the Abyssinians adopt this belief: carrying it even further, they
confidently implore their assistance in all concerns, and invoke and adore
them in a higher degree than the Creator. The clergy enjoy the price of
deathbed confession; and the churchyard is sternly denied to all who die
without the rite, or whose relations refuse the fee and the funeral feast.
Eight pieces of salt are the price of wafting a poor man's soul to the
place of rest, and the feast for the dead places him in a state of
happiness, according to the cost of the entertainment. For the rich, money
procures the attendance of priests, who absolve, and pray continually day
and night. The anniversaries of the deaths of the six kings of Shoa are
held with great ceremony in the capital; and once every twelvemonth,
before a splendid feast, their souls are absolved from all sin.

Major Harris expresses himself ardently and eloquently on the hopes of
commerce which might be maintained by Great Britain with this little-known
but productive part of the world. It is notorious that gold and gold dust,
ivory, ostrich feathers, peltries, spices, wax, and precious gums, form a
part of the lading of every slave caravan; notwithstanding that the
tediousness of the transport, and the penuriousness of the Indian and Arab
merchant, offer but a small compensation for their labour. No quarter of
the globe abounds to a greater extent in vegetable and mineral productions
than tropical Africa; and in the populous, fertile, and salubrious
portions lying immediately north of the equator, the very highest
capabilities are presented for the employment of British capital. Coal has
already been found; cotton, of a quality unrivaled in the whole world, is
every where a weed, and might be cultivated to any extent. The coffee
which is sold in Arabia as the produce of Mocha, is chiefly of wild
African growth; and that species of the tea plant which is used by the
lower orders of the Chinese, flourishes so widely, and with so little care,
that the climate would doubtless be found well adapted for the
higher-flavoured and more delicate species. If, at a very moderate
calculation, a sum falling very little short of a hundred thousand pounds
sterling, can be annually invested in European goods, to supply the wants
of some of the poorer tribes adjacent to Abyssinia, what important results
might not be anticipated from well-directed efforts, adopting the natural
neans of communication in Africa?

Another winter passed--a dreary time for the mission in Ankober. Torrents
rushed down the mountains, every footpath had been converted into a stream,
and every valley into a morass. The season was peculiarly tempestuous; the
heavy white clouds constantly hung on the mountain pinnacles, and the
torrents swelled the Hawash to such an extent, that the land for many
miles on both sides was inundated. There must have been some difficulty in
spending the time of this solitary confinement among the hills; but the
author was well employed in writing his volumes, and engineers were
employed in erecting a Gothic hall, to the great delight of his Abyssinian
majesty. He would allow them to do every thing except paint his
portrait--the national idea being, that whoever takes a likeness,
immediately becomes invested with power over the original. "You are
writing a book," he said. "I know this, because I never enquire what you
are doing that they do not tell me you are using a pen, or gazing at the
heavens. That is a good thing, and it pleases me. You will speak
favourably of myself; but you shall not insert my portrait, as you have
done that of the King of Zingero."

The English had new wonders for him; they shaped planks out of trees in a
fashion new to the Abyssinians, who waste a tree on every plank. "You
English are indeed a strange people," said the king, as he saw the first
plank formed in this economical style. "I do not understand your stories
of the roads dug under rivers, nor of the carriages that gallop without
horses; but you are a strong people, and employ wonderful inventions."

At length the Gothic hall was complete. It may be presumed that nothing
like it was ever seen in Abyssinia before; for the mission not merely
built, but furnished it with couches, ottomans, chairs, tables, and
curtains; doubtless a very showy affair, though we camot exactly
comprehend the author's expression of its being furnished after the manner
of an English cottage ornee. The king, however, was delighted with it. "I
shall turn it into a chapel," said his majesty, patting his chief
ecclesiastic on the back. "What say you to that plan, my father?" As a
last finishing touch, were suspended in the centre hall a series of large
coloured engravings, representing the chase of the tiger in all its
various phases. The domestication of the elephant, and its employment in
war or in the pageant, had ever proved a stumbling block to the king; but
the appearance of the hugest of beasts in his hunting harness struck the
chord of a new idea. "I will have a nunber caught on the Roby," he
exclaimed, "that you may tame then, and that I too may ride on an elephant
before I die!"

Another of those fearful displays of barbarian plunder and havoc took
place at the end of September. Twenty thousand warriors, headed by the
king, made an inroad on the Galla. Those unfortunate people were so little
prepared, that they seem to have been slaughtered without resistance.
Between four and five thousand were butchered, and forty-three thousand
head of cattle were driven off. A thousand captives, chiefly women and
children, were marched in triumph to the capital; but they were soon
liberated, apparently on the remonstrance of the British mission.

But a terrible disaster was to befall the palace and the people. The
dweller amongst mountains must be always exposed to their dilapidation;
and a season of unusual rain, continuing to a much later period than usual,
produced an earth-avalanche.

"As the evening of an eventful night (Dec. 6th) closed in, not a
single breath of wind disturbed the thick fog which brooded over the
mountain. A sensible difference was perceptible in the atmosphere;
but the rain again began to descend, and for hours pelted like the
dischage of a waterspout. Towards morning, a violent thunder storm
careered along the crest of the range, and every rock and cranny
re-echoed from the crash of the thunder. Deep darkness again settled
on the mountains, and a heavy rumbling noise, like the passage of
artillery wheels, as followed by the shrill cry of despair. The earth,
saturated with moisture, had slidden from their steep slopes, houses
and cottages were engulfed in the debris, or shattered to fragments
by the descending masses, and daylight presented a strange scene of
ruin. Perched on the apex of the conical peak, the palace buildings
were now stripped of their palisades, or overwhelmed: the roads along
the hill were completely obliterated. The desolation had spread for
miles along the great range: houses, with their inmates, had been
hurried away."

Before the mission took its departure, it did honour to the character of
its country by one act which alone would have been worth its time and
trouble. The horrid policy of African despotism condemns all the brothers
of the throne to the dungeon, from the moment of the royal accession. The
king had exhibited qualities of a very unexpected order in an African
despot, and, under the guidance of the mission, had made some advances to
justice, and even to clemency. At this period, he was suddenly seized with
an alarming spasmodic disorder, and he apprehended that his constitution,
enfeebled by the habits of his life, was likely to give way. On his
recovery being despaired of by both priests and physicians, he suddenly
sent for the British mission.

"'My children,' said his majesty in a sepulchral voice, as he
extended his burning hand towards them, 'behold I am sore stricken.
Last night they believed me dead, and the voice of mourning had
arisen within the palace walls; but God hath spared me until now.'"

It seems to be the custom for the king's physician to taste the draught
prescribed for him, and an attenpt being made to do this by the British,
the sick monarch generously forbade it.

"'What need is there now of this?' he exclaimed reproachfully. 'Do I
not know that you would administer to Sahela Selasse nothing that
could do him mischief?'"

The reader will probably remember an almost similar act of confidence of
Alexander the Great in his physician. An opportunity was now taken of
urging him to an act of humanity, however strongly opposed to the habits
of the country, and to the interests of the man. It was represented to him
that his uncles and brothers had been immured in a dungeon during the
thirty years of his reign, and that no act could be more honourable to
himself, or acceptable to Heaven, than the extinction of this barbarous
custom.

"'And I will release them,' returned the monarch, after a moment's
debate within himself. 'By the Holy Eucharist I swear, and by the
Church of the Holy Trinity in Koora Gadel, that if Sahela Selasse
arise from this bed of sickness, all of whom you speak shall be
restored to the enjoyment of liberty.'"

Fortunately he did arise from that bed of sickness, and he honourably
determined to keep his promise. The royal captives were seven, and the
British mission were summoned to see their introduction into the presence.
They had been so exhausted by long captivity, that at first they seemed
scarcely to comprehend freedom. They had been manacled, and spent their
time in the fabrication of harps and combs, of which they brought
specimens to lay at the feet of their monarch. This touching interview
concluded with a speech of the king to the embassy--

"'My children, you will write all that you have seen to your country,
and will say to the British Queen, that, though 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.'"

We have thus given a rapid and bird's-eye view of a work, which we regard
as rivaling in interest and importance any "book of travels" of this
century. The name of Abyssinia was scarcely more than a recollection,
connected with the adventurous ramblings of Bruce, for the romantic
purpose of discovering the source of the Nile. His narrative had also been
wholly profitless--attracting public curiosity in a remarkable degree at
he time, no direct foundation of European intercourse was laid, and no
movement of European traffic followed. But giving Bruce all the credit,
which was so long denied him, for fidelity to fact, and for the spirit of
bold adventure which he exhibited in penetrating a land of violence and
barbarism, the mission of Major Harris at once establishes its object on
more substantial grounds. It is not a private adventure, but a public act,
rendered natural by the circumstances of British neighbourhood, and
important for the opening of Abyssinia and central Africa to the greatest
civilizer which the world has ever seen--the commerce of England. There
are still obvious difficulties of transit, between the coast and the
capital, by the ordinary route. But if the navigation of the Gochob, or
the route from Tajura, should once be secured, the trade will have
commenced, which in the course of a few years will change the face of
Abyssinia; limit, if not extinguish, that disgrace of human nature--the
slave trade; and, if not reform, at least enlighten, the clouded
Christianity of the people.

As the author was commissioned, not merely as a discoverer, but a
diplomatist, it is to be presumed that on many interesting points he
writes under the restraints of diplomatic reserve. But he has told us
enough to excite our strong interest in the beauty, the fertility, and the
capabilities of the country which he describes; and more than enough to
show, that it is almost a British duty to give the aid of our science, our
inventions, and our principles, to a monarch and a people evidently
prepared for rising in the scale of nations.

We have a kind of impression, that some general improvement is about to
take place in the more neglected portions of the world, and that England
is honoured to be the chief agent in the great work. Africa, which has
been under a _ban_ for so many thousand years, may be on the eve of relief
from the misery, lawlessness, and impurity of barbarism; and we are
strongly inclined to look upon this establishment of British feeling, and
intercourse in Abyssinia, as the commencement of that proud and fortunate
change. All attempts to enter Africa by the western coast have failed. The
heat, the swamps, the rank vegetation, and the unhealthy atmosphere, have
proved insurmountable barriers. The north is fenced by a line of burning
wilderness. But the east is open, free, fertile, and beautiful. A British
factory in Abyssinia would be not merely a source of infinite comfort to
the people, by the communication of European conveniences and manufactures,
but a source of light. British example would teach obedience and loyalty
to the laws, subordination on the part of the people, and mercy on that of
the sovereign.

But we have also another object, sufficiently important to determine our
Government in looking to the increase of our connexion with Eastern Africa.
It is certainly a minor one, but one which no rational Government can
undervalue. The policy of the present French King is directed eminently to
the extension of commercial influence in all countries. To this policy,
none can make objection. It is the duty of a monarch to develop all the
resources of his country; and while France exerts herself only in the
rivalry of peace, her advance is an advance of all nations. But her
extreme attention, of late years, to Africa, ought to open our eyes to the
necessity of exertion in that boundless quarter. On the western coast, she
had long fixed a lazy grasp; but that grasp is now becoming vigorous, and
extending hour by hour. Her flag flies at Golam, 250 miles up the Senegal.
She has a settlement at Gori; she has lately established a settlement at
the mouth of the Assinee, another at the mouth of the Gaboon, and is on
the point of establishing another in the Bight of Benin; when she will
command all Western Africa.

She is not less active on the eastern shore. At Massawah, on the coast of
Abyssinia, she is fast monopolizing the trade in gold and spices. She has
purchased Edh, and is endeavouring to purchase Brava. Her attention to
_Northern_ Abyssinia is matter of notoriety, and we must regard this
system, not so much with regard to advantages which such possessions might
give to ourselves, as to their prejudice to us in falling into rival hands.
The possession of Algeria should direct the eye of Europe to the ulterior
objects of France; the first change of masters in Egypt, must be looked to
with national anxiety; and the transmission of the great routes of Africa
into her hands, must be guarded against with a vigilance worthy of the
interests of England and Europe.

If the river shall be found navigable to any extent, what an opening is
thus presented to both the Merchant and the philanthropist; a soil
surpassed by none in the world, a climate varying only 1º in the mean
temperature of summer and winter, and presenting an average of 55-1/2º,
and a population who could hardly fail to feel the advantages of commerce
and civilization. From such a point as Aden offers, access is promised to
the very heart of Africa, and thence to the sources of the mighty rivers
which find an outlet on the western side of the continent; thus not merely
benefiting the British merchant in a remarkable degree, but rapidly
abolishing the slave trade, by giving employment to the people, wealth to
the native trader, and a new direction to the powers of the country and
the mind of its unhappy population.

On the whole consideration of the subject, we feel convinced, that Eastern
Africa is the safe and the natural point for British enterprise; that it
is the most direct and effective point for the extinction of the cruel
traffic in human flesh; and that it is the most promising and productive
point for the establishment of that substantial connexion with the
governments of the interior, which alone can be regarded as worth the
attention of the statesman.

Insignificant stations on the coast, to carry on a peddling traffic, are
beneath a manly and comprehensive policy. We must penetrate the mountains,
ascend the rivers, and reach the seats of sovereignty. We must, by a large
and generous self-interest, combine the good, the knowledge, and the
virtue of the population with our own; and we must lay the foundation of
our permanent influence over this fourth of the globe, by showing that we
are the fittest to communicate the benefits, and establish the example of
civilized society.

To those who desire to go into more minute details, we recommend an
accompanying volume by the missionaries Isenberg and Krapf--the latter of
whom acted as interpreter to the embassy. A capital geographical memoir is
also given by Mr M'Queen, the well-known African geographer.

On the whole, it is highly gratifying to our respect for British
soldiership; to see works of this rank proceeding from our military men.
They have great opportunities, and may thus render national services in
peace, not less important than their enterprise in war. The East India
Company offers inducements of the most important order, to the
accomplishment and scientific activity of its officers; and Major Harris
must feel the distinction of having been selected for a mission of such
interest, as well as the high gratification of having conducted it to so
benevolent, solid, and satisfactory a close.

* * * * *

A WORD OR TWO OF THE OPERA-TIVE CLASSES.

BY LORGNON.

"Vai, ch'avete gl'intelletti sani,
Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde,
Sotto queste coperte, alte e profonde!"--BERNI.

In the course of social transition, professions, like dogs, have their day.
A calling honourable in one century, becomes infamous in the next; and
vocations grow obsolete, like the fashioning of our garments or figures of
speech. In barbarous communities, the strong man is king:--

"Le premier roi fut un soldat heureux."

Where human statute is beginning to prize the general weal, the legist is
of high account, and the priest paramount. Higher civilization engenders
the influence of the man of letters, the artist, the dramatist, the wit,
the poet, and the orator. Or when, with a wisdom surpassing the philosophy
of the schools, we tumble down to prose, and assume the leathern apron of
the utilitarian--the civil engineer, or operative chemist, starts up into
a colossus. Sir Humphrey Davy, and Sir Isambert Brunel, are the true
knights of modern chivalry; and Sir Walter--our Sir Walter--never showed
himself more shrewd than in his exclamation to Moore--"Ah, Tam!--it's
lucky, man, we cam' sae soon!" Great as was his influence, equaling that
of the other two great Sir Walters, Manny and Raleigh, in their several
epochs of valour and enterprise, it is likely enough, that, if born a
century later, the MSS. of the Scotch novels would have been chiefly
valuable to light the furnace of some factory!

So much in exposition of the fact, that, so long as the world possessed
only three of what we choose to call quarters, an executioner was an
officer of state; and that, now it possesses five, the female of highest
renown, and greatest power of self-enrichment, is the _danseuse_, or
opera-dancer!

Many intermediary callings have disappeared. The domestic chaplain of a
lordly household is now nearly as superfluous as its archers or falconers;
and the court calendars of former reigns record a variety of places and
perquisites, which, did they still exist, would be unpalatable to modern
courtiers, though compelled to earn their daily cakes, however dirty. Just
as the last golden pippin of the house of Crenie was preserved in wax for
the edification of posterity, a watchman has been deposited, with his
staff and lantern, in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, or the Museum of the
Zoological, or United Service Club, or some other of your grand national
collections, as a specimen of the extinct Dogberry or Charley of the
eighteenth century; and in process of time, as much and more also will
probably be done to a parish beadle, a theatrical manager, a lord
chamberlain--and other public functionaries whom it might not be
altogether safe to enumerate.

Among them, however, there is really some satisfaction in hinting at the
hangman!--For, hear it, ye sanguinary _manes_ of our ancestors:--"_Les
bourreaux s'en vont!_" Executioners are departing! We shall shortly have
to commemorate in our obituaries, and signalize by the hands of our
novelists--"the last of the Jack Ketches." In these days of
ultra-philanthropy, the hangman scarcely finds salt to his porridge, or
porridge to salt.

_Exempli gratia_. In the course of last year, a patient of the lower class
was admitted into the lunatic ward of the public hospital at Marseilles,
whose malady seemed the result of religious depression. In that
supposition, the usual means of relief were resorted to, and he was at
length discharged as convalescent; when, to attest the perfectness of his
cure, he went and hanged himself! A _proces verbal_ was, as usual, made
out, and the supposed fanatic proved to be the ex-executioner of Lyons!
Tender-hearted people instantly ascribed his melancholy to qualms of
conscience. But it appeared in evidence, that, since the accession of the
citizen king, the trade of the hangman had become a dead failure; and the
disconsolate bankrupt was accordingly forced to take French leave of a
world wherein _bourreaux_ can no longer turn an honest penny!

Yet, less than three centuries ago, his predecessors were men of mark and
consideration. Our own King Hal took more heed of his executioner than of
half the counties over whose necks his axe was suspended; while Louis XI.,
a _legitimate_ sovereign of France, used to dip in the dish with Tristan
Hermite and Olivier le Dain. A few reigns later, and the hangman of the
French metropolis (who shares with its diocesan the honour of being styled
"Monsieur de Paris") was respected as the most accomplished in Europe. The
treasons of its civil wars had created so many executions, that a Gascon,
wishing to prove that his father had been beheaded as a nobleman, instead
of hanged like a dog or a citizen, asserted the decollation to have been
so expertly executed _en Greve_, that the sufferer was unconscious of his
end. "Shake yourself," exclaimed the executioner; and, on his lordship's
making the attempt, his head rolled into the dust.

This adroitness was the result of competition. In that day there were
degrees of hangmen, and promotion might be accomplished. Not only had the
king his executioner, and the Lorraines theirs--the court and the
city--the abbot of St Germain des Pres--the abbot of this, and the abbot
of that--but various communities and Signories, having right of life and
death over their vassals, kept an executioner for purposes of domestic
torture, as they kept a seneschal to carve their meats; or as people now
keep a _chef_ or a_ maitre d'hotel_. In those excellent olden times of
Europe, hangmen, doubtless, carried about written characters from lord to
lord, certifying their experience with rope and axe--branding-iron and
thong. So long as the Inquisition afforded constant work for able hands, a
good hangman out of place must have been a treasure! Had there been
register-offices or newspaper advertisements, there probably would have
appeared--

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