The geography of the country—Vegetable Life—Races in Abyssinia—Characteristics of the climate—The origin of the Blue Nile—Government and social features—Abyssinia a feudal monarchy—The fauna of the region—The finest hunting ground in the world—Agriculture and slavery—Relation of Abyssinia to ancient Egypt—Ancient monuments—Traditions of the people—Curious facts about their religion and its history.
THE short epitome which I shall give of the geography, climate, history, and customs of the people of Abyssinia is founded on trustworthy information from those whom I think best informed, and on my own observations. I am greatly indebted for much that is valuable to Monsieur Abbé Duflot, a highly cultivated gentleman who lived in the country for nine years, and mixed socially and as priest with the people.
Abyssinia is a rolling and rugged country ; its mountains are like “ Pelion piled upon Ossa,” with numerous grand plateaus very much like the table-lands of Mexico, from 3000 to 6000 feet above the level of the sea. In a march of eighty miles you ascend 3000 feet to the mountain of Khaya Khor. The ascent is gradual from the coast, but on the other side it is only a step from the top of the mountains down to the level plateau of Gura. The boundaries of Abyssinia are uncertain. Some place them between 8° and 16° N. lat. And 31° and 43° E. lon., and this seems to be the most probable estimate. It claims control of the country contiguous to the Soudan on the one side of Egypt, a vast stretch of country west of the Blue Nile inhabited by the Gallas, a people who do not speak the same language nor profess the same religion, “ consisting of numerous tribes that extend to the Indian Ocean as far as Zanzibar ;” and on the other side of the Equator. Shoa, a large province, is sometimes independent under its own king, who bears the traditional, hereditary name of Menelek. This descendant of King Solomon, as he claims, is now a vassal of King John. Shoa is inhabited by the same people and has the same religion and language as Abyssinia proper. The people are of the original Abyssinian stock, and are naturally a part of the same nation. From this sketch it will be noticed that it is difficult to determine the population of Abyssinia. It is variously estimated to be from five to ten millions. The country is divided into two principal parts. In one are the mountains of Hamzen, Augaie, Angassie, Tigre, Amhara, Semien, Agaos, and Ambas.
One of the finest views in all these mountains is obtained by ascending from the little town of Abbi-Addi, the capital of the province of Tembien, to the summit of the Ambas Mountains, a distance of twenty miles. Here dwell the monks of whom I shall write. These mountains appear to have been terribly shaken by tremendous convulsions of nature. Cut and torn into fantastic shapes, they present to a lively imagination well-nigh every conceivable form—cathedral towers, battlements, castle fronts, and what not—giving to the whole the semblance of some great panorama of nature's creation for the amusement of the looker-on.
There are defiles and gorges, where a handful of resolute men can defy an army, and these natural defences have many a time served the turbulent people well in war and revolution. These mountain defiles have also served the purposes of vengeance on occasion. It was in a fortress here that King John doomed Obei, his rival, to die after his eyes had been put out. In the midst of the mountains lie the beautiful and rich plateaus lying from 2000 to 3000, others from 6000 to 9000 feet above the level of the sea, and having a fine climate.
The other part of the country, in grand contrast to this mountainous region, is made up of the immense plains of Tembien and Shoa, from 1000 to 1500 feet high, and much of them a sandy, burning, and unhealthy region. There is great difference in the people, climate, soil, productions, and animals. In the high lands you find a hardy, bold, and comparatively rich Christian people, of lighter complexion than most other tribes ; handsome, intelligent, and thickly settled in numerous cities and villages. In the lower lands you find a portion of the people Mahometan, with a much darker skin, disposed to be nomadic and turbulent, more scattered, and with fewer villages. It is a country which borders chiefly on the Red Sea, in which also live the Dankils and Taltals. Throughout Abyssinia the productions are in many respects the same, but it is in the low lands that you find cotton and the tropical fruits, such as oranges, bananas, and citrons. It is only here that you see the curious, unsightly, and knotted boab-tree, so often seen in tropical and torrid Africa. It is of immense size, and though its trunk is comparatively stumpy, it takes fifteen men to span it, while it spreads over considerable ground with its enormous and fantastically twisted branches. The bark is rough and warped like the skin of the elephant, and in vegetable life it is what he is in the animal—the grandest production in Africa. Covered by many knobby protuberances which are its succulent matter hardened by the air, its fibrous substance crumbles to dust under the influence of water and air. The vegetation of Africa, like its great deserts, is sombre. Though many of its trees, like the boab, are of great size, in beauty and magnitude they are unlike those of America. Nor are its flowers as varied and beautiful or as highly perfumed as they are in the new world. Natural forms of all kinds are heavy and inelegant ; and the soft, crumbling boab and kolkual take the place of the symmetrical and grand old oak and the tall, graceful fir, with its airy and beautiful nodding plume.
Though there is apparently great diversity of races in Abyssinia, of which we shall speak more fully hereafter, this is the effect of accidental causes and of proximity to the African tribes. It is generally understood among competent ethnologists that the people who inhabit northeastern Africa, called Abyssinians—the Gallas and Somalis and those who have sprung from them, like the Taltals, Adils, and Dankils, and many of the Nubians and Bucharis—belong to one family under the name of Cushites, not limited to Africa, but extending to southern Arabia, even to the Gulf of Omar and the lower Euphrates. In the low lands bordering the Red Sea, from November to March, owing to constant rains, it is comparatively pleasant. For the rest of the year it is without a drop of rain ; there is no breeze, and it is hot and sultry in the extreme, with fatal epidemics. From thirty to forty miles distant, on the table-lands, during the winter months there is no rain, and from its altitude, 3000 to 6000 feet above the level of the sea, this region enjoys the perfection of climate. Beginning in April, there are rains in these table-lands every day, accompanied by thunder and lightning, the sky about two o'clock in the afternoon opening its floodgates, and closing them at five o'clock. The mornings are bright and sunny, the nights clear and brilliantly lighted by glittering stars, of which the Southern Cross is the most resplendent constellation. Though, like Mexico, in the tropics, the climate of a large area, by reason of its altitude, is very temperate and equable. There is no country where one day is so like another, and where there is more of what may be called eternal spring. If this region has any winter, it is our summer. When the sun passes into the northern hemisphere, and sends its rays more perpendicularly, nature so provides that rains come and temper the otherwise burning heat of the tropics. As already stated, the winters are dry, and scarcely a drop of rain ever falls, which makes it the “ poetry of seasons,” better than that of Egypt.
On the plateaus of the interior, for a month before the rains come, there is constant and vivid lightning at night, apparently with a clear sky, and often during both day and night there is rumbling like that of the thunder accompanying an earthquake ; again at times like the discharge of cannon in the distance. Some time before the fighting between the Egyptians and the Abyssinians began, during our campaign, this noise was heard in the direction of Bahr-Rezza, on our line of communication with the coast, and Ratib, the commander of the Egyptian army, listened to its mutterings with great anxiety, thinking it might be caused by the disturbance of his troops in that direction. Another phenomenon consists of frequent whirlwinds, which portend rain. I remember one passing from the south over the valley of Gura, accompanied by great volumes of dust, carrying with it our tents, clothing, and papers. These winds spend their force usually against the Khaya Khor mountains in the north. In the desert, where they have free scope and last for hours, they are very much dreaded, particularly by the superstitious Arabs, who believe that the Evil Spirit thus takes the form of a sand-cloud.
The rains early in the summer cause torrents, tearing the mountain-sides and bringing along with them soil, rock, and trees. The numerous dry beds, so universal at this season, are so suddenly swollen into deep rivers that the inhabitants and animals are sometimes caught in them and drowned. Lake Tzana, in lat. 11° and lon. 55°, about the centre of Abyssinia, is one of the basins kept full by these summer rains, or rather by the streamlets running into it from the mountains, 6000 feet high. Here the Blue Nile takes its rise. This is the great river of Abyssinia, which as it flows in its raging course through the mountains and valleys, carries the disintegrated matter which it collects, and that of a greater number of smaller streams which empty in it. Joining in the great desert of the Soudan, in lat. 16°, lon. 51°, with the White Nile as it comes from the Equator, the two now one periodically flood the banks of the Nile in its immense length, and finally deposit their surplus water in the Mediterranean. In Lower Egypt science controls their waters by a simplified system of canals, used from the earliest Pharaonic times to the present day. The other important rivers are the Atbara, an affluent of the main Nile, and Tacazze, a branch of the Atbara. These streams also assist in the great work of furnishing soil and flood for the Nile. There is another river, called the Mareb, which loses itself in the sands of the desert. It is in these mountains of Abyssinia, 10,000 to 15,000 feet above the level of the sea, that great numbers of small streams take their rise, and through which is precipitated the immense mass of moisture condensed on them which comes from the Red Sea, Arabian Gulf, and Indian Ocean. In the late spring and early summer the mountain streams and rains flood the greater arteries beneath with such force that it is not surprising that they tear the soil and disintegrate granite, filling the rivers so rapidly that the people of the country are often drowned in their wild flood. The waters roll over vast deserts on their way to the Nile of Egypt, swelling the dry beds of the rivulets so suddenly that the flood rises in a single night from twenty to thirty feet.
Among the Abyssinians there are few regular merchants, tradesmen, or shopkeepers. Each raz or great man has among his attachés people who do his bidding and furnish him with most that he requires. The women make nearly everything used in the family. They make the pottery and clothing, grind the grain, cook, wash, nurse the children, and labor in the field. The men manufacture weapons, fashion the granite stones with which the women grind the grain, work in wood, and are always ready to use the lance.
Abyssinia proper is divided into several grand divisions—Tigre, the richest, most populous, and powerful ; Amhara and Semien, the next in strength ; Shoa, Hamzen, Ogoulo-Goussai, Gojam, and Agaos next in order. Besides these are many minor dependencies. Each of these provinces has at its head a raz or prince, who inherits, or, as is often the case, seizes power. These powerful princes owe a sort of feudal allegiance to the king. They pay tribute in men and money, unless military service is required, in which case the king is supreme. His call is instantly obeyed or they feel his sword.
In the absence of the raz these grand divisions are managed by a governor, called a meslannis. The next high officer is the dagatch, who is a general of an army corps or governor of a smaller province. A shoum is the chief of a still smaller district ; alaka is the name of lieutenant, and bashar is equal in rank to a corporal. The government being, as I have said, feudal, the king is the central figure, around which all others revolve in case of war, when military service is required. In war, the raz, who furnishes the men and money, commands the troops from his own province. As he sits nearest the king in peace, so he rides next to him in battle ; the most powerful, Welled Sellassie, raz of Amhara and Semien, taking precedence. Differences are settled among themselves by a resort to arms, though the king often interferes and decides according to his judgment. So long as the chiefs give men and money the king has nothing further to say. But claiming power by descent (almost all have had an ancestor on the throne), these feudal lords are constantly mixed up in bloody insurrections. The king, knowing that fear and force are his surest friends, is always on the qui vive.
Innumerable small game like guinea-fowls, quails, pinnated grouse, bustards, gazelles, deer, and various species of antelopes are found everywhere, while over vast stretches of country the grander fauna roam in undisputed possession. The elan, wild boar, ostrich, eagle, giraffe, buffalo, rhinoceros, wild cat, leopard, hippopotamus, lion, and elephant offer to the sportsman the finest fields in the world. The birds and animals are all easily approached by man, as the natives rarely hunt them or use firearms when they do. I have been in most of the fine hunting grounds of Florida, Texas, the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and California, but I have visited no country where there is such a variety of game and so much of it to be found without hunting for it as in Abyssinia.
For ages, with the exception of a few striking episodes of a short bright period when the Portuguese introduced the germs of civilization, about the middle of the fifteenth century, Abyssinia has been the home of a semi-barbarous people. Claiming to be Christians since the third century, they have villages and towns such as they are ; huts to live in, but only a degree above those of the savages of North America. They raise a small grain called teff (Poa Abyssinica), very nutritious, and the doura (Sorgo paniccum et Indicum), barley, and Indian corn, and cultivate them for a bare subsistence. They have numerous horses, broad-horned, hump-backed small cattle, goats, and sheep ; the latter animal is impeded in its walk by its enormous fat tail. They have little poultry, and raise few or no vegetables or flowers.
Internal dissensions frequently ending in bloody wars furnish the Abyssinians with excitement. They carried on at one time a brisk trade in slaves with Egypt, now to some extent stopped ; a similar trade with Arabia and other provinces of Asia is still prosperous. They doom any Mahometan enemy or pagan who falls into their power to the most fearful slavery. They do not hesitate to take the life of the slave belonging to them when it suits their caprice, and their galling servitude is worse than death. They often sell their own people into slavery, particularly their young women, who are famous for beauty of face and form. Brave and adventurous in the past, they carried their victorious arms into Arabia, and successfully defended their mountain homes against the Saracenic hordes.
Mariette Bey, the learned hieroglyphist, tells us that as early as the twelfth Pharaonic dynasty, about 3000 B.C., the country was the scene of bloody wars, in one of the most brilliant epochs of ancient Egypt. It was under the powerful monarch, Osurtarsin I., that the Egyptian way extended beyond the First Cataract, the site of Assouan, “ unto the utmost limits of Abyssinia.” After that Abyssinia was to ancient Egypt what the Soudan is now to modern Egypt. The hieroglyphics tell us that “ it was part of the country of Cush or Ethiopia, without precise limits.” It is so now as then. Without unity of organization or territory, Ethiopia nourished a numerous population of diverse origin and race, but the bulk of the nation was formed by the Cushites, people of Semitic blood, who at an epoch unknown to history crossed the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb (the mouth of the Red Sea), and possessed themselves of the Upper Nile. Thothmes III., than whom no Pharaoh merits more the title of great, according to the poetic idea of the time, “ placed his frontiers where it pleased him,” extended his empire over Abyssinia proper, and appointed a governor-general there. Though it is true that the Cushites and Ethiopians are not mentioned on the monuments, yet as early as the sixth dynasty, not long after the building of the great Pyramid, they speak of getting negroes from the wild and turbulent tribes of the upper Nile and of bringing them into Egypt to drill them as soldiers to invade Asia. Lord Valentine, a noted man who travelled in Abyssinia, thinks that the people of Ethiopia were colonists or refugees from Egypt, who conquered and mingled with the aborigines.
The obelisk now at Axum, near Adua, the capital of Abyssinia, and a few stones with Greek inscriptions are the only monuments remaining, so far as has been discovered, of the ancient people. The obelisk is of granite, and much resembles those of ancient Egypt. Salt, another traveller in Abyssinia, thinks it was erected in the time of the Ptolemies, as its order is strictly Grecian. It is an elegant shaft of solid granite, sixty feet high, and compares favorably with monuments of the kind that are to be found elsewhere in the world. All its ornamentation is in bold relief, and the hollow space running to the top makes it unrivalled in lightness and elegance. The Abyssinian tradition is that it was erected after the Christian era, but it is thought that the workmen then were not equal to so chaste and highly finished an undertaking. In Abyssinia was found an old chronicle called the “ Tari-Naguensti,” which gives a long list of ancient kings, and mentions the name of Queen Makéda. Many learned scholars believe that it is intended for the Queen of Sheba. The tradition is that Makéda went to Jerusalem, made the acquaintance of Solomon, and gave birth to a son whom she named Menelek, and that this son returned with her to Ethiopia. To this day the name is preserved in their royal family, and Theodore, whom the English fought, though really a plebeian, it is said claimed his descent from Solomon. He was probably as much entitled to it as any Abyssinian monarch. There is no question that the Queen of Sheba had her kingdom on both sides of the Red Sea, that she resided in Arabia, and got her gold which she carried to Solomon from either Abyssinia, where it is now found on the Atbara River and its branches, or in the Galla country, where the Abyssinians say it is to be found.
It is entertaining to hear the bareheaded and barefooted Abyssinian princes express their indignation that the powerful Christian monarchies of the world permit the Mussulman to outrage them in their weakness. They say that Solomon was their great progenitor, and that they too were once strong. They glory in the belief that theirs is the oldest royalty in existence, and that all others compared with them are parvenus. There seems to be some evidence of the fact that they were Jews before they became Christians. It is a strange fact that a number of them, who live by themselves, workers in brass and gold, are Jews. They pretend that Menelek brought from Jerusalem, together with the laws of Moses, the foundation of their laws and religion. As evidence they cite the fact that, though Christians, a part of their faith is the choice of meats, the veil of the temple, and circumcision.
There is still another monument in Abyssinia which dates back to the sixteenth century. It was originally a Catholic, but now a Coptic church—a splendid work of those famous Portuguese explorers. Though not as ancient as the obelisk, it still calls forth the admiration of the traveller, as a fine relic of the past. It differs from all others in Abyssinia as much by its form as in its dimensions. It is vast in extent, and twice as long as broad. It is massive in its construction and entirely of stone. The façade is ornamented in its front by a broad gallery, which is set off by colonnades surmounted by a triangular front. It is approached by broad granite steps. It bears evidence of strength, while all its parts are in just harmony. Like everything the Portuguese touched in that day, it bears the impress of a strong and vigorous people. This church has within it several pictures, among others a tolerable one of St. George, their patron saint. They also pretend to have in it the “ table of the law,” which Menelek Solomon, the son of the Queen of Sheba, stole out of the temple and brought with him to Ethiopia.
It was in the fourth century that Abyssinia was Christianized by St. Frumentius. Following subsequently the teachings of St. Eutychus, the apostle of the Coptic religion of Egypt, and acknowledging only the Patriarch of Alexandria as the head of their Church, they receive to this day their bishop or abouna, which means “ father of the people,” from the patriarch who resides at Alexandria.
There is a MS. still preserved among the Abyssinians, which states as an historical fact that in the sixth century they conquered lower Arabia. Subsequently, however, they were driven from Arabia by the Mussulmans, who followed up their success and established on the coast of Abyssinia the kingdom of Zeila, but never conquered the seat of Abyssinian power, though it lies only 200 miles from Mecca. In the tenth century a colony of Jews crossed the Red Sea, conquered the country, and reigned for more than two centuries in Abyssinia. It was then that they got their Mosaic rites and the impress of Jewish features so distinctly marked among the people of to-day, which particularly distinguishes many of their leading men. During this Jewish era the Solomonian dynasty took refuge in Shoa. The usurpers being subsequently driven from the throne, many changes followed, all the pretenders claiming descent from Menelek up to the time of Theodore, who occupied the throne when the English invasion took place.