The monarch, elated with his knowledge, now determined to build a bridge, which in three days was completed; and, as was predicted by the quiet English spectators, in three hours fell down on the very first fresh produced by the annual rains.
Weaving excepted, the people manufactured nothing; but British commerce has long been known, though evidently of the coarsest kind. At length, on his majesty's being told that five thousand looms would bring him more wealth than ten thousand soldiers, he gradually consented to form a commercial treaty. The crown had hitherto appropriated the property of strangers dying in the country. The purchase or display of costly goods by the subject had been interdicted, and a maxim exhibiting the whole jealousy of savage life had been established, that the stranger who once entered was never to depart from Abyssinia. By the articles of the commercial treaty, all those barbarous prohibitions have been abolished.
As the monarch returned the deed, he made a short speech sufficiently able and appropriate: "You have loaded me with costly presents, the rainment that I wear, the throne on which I sit, the curiosities in my store-houses, and the muskets which hang round my great hallall are from your country. What have I to give in return for such wealth? My kingdom is as nothing."
The hereditary provinces at this day subject to the King of Shoa, are comprised in a rectangular domain of 150 by 90 miles; an area traversed by five systems of mountains, of which the culminating point divides the basin of the Nile from that of the Hawash. The Christian population of Shoa and Efat are estimated at a million; and the Moslem and Pagan population at a million and a half. The royal revenues are said to amount to 80,000 or 90,000 German crowns, arising chiefly from import duties in slaves, merchandise, and salt. As the annual expenses of the state do not exceed 10,000 dollars; it is presumed that the king, during his thirty years' reign, has amassed much treasure, which is regularly deposited under ground.
We recommend the enquirers into the truth of Herodotus, to examine the curious illustrations stated in these volumes; and, among the rest, the kingdom of pigmies. The geographer will find ample interest in tracing the course of the Gochob, a sort of central Nile; and the naturalist, botanist, and entomologist, will find abundant information in the very interesting and complete appendices on those subjects. The history of the Christian missions of early ages is an excellent chapter, and the general statistics of religion.
The practical religion of the Abyssinian Christian is of the very lowest degree of formality. Fasts, penances, and excommunications, form the chief discipline; but the penitent can always provide a substitute for the two former, and the latter is always to be averted by money. Spiritual offences, however, are rare; for murder and sacrilege alone give umbrage to the easy conscience of the natives of Shoa. Abstinence and largesses of money are equivalent to wiping away every sin. Their creed advises the invocation of saints, confession to the priest, and faith in charms and amulets. Prayers for the dead, and absolution, are indispensable; and, as a more summary mode of relieving the burdens of the flesh, it is pronounced, that all sins are forgiven from the moment that the kiss of the pilgrim is imprinted on the stones of Jerusalem, and that even kissing the hand of a priest purifies the body from all sin. A creed of this order, which makes spiritual safety dependent, not upon personal purification of mind and divine mercy, but upon forms which are unconnected with either, and which even can be executed by a substitute, of course excludes the necessity for morals of any kind. All is corruption"Born amid falsehood and deceit, cradled in bloodshed, and nursed in the arms of idleness and debauchery, the national character almost defies the missionary."
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?