Part 8 (2/2)

The road on nearing Magdala is more abrupt; one or two conical hills have to be crossed before the amba itself is reached. Magdala is formed of two cones, separated by a small plateau named Islamgee, a few hundred feet lower than the two peaks it divides. The northern peak is the higher of the two, but on account of the absence of water and the small s.p.a.ce it affords, it is not inhabited; and to Magdala alone belonged the privilege of being Theodore's most famous fortress, his treasury, and his gaol.

From Islamgee the ascent is steeper, but we were able to ride on our mules up to the second door; a feat we could not perform whilst ascending from the Bechelo and Jiddah, as we had not only to descend almost all the way on foot, but had frequently to dismount at the ascent, and climb on all-fours, leaving the mules to find their way as best they could. The distance from Watat to Magdala is generally accomplished in five hours, but we were nearly seven, as we had to make frequent halts, and messengers came to and fro from the Amba.

Many of the chiefs of the mountain came out to meet Bitwaddad Tadla.

At Islamgee another long halt was made, I suppose while our _lettre de cachet_ was examined by the chiefs in council. At last, one by one, counted like sheep, we pa.s.sed the doors, and were taken to a large open s.p.a.ce in front of the King's house. There we were met by the Ras (Head of the mountain) and the six superior chiefs, who join with him in council on every important occasion. As soon as they had greeted Bitwaddad Tadla they retired a few yards, and consulted with him and Samuel. After a few minutes, Samuel told us to come on; and, accompanied by the chiefs, escorted by their followers, we were taken to a house near the Imperial fence. A fire was lighted. To fatigued and dejected men the prospect of a roof, after so many days pa.s.sed in the rain, cheered us even in our misery, and when the chiefs had retired, leaving a guard at the door, we soon forgot--talking, smoking, or sleeping near the fire--that we were the innocent victims of base treachery. Two houses had been allowed to our party. At first we all slept in one of them, the other being made over to the servants, and used as a kitchen.

CHAPTER XI.

Our First House at Magdala--The Chief has a ”little Business”

with us--Feelings of an European when being put in Chains--The Operation described--The Prisoner's Toilet--How we Lived--Our first Messenger a Failure--How we obtained Money and Letters--A Magdala Diary--A Rainy Season in a G.o.djo.

It was already dark when we had arrived the evening before. Our first thought in the morning was to examine our new abode. It consisted of two circular huts, surrounded by a strong th.o.r.n.y fence, adjoining the Emperor's Enclosure. The largest hut was in a bad state of repair; and as the roof, instead of being supported by a central pole, had about a dozen of lateral ones forming as many separate divisions, we made it over to our servants and to our balderaba Samuel. The one we kept for ourselves had been built by Ras Hailo, at one time a great favourite of Theodore, but who had unfortunately fallen under his displeasure. Ras Hailo was not chained during the time he remained in that house: for a time he was even ”pardoned,” and made chief of the mountain. But Theodore, after a while, again deprived him of his command and confidence, and sent him to the common gaol, chained like the other prisoners. For an Abyssinian house it was well built; the roof was almost the best I saw in the country, being made with small bamboos closely arranged and bound with rings of the same material. After Ras Hailo had been sent to the gaol, his house had been made over to the favourite of the day, Ras Engeddah; but, according to custom, Theodore took it away from him to lodge his English guests.

For us it was small: we were eight, and the place could not contain easily more than four. The evenings and nights were bitterly cold, and the fire occupying the centre of the room, some of us had to lay half the body in a recess that leaked, and half in the room.

At first we felt our position bitterly. The rainy season had set in, and hailstorms occurred almost every day. Many of us (Prideaux and myself amongst them) had not even a change of clothes, no bedding, nor anything to cover ourselves with during the long cold damp nights; and I always shall remember with feelings of grat.i.tude the Samaritan act of Samuel, who, pitying me, kindly lent me one of his shamas.

We had hardly any money, and we had not the remotest idea from whence we could obtain any. Though there was some talk of rations being supplied from the Imperial stores, the former captives only laughed at the idea; they knew, from bitter experience, that prisoners on Amba Magdala ”were expected to give, but never to receive.” The event proved that their surmises were right: we never received anything from the man who on all occasions loudly proclaimed himself our friend but a small jar of tej, that for some months was daily sent to Samuel: (I believe all the time it was intended for him; at all events, he and his friends drank it;) and on great feast days a couple of lean, hungry-looking cows, of which, I am delighted to say, I declined a share.

To the European, accustomed to find at his door every necessary of life, the fact that not a shop exists throughout the breadth and width of Abyssinia may appear strange; but still it is so. We had, therefore, to be our own butchers and bakers, and as for what is called grocery stores, we had simply to dispense with them. Our food was abominably bad; the sheep we purchased were little better than London cats; and as no flour-mill is to be found in Abyssinia, far less any bakers, we were obliged to purchase the grain, beat it to remove the chaff, and grind it between two stones--not the flat grinding-stones of Egypt or India, but on a small curved piece of rock, where the grain is reduced to flour by means of a large hard kind of pebble held in the hand. It was brown bread with a vengeance. On the mountain we might buy eggs and fowls; but as the first were generally bad when sold to us, we soon got disgusted with them; and though we put up with the fowls as a change of diet, their toughness and leanness would have made them rejected everywhere else. Being the rainy reason, we had great difficulty in purchasing a little honey. Wild coffee was now and then obtainable; but it made, in the absence of sugar, and with or without smoky milk, such a bitter, nauseous compound, that, after a while, I and others preferred doing without it. Such was then the amount of ”luxuries”

we had to depend on during our long captivity,--coa.r.s.e, vitreous-looking, badly-baked bread; the ever-returning dish of skinny, tough mutton, the veteran c.o.c.k, smoked b.u.t.ter, and bitter coffee. Tea, sugar, wine, fish, vegetables, &c., were not, either for love or money, to be obtained anywhere. The coa.r.s.eness and uniformity of our food, however, was as nothing compared with our dread of being starved to death; for even the few and inferior articles I have mentioned would fail us when our money was expended.

I was very badly off for clothes. Before leaving Debra Tabor, I was told to leave everything behind in the charge of the Gaffat people, and only take with me the few things I required for the road. My only pair of shoes, what from rain, sun, and climbing, had become so thoroughly worn-out, and so hard, as to bring on a wound that took months to heal, so that until the arrival of one of my servants from the coast, many months afterwards, I had to walk, or rather crawl, about on naked feet.

Life in common among men of different tastes and habits is, indeed, dreadful. There we were, eight Europeans, all huddled up in the same small place, a waiting-room, a dining-room, a dormitory; most of us entire strangers before, and only united by one bond--common misfortune. Adversity is but little fitted to improve the temper: on the contrary, it breaks down all social habits; the more so if education and birth do not enable the sufferer to contend against the greatest difficulties. We feared above all things that familiarity which creeps on so naturally between men of totally different social positions, and leads to harsh words and contempt. We had to live on terms of equality with one of the former servants of Captain Cameron; we had to be quiet if some remained talking part of the night, and put up silently with the defects of others in the hope that our own might meet with the same leniency.

A party of soldiers, varying from fifteen to twenty, came every evening a little before dusk, and pitched a small black tent almost opposite our door. As it frequently rained at night, the greater number of the soldiers remained in the tent; only two or three, supposed to be watching, went to sleep under the shelter of a projecting part of the roof. They did not disturb us, and, if we went out after dark, they merely watched where we went, but did not follow. In the daytime we had four guards, two taking it in turn to watch the gate of our inclosure. These men were never changed during all the time of our stay; but we had not much reason to be satisfied with the selection made, as, with one exception, our day guards were fearful rascals and dangerous spies.

We had already spent three days at Magdala, and were beginning to hope that our punishment would be limited to ”simple imprisonment,”

when about noon on the 16th we perceived the chief, accompanied by a large escort, coming in the direction of our prison. Samuel was sent for, and a long consultation took place between him and the chief outside the gate. We were yet in ignorance of what was going on, and felt rather uncomfortable when Samuel returned to us with a serious countenance, and told us that we must all go into the room, as the chief had a ”little business” with us. We obeyed, and shortly afterwards the Ras (Head of the mountain), the five members of council, and about eight or ten more presented themselves. The Ras and the princ.i.p.al chiefs, all armed to the teeth, squeezed themselves into the room, the others remaining outside. The ordinary Abyssinian conversation--that is to say, a great deal of talking about religion, looking pious, taking G.o.d's and the King's name in vain every minute--opened the proceedings. I was sitting near the door, and as the conversation did not interest me much, I was looking at the motley crowd outside, when all at once I perceived that two or three men were carrying large bundles of chains. I pointed them out to Mr. Ra.s.sam, and asked him if he believed they intended them for us; he spoke to Samuel in Arabic on the subject, and the affirmative answer he received revealed to us the subject of the long consultation that had taken place outside.

The Ras now dropped the desultory conversation he had been holding since his arrival, and in quiet terms informed us that it was the custom of the mountain to chain every prisoner sent there; that he had received no instructions from the Emperor, and would at once despatch a messenger to inform him that he had put us in irons, and he had no doubt that before long his master would send orders for our fetters to be removed, but that in the meanwhile we must submit to the rules of the amba; he added that in our case it was with regret that he felt himself obliged to enforce them. The poor fellow really meant well; he was kind-hearted and, for an Abyssinian, had gentlemanly manners; he had some hope that Theodore might have by that time regretted the unnecessary and cruel order, and would perhaps seize the opportunity he thus offered him and cancel it.

I may as well add here that, not many months afterwards, the Ras was accused of being in correspondence with the king of Shoa; he was taken in irons to the camp, where he shortly afterwards died from the consequences of the many tortures inflicted upon him.

The chains were brought, and the real business of the day began; one after another we had to submit to the operation, the former captives being first served and favoured with the heaviest chains.

At last my turn came. I was made to sit down on the ground, tuck up my trousers, and place my right leg on a large stone that had been brought for the purpose. One of the rings was then placed on my leg a couple of inches above the right ankle, and down came, upon the thick cold iron, a huge sledge-hammer: every stroke vibrated through the whole limb, and when the hammer fell not quite straight it pressed the iron ring against the bone, causing most acute pain.

It took about ten minutes to fix on properly the first ring; it was beaten down until a finger could just be introduced between the ring and the flesh, and then the two pieces, where they overlapped one another, were hammered down until they perfectly joined. The operation was then performed on the left leg. I was always afraid of the blacksmith missing the iron and smas.h.i.+ng my leg to pieces.

All at once I felt as if the limb was being torn asunder; the ring had broken just when the operation was nearly completed. For the second time I had to submit to the hammering process, and this time the fetter was rivetted to the entire satisfaction of the smith and chief.

I was now told that I might rise and go to my seat; but that was no easy matter, and, having no practice in this, for me, quite new way of locomotion, I could hardly take the necessary three or four steps. Although I was in great bodily pain, and felt deeply the degradation we were subjected to, I would not give the officers of the man who was thus ill-treating us cause to believe that I cared in the least about it. On rising to my legs I lifted up my cap and shouted, to their great astonishment, ”G.o.d save the Queen,” and went on laughing and chatting as if I felt perfectly happy. As every detail of our life was reported to Theodore, and my contempt for his chains was public, he was at once informed of it: but he only mentioned the fact twenty-one months afterwards, when he alluded to it in conversation with Mr. Waldmeier, to whom he said that every one allowed themselves to be chained without saying a word; that even Mr. Ra.s.sam had smiled upon them; but that the doctor and Mr.

Prideaux had looked at them with anger.

After the operation was over, and the witnesses of the scene had each favoured us with a ”May G.o.d open thee,” the messenger the chiefs were sending to Theodore (a fellow named Lib, a great spy, and confidant of the Emperor; the same who had brought our _lettres de cachet_,) was introduced to receive any message Mr. Ra.s.sam desired to convey to his Majesty. That gentleman, in quiet and courteous words, reproached his Majesty for his treachery, and cast upon him the onus of the consequences such unfair treatment would most likely bring upon him. Unfortunately Samuel, always timid, and at this time almost dead with fright, as he did not know whether chains were not in reserve for him also, declined to interpret, and simply sent the ordinary compliments instead.

When our gaolers had withdrawn, we looked at one another, and the sight was so ridiculous, so absurd, that for all our sorrow we could not help laughing heartily. The chains consisted of two heavy rings connected together by three small thick links, leaving just a span between one ring and the other; and these we wore for nearly twenty-one months! At first we could not walk at all; our legs were bruised and sore from the hammering on, and the iron pressing on the ankles was so painful that we were obliged to tie bandages under the chains during the daytime. At night I always took off the bandages, as the constant impediment to the circulation they occasioned, caused the feet to swell; yet at night we felt the weight and pressure even more than during the day: our legs seemed for a long time never to get rest; we could not move them about, and when in our sleep we turned from one side to the other, the links, by striking the bone of the leg, caused such acute pain as to awake us at once. Though after a time we got more accustomed to them, and could walk about our small inclosure with more ease, still every now and then we had to remain quiet for some days, as the legs got sore, and small ulcers appeared on the parts where the greatest pressure bore. Even since they have been removed, for months my legs were weaker than before, the ankles smaller, and the feet somewhat enlarged.

The evening we were put in chains we had to cut open our trousers as the only way of getting them off. During their former captivity at Magdala, Messrs. Cameron, Stern and others, either wore petticoats or native drawers, which they had been taught to pa.s.s between the leg and the chain. But we had no material at hand to make the first, and as for pa.s.sing even the thinnest cambric through the rings in the swollen condition of the limb, that was quite out of the question.

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