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taken for the subject of romantic ditties by the poetesses of England, as you were by those of Tigrè, it will certainly not be because the theme is unsuggestive. Innumerable incidents in your Abyssinian career deserve to be commemorated in flowing metre, and sung by Ethiopian serenaders to banjo accompaniment, and to the ancient and pathetic melody of “The King of the Cannibal Islands.” And this reminds us to accompany you to one of the festivals you above allude to—a dinner party at Adoua—first advising ladies to have their salts at hand, and permitting squeamish readers to pass over a page if it so please them. Here are a score of Abyssinian gentlemen squatted, sword in hand, on cut grass round a low table. It is perhaps unnecessary to mention that the tablecloth has been forgotten, and that napkins are absent, their place being supplied by cakes of bread, on which the guests wipe their fingers after dipping them in the dish or smearing them with the blood of the raw meat. The cooked dishes are first brought in and their contents distributed by waiters, who cut the meat or tear it with their fingers into pieces of a convenient size. They also take a piece of bread from before each person, sop it in the sauce, and return it to him. “The guests take their bread and sauce and mix them together into a sort of paste, of which they make balls, long and rounded like small black puddings (black enough, we doubt not); these they consider it polite to poke into their neighbours’ mouths; so that, if you happen to be a distinguished character, or a stranger to whom they wish to pay attention, which was often my case, you are in a very disagreeable position; for your two neighbours, one on each side, cram into your mouth these large and peppery proofs of their esteem so quickly, one after the other, that, long before you can chew and swallow the one, you are obliged to make room for the next.” Surely these can hardly be included amongst the “happy moments” Mr Parkyns so pathetically regrets, when recording, towards the close of his work, his tearful parting from his Adoua friends—the first time, he says, since his arrival in the country, that he felt the want of a pocket-handkerchief. Let us, however, proceed with our repast, after a glance at the accompanying plate of the “Dinner Party,” where a favoured guest, with distended jaws, is undergoing the cramming process. This first course, of cooked dishes, is usually mutton; whilst it is being gobbled up, a cow is killed and flayed outside, and as soon as the first course is
removed, in comes the raw meat—the broundo, as it is called— brought in by servants in quivering lumps.
“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-andblue 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 greenishgrey 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, semihuman, 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 lightcoloured 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.
Although it may with perfect truth be said that no chapter of Mr Parkyns’ book is devoid of strong interest of one kind or other, all are not equally attractive; and we have preferred dwelling at some length upon the section of natural history to extracting any of the horrible stories of Abyssinian cruelty which he relates under the head of “Anecdotes of Character.” He himself seems to doubt whether they might not have been as well omitted, but perhaps he was right in deciding to give them, in order to supply data for a fair estimate of the national character of that singular people, which he might otherwise have been suspected of placing in too favourable a light. Persons to whom narratives of murder, torture, barbarous mutilation, and savage cruelty are odious and intolerable, have only to treat the pages 187 to 222 of the second volume as the monkey treated those of “Peter Simple”—turn without reading them, although we warn them that by so doing they will miss some very characteristic and curious matter. Portions of the chapter devoted to “Physical Constitution, Diseases, &c.,” may be trying to delicate stomachs, but for such Mr Parkyns has not written—as may be judged from one or two extracts already given. Amongst the traits of character, &c., we find some remarkable anecdotes of Arab swordsmanship. An Abyssinian having treacherously murdered one of the Arab allies of the Tigrè chiefs (merely for the sake of gratifying the exorbitant vanity inherent in all those people, by displaying the barbarous trophies taken from his victim), the murdered man’s friends claimed the assassin’s blood.
“The crime being proved against him, Oubi gave him over to their tender mercies. His punishment was most summary. Before they had left the presence of the prince, one of the relations of the deceased, drawing his heavy two-edged broadsword, cut the culprit through with one blow; and, turning to Oubi, said, in Arabic: ‘May God lengthen your life, oh my master!’ just as he would have done had he received a present from his hands; and then, picking up a wisp of grass from the floor, walked away, wiping his blade with as much sangfroid as if nothing had occurred. Oubi is said to have expressed much admiration at the manly offhand way in which this was done, as well as at the wonderful display of swordsmanship. I know, from very good authority, that the facts of the Arab being murdered, and the subsequent execution of the criminal, are true, though I was not present when it occurred. I do not dispute the fact; I do not wish any of my readers, who think such a feat impossible, to believe it in the present instance. I have known for certain of the same feat being performed by Turks with their crooked sabres, but never by an Arab with his straight sword.”
Mr Parkyns subjoins a note relating to the campaign in Taka in which Werne shared.[3] Some of the prisoners then made were, as recorded by Werne, treated with great barbarity. We do not remember his mentioning the exact circumstances now recorded; but he separated from the Egyptian army before its return to Khartoum, in order to join the expedition up the White Nile. Certain chiefs, Mr Parkyns tells us, being marched off to be made examples of on the marketplace of Khartoum, paused on the road and refused to proceed. “Suliman Cushif, who commanded the escort, having orders that all such should be put to death on the spot, is said to have practised his swordsmanship on them by cutting them through at the waist as they stood. My friend, Moussa Bey, in the same expedition, unintentionally cut a horse’s head clean off.... Seeing one of his men turn his horse’s head and make for the jungle, he determined to check so dangerous an example by summary means, and so gave chase to the fugitive. Being better mounted, he soon came up with him; but the Arab, not liking his appearance as he stood up in his stirrups with his nasty little crooked olive-brown blade, ready for a back-stroke, threw his horse suddenly back on his haunches, and dropped off; the horse’s head went up just in time to receive the blow aimed at his master”—and dropped off too, it would appear. Mr Parkyns knows, he says, plenty more such anecdotes—and indeed such anecdotes are plentiful enough in other countries than Africa— but nothing is more difficult than to sift the inventions from the
verities. Haydon the artist, who seems to have been partial to such tales, and ready enough to credit them, relates some astounding exploits collected from his model life-guardsmen—amongst others a story of a cut received by a French dragoon at Waterloo, which went through helmet and head, so that the severed portion dropped on the shoulder like a slice of apple. We have not the volume at hand to refer to, but this is the substance of the incident, told nearly in the same words. Such cuts as that—like the flying dragons of Abyssinia— we must see before believing in them. At the same time, a swordsman’s power depends so much more upon the mode in which his cuts are delivered than upon mere brute strength—upon skill than upon violence—that it becomes difficult to assign exact limits to the possible effect of a good blade in adroit and practised hands. The cutting through, at the waist, of a slender Oriental, will hardly appear an impossibility to those who have seen the now commonplace feat of severing a leg of mutton at a blow. Moussa Bey’s “nasty little crooked olive-brown blade” must unquestionably have been dexterously wielded to decapitate, at a single blow, his fugitive follower’s charger, allowing even that the latter was the slenderest and most ewe-necked of its race. Oubi’s admiration of the sweeping blow of his Arab auxiliary was not surprising, since his own subjects have difficulty in inflicting a serious wound with their clumsy sickleshaped falchions, of great length of blade, and with hilts of such awkward and inconvenient construction as to paralyse the play of the swordsman’s arm. These hilts are cut out of solid pieces of rhinoceros horn, at great waste of material, and a handsome one costs as much as £2 sterling. The sword is worn on the right side, that the Abyssinian warrior may not, when he has thrown his lance, have to disturb the position of his shield, and so uncover himself, whilst drawing his weapon across his body. Such, at least, is the explanation Mr Parkyns gives. But the whole military equipment of the Abyssinians is far from formidable. They are tolerably expert in throwing the javelin, but with firearms they are extremely clumsy; and, notwithstanding their large buffalo-hide shields, a European, who has any knowledge of the sword, is more than a match for the best of them.
“It was my original intention” (we revert to Mr Parkyns’ Introduction) “to write solely on the habits of the people, without bringing myself into notice in any part of the story; but from this I
was dissuaded by being told that, without a little personal narrative, the book would be unreadable. I have, therefore, divided the subject into two parts—Travel, and Manners and Customs.” Your dissuasive friends, Mr Parkyns, were in the right, and you showed your good sense by taking their advice—in form as regards the first volume, in fact as regards also the greater part of the second. Personal narrative is evidently your forte; a humorous, rollicking, letter-writing style, the one you have most at your command. The “exuberant animal spirits, not dependent on temporary excitement, but the offspring of abstemious habits, combined with plenty of air and exercise—the feeling which inspires a calf to cock his tail, shake his head, kick and gallop about—which swells a pigmy into a Hercules, and causes a young hippopotamus to think of adopting the ballet as his profession,”—which you declare to be the reason of your addiction to savage life, and which you so enjoyed in Abyssinia, had evidently not abandoned you when dressing up your journal for the press within the civilised precincts of the Nottinghamshire County-hall, whence you date your dedication to Lord Palmerston. Your style, of which you unnecessarily deprecate criticism, is spirited, racy, and abundantly good for the subject. When the mass of your book is so highly interesting, it may seem unkind to mention that a few of your jokes are a little the worse for wear, and remind us too strongly of the departed Miller to add much to the originality of your otherwise extremely original and capital volumes; and if we touch on that point, it is merely in the hope that you will take the hint in a kindly spirit, and profit by it when preparing for the press the “ponderous heap of papers” you inform us you accumulated during four and a half years’ travel in Nubia, Kordofan, and Egypt. Prepare them by all means, at your leisure, and with care, and let us have them in type at the earliest convenience of yourself and publisher. After your present work, we shall expect much from them, and do not fear being disappointed. As to attacking your statements, in the way of impugning your veracity, such temerity would never enter our minds. We will not say that we have not at times been startled, almost staggered, as we read with foot on fender, and much enjoyment, the narrative of your strange experience; but, as you justly observe, stay-at-home critics sometimes get hold of the wrong end of the stick, and sneer at truth whilst swallowing exaggerations. We beg, then, to assure you that, until we ourselves have passed a
season in Abyssinia, with butter on our hair, and nothing on our feet —until we have dined upon raw beefsteaks, with fingers for forks, and a curved sabre for a carving-knife—we shall never venture to question the strict correctness and fidelity of any portion of your singular narrative—an assurance you may safely accept as a guarantee of impunity at our hands, even though you should draw a far longer bow than we believe you to have done in the case of the country of which you have so pleasantly written. Of one thing we are convinced, and that is, that few who take up Life in Abyssinia will lay it down without reading it through, and without exclaiming, when they come to the end, “What an amusing book this is, and what an agreeable savage is Mansfield Parkyns!”
THE QUIET HEART.
PART III.—CHAPTER XI.
“My patience! but ye’ll no tell me, Miss Menie, that yon auld antick is the doctor’s aunt?”
“She was no older than my father, though she was his aunt, Jenny,” said Menie Laurie, with humility. Menie was something ashamed, and had not yet recovered herself of the first salute.
“Nae aulder than the doctor!—I wouldna say; your mamma hersel is no sae young as she has been; but the like of yon!”
“Look, Jenny, what a pleasant place,” said the evasive Menie; “though where the heath is—but I suppose as they call this Heathbank we must be near it. Look, Jenny, down yonder, at the steeple in the smoke, and how clear the air is here, and this room so pleasant and lightsome. Are you not pleased, Jenny?”
“Yon’s my lady’s maid,” said Jenny, with a little snort of disdain. “They ca’ her Maria, nae less—set her up! like a lady’s sel in ane of your grand novelles; and as muckle dress on an ilkaday as I’ve seen mony a young lady gang to the kirk wi’, Miss Menie—no to say your ain very sel’s been plainer mony a day. Am I no pleased? Is’t like to please folk to come this far to an outlandish country, and win to a house at last with a head owre’t like yon?”
“Whisht, Jenny!” Menie Laurie has opened her window softly, with a consciousness of being still a stranger, and in a stranger’s house. The pretty white muslin curtains half hide her from Jenny, and Jenny stands before the glass and little toilet-table, taking up sundry pretty things that ornament it, with mingled admiration and disdain, surmising what this, and this, is for, and wondering indignantly
whether the lady of the house can think that Menie stands in need of the perfumes and cosmetics to which she herself resorts. But the room is a very pretty room, with its lightly-draped bed, and bright carpet, and clear lattice-window. Looking round, Jenny may still fuff, but has no reason to complain.
And Menie, leaning out, feels the soft summer air cool down the flush upon her cheeks, and lets her thoughts stray away over the great city yonder, where the sunshine weaves itself among the smoke, and makes a strange yellow tissue, fine and light to veil the Titan withal. The heat is leaving her soft cheek, her hair plays on it lightly, the wind fingering its loosened curls like a child, and Menie’s eyes have wandered far away with her thoughts and with her heart.
Conscious of the sunshine here, lying steadily on the quiet lawn, the meagre yew-tree, the distinct garden-path—conscious of the soft bank of turf, where these calm cattle repose luxuriously—of the broad yellow sandy road which skirts it—of the little gleam of water yonder in a distant hollow—but, buoyed upon joyous wings, hovering like a bird over an indistinct vision of yonder pier, and deck, and crowded street—a little circle enclosing one lofty figure, out of which rises this head, with its natural state and grace, out of which shine those glowing ardent eyes—and Menie, charmed and silent, looks on and watches, seeing him come and go through all the ignoble crowd —the crowd which has ceased to be ignoble when it encloses him.
And voices of children ringing through the sunshine, and a sweet, soft, universal tinkle, as of some fairy music in the air, flow into Menie Laurie’s meditation, but never fret its golden thread; for every joy of sight and sound finds some kindred in this musing; and the voices grow into a sweet all-hail, and the hum of distant life lingers on her ear like the silver tone of fame—Fame that is coming—coming nearer every day, throwing the glow of its purple royal, the sheen of its diamond crown upon his head and on his path—and the girl’s heart, overflooded with a light more glorious than the sunshine, forgets itself, its own identity and fate, in dreaming of the nobler fate to which its own is bound.
“A young friend of yours?—you may depend upon my warmest welcome for him, my dear Mrs Laurie,” says a voice just emerging into the air below, which sends Menie back in great haste, and with violent unconscious blushes, from the window. “Mr Randall Home?
—quite a remarkable name, I am sure. Something in an office? Indeed! But then, really, an office means so many very different things—may be of any class, in fact—and a literary man? I am delighted. He must be a very intimate friend to have seen you already.”
Menie waits breathless for the answer, but in truth Mrs Laurie is very little more inclined to betray her secret than she is herself.
“We have known him for many years—a neighbour’s son,” said Mrs Laurie, with hesitation; “yet indeed it is foolish to put off what I must tell you when you see them together. Randall and my Menie are —I suppose I must say, though both so young—engaged, and of course it is natural he should be anxious. I have no doubt you will be pleased with him; but I was hurried and nervous a little this morning, or I should have postponed his first visit a day or two, till we ourselves were less perfect strangers to you, Miss Annie.”
“I beg——” said Miss Annie Laurie, lifting with courteous deprecation her thin and half-bared arm. “I felt quite sure, when I got your letter, that we could not be strangers half an hour, and this is really quite a delightful addition;—true love—young love!—ah my dear Mrs Laurie, where can there be a greater pleasure than to watch two unsophisticated hearts expanding themselves? I am quite charmed—a man of talent, too—and your pretty little daughter, so young and so fresh, and so beautifully simple. I am sure you could not have conferred a greater privilege upon me—I shall feel quite a delight in their young love. Dear little creature—she must be so happy; and I am sure a good mother like you must be as much devoted to him as your darling Menie.”
Mrs Laurie, who was not used to speak of darling Menie, nor to think it at all essential that she should be devoted to Randall Home, was considerably confused by this appeal, and could only answer in a very quiet tone, which quite acted as a shadow to Miss Annie’s glow of enthusiasm, that Randall was a very good young man, and that she had never objected to him.
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” said the greatly interested Miss Annie. “My dear Mrs Laurie, I am afraid you must have had some other, perhaps more ambitious views, or you could not possibly—with your experience, too—speak with so little interest of your dear child’s happiness.”
Here Menie ventured to glance out. The lady of the house swayed lightly back and forward, with one foot on the ground and another on the close turf of the little lawn, switching the yew-tree playfully with a wand of hawthorn; and the wind blew Miss Annie’s long ringlets against her withered cheek, and fluttered the lace upon her arm, with a strange contempt for her airy graces, and for the levity so decayed and out of date which Menie felt herself blush to see. Opposite, upon the grass, stood Mrs Laurie, the sun beating down upon her snowy matron-cap, her healthful cheek, her sober household dignity. But the sun revealed to Menie something more than the natural good looks of that familiar face. Mrs Laurie’s cheek was flushed a little. Mrs Laurie’s fine clear dark eye wandered uneasily over the garden, and Mrs Laurie’s foot patted the grass with a considerable impatience. Half angry, disconcerted, abashed, annoyed, Menie’s mother could but half-conceal an involuntary smile of amusement, too.
“Yes, my child’s happiness is very dear to me,” said Mrs Laurie, with half a shade of offence in her tone. “But Menie is very young—I am in no haste to part with her.”
“Ah, my dear, youth is the time,” said Miss Annie, pathetically —“the first freshness, you know, and that dear, sweet, early susceptibility, of which one might say so many charming things. For my part, I am quite delighted to think that she has given her heart so early, so many experiences are lost otherwise. I remember—ah, I remember!—but really, Mrs Laurie, you surprise me. I see I must give my confidence to Menie. Poor little darling—I am afraid you have not encouraged her to confide all her little romantic distresses to you.”
“I have always respected Menie’s good sense,” said Mrs Laurie hastily. Then she made a somewhat abrupt pause, and then glanced up with her look of disconcertment and confusion, half covered with a smile. “I am Menie’s mother, and an old wife now, Miss Annie. I am afraid I have lost a great deal of that early susceptibility you spoke of—and I scarcely think my daughter would care to find it in me—but we are very good friends for all that.”
And Mrs Laurie’s eye, glistening with mother pride, and quite a different order of sentiment from Miss Annie’s, glanced up involuntarily to Menie’s window. Menie had but time to answer with
a shy child’s look of love out of her downcast eyes—for Menie shrank back timidly from the more enthusiastic sympathy with which her grand-aunt waited to overpower her—and disappeared into the quiet of her room to sit down in a shady corner a little, and wind her maze of thoughts into some good order. The sun was drawing towards the west—it was time to descend to the shady drawing-room of Heathbank, where Randall by-and-by should be received for the first time as Miss Annie Laurie’s guest.
CHAPTER XII.
It is very pleasant here, in the shady drawing-room of Heathbank. Out of doors, these grassy slopes, which Menie Laurie cannot believe to be the heath, are all glowing with sunshine; but within here, the light falls cool and green, the breeze plays through the open window, and golden streaks of sunbeams come in faintly at one end, through the bars of the Venetian blind, upon the pleasant shade, touching it into character and consciousness. It is a long room with a window at either end, a round table in the middle, an open piano in a recess, and pretty bits of feminine-looking furniture straying about in confusion not too studied. The walls are full of gilt frames, too, and look bright, though one need not be unnecessarily critical about the scraps of canvass and broad-margined water-colour drawings which repose quietly within these gilded squares. They are Miss Annie Laurie’s pictures, and Miss Annie Laurie feels herself a connoisseur, and is something proud of them, while it cannot be denied that the frames do excellent service upon the shady drawing-room wall.
Mrs Laurie has found refuge in the corner of a sofa, and, with a very fine picture-book in her hand, escapes from the conversation of Miss Annie, which has been so very much in the style of the picturebook that Menie’s mother still keeps her flush of abashed annoyance upon her cheek, and Menie herself lingers shyly at the door, half afraid to enter. There is something very formidable to Menie in the enthusiasm and sympathy of her aunt.
“My pretty darling!” said Miss Annie—and Miss Annie lifted her dainty perfumed fingers to tap Menie’s cheeks with playful grace. Menie shrank back into a corner, blushing and disconcerted, and drooped her head after a shy girlish fashion, quite unable to make any response. “Don’t be afraid, my love,” said the mistress of the house, with a little laugh. “Don’t fear any jesting from me—no, no—I hope I understand better these sensitive youthful feelings—and we shall say nothing on the subject, my dear Menie—not a word—only you must trust me as a friend, you know, and we must wait tea till he comes—ah, till he comes, Menie.”
Poor Menie for the moment could have wished him a thousand miles away; but she only sat down, very suddenly and quietly, on a low seat by the wall, while Miss Annie tripped away to arrange some ornamental matters on the tea-table, where her little china cups already sparkled, and her silver tea-pot shone. Menie took courage to look at her kinswoman’s face as this duty was being performed. Withered and fantastic in its decayed graces, there was yet a something of kindness in the smile. The face had been pretty once in its youthful days—a sad misfortune to it now, for if it were not for this long-departed, dearly remembered beauty, there might have been a natural sunshine in Miss Annie Laurie’s face.
As it was, the wintry light in it played about gaily, and Miss Annie made very undeniable exertions to please her visitors. She told Menie of her own pursuits, as a girl might have done in expectation of a sharer in them; and to Mrs Laurie she gave a sketch of her “society,” the few friends who, Menie thought, made up a very respectable list in point of numbers. Mrs Laurie from her sofa, and Menie on her seat by the wall, looking slightly prim and very quiet in her shy confusion, made brief answers as they could. Their entertainer did not much want their assistance; and by-and-by Menie woke with a great flush to hear the little gate swing open, to discern a lofty figure passing the window, and the sound of a quick step on the gravel path. Randall was at the door.
And Randall, looking very stately, very gracious and deferential, came through the shower of “delighteds” and “most happys” with which Miss Annie saluted him, with a bow of proud grace and much dignity of manner, to Mrs Laurie’s extreme surprise, and Menie’s shy exultation. Another hour passed over very well. The strangers grew familiar with Miss Annie; then by-and-by they strayed out, all of them, into the sweet evening air, so full of charmed distant voices, the hum and breath of far-off life; and Menie found herself, before she was aware, alone under a sky slowly softening into twilight, in a pretty stretch of sloping turf, where some young birch-trees stood about gracefully, like so many children resting in a game, with Randall Home by her side.
And they had found time for various pieces of talk, quite individual and peculiar to themselves, before Menie lifted her face, with its flush of full unshadowed pleasure, and, glancing up to the other
countenance above her, asked, “When is the next book coming, Randall?”
“What next book, May Marion?”
This was his caressing name for her, as May alone was his father’s.
“The next book—our next book,” said Menie. “I do not know much, nor maybe care much, about anybody else’s. Randall—our own— when is it coming?”
“What if it should never come at all?”
Randall drew her fingers through his hand with playful tenderness, half as he might have done with a child.
“Yes—but I know it is to come at all, so that is not my question,” said Menie. “I want to know when—not if. Tell me—for you need not be coy, or think of keeping such a secret from me.”
“Did you never hear that it is dangerous to hurry one work upon another?” was the answer somewhat evasively given. “I am to be prudent this time—there is peril in it.”
“Peril to what?” Menie Laurie looked up with simple eyes into a face where there began to rise some faint mists. Looking into them, she did not comprehend at all these floating vapours, nor the curve of fastidious discontent which they brought to Randall’s lip and brow.
“My simple Menie, you do not know how everything gets shaped into a trade,” said Randall, with a certain condescension. “Peril to reputation, risk of losing what one has gained—that is what we all tremble for in London.”
“Randall!” Menie looked up again with a flush of innocent scorn. He might speak it, indeed, but she knew he could mean nothing like this.
There was a slight pause—it might be of embarrassment—on Randall’s part; certainly he made no effort to break the silence.
“But a great gift was not given for that,” said Menie rapidly, in her unwitting enthusiasm. “People do not have unusual endowments given them to be curbed by such things as that; and you never meant it, Randall; it could not move you.”
But Randall only drew his hand fondly over the fingers he held, and smiled—smiled with pleasure and pride, natural and becoming.
He had not been sophisticated out of regard for the warm appreciation and praise of those most dear to him. He might distrust it—might think the colder world a better judge, and the verdict of strangers a safer rule, but in his heart he loved the other still.
But Menie’s thoughts were disturbed, and moved into a sudden ferment. Her hand trembled a little on Randall’s arm; her eyes forsook his face, and cast long glances instead over the bright air before them; and when she spoke, her voice was as low as her words were quick and hurried.
“It does not become me to teach you, but, Randall, Randall, you used to think otherwise. Do you mind what you used to say about throwing away the scabbard, putting on the harness—Randall, do you mind?”
“I mind many a delightful hour up on the hillside yonder,” said Randall affectionately, “when my May Marion began to enter into all my dreams and hopes; and I mind about the scabbard and the harness no less,” he continued, laughing, “and how I meditated flashing my sword in the eyes of all the world, like a schoolboy with his first endowment of gunpowder; but one learns to know that the world cares so wonderfully little about one’s sword, Menie; and moreover—you must find out for me the reason why—this same world seems to creep round one’s-self strangely, and by-and-by one begins to feel it more decorous to hide the glitter of the trenchant steel. What a coxcomb you make me,” said Randall, abruptly breaking off with a short laugh; “one would fancy this same weapon of mine was the sword of Wallace wight.”
Menie made no answer, and the discontent on Randall’s face wavered into various shades of scorn,—a strange scorn, such as Menie Laurie had never seen before on any face—scorn half of himself, wholly of the world.
“When I knew I had succeeded,” said Randall at length, with still a tone of condescension in his confidence, “I was a little elated, I confess, Menie, foolish as it seems, and thought of nothing but setting to work again, and producing something worthy to live. Well, that is just the first impulse; by-and-by I came to see what a poor affair this applause was after all, and to think I had better keep what I had, without running the risk of losing my advantage by a less successful stroke. After all, this tide of popularity depends on
nothing less than real ‘merit,’ as the critics call it; so I apprehend we will have no new book, Menie; we will be content with what we have gained.”
“If applause is such a poor affair, why be afraid of the chance of losing it?” said Menie; but she added hastily, “I want to know about Johnnie Lithgow, Randall; is it possible that he has come to be a great writer too?”
“If I only knew what you meant by a great writer too,” said Randall, with a smile. “Johnnie Lithgow is quite a popular man, Menie—one of the oracles of the press.”
“Is it a derogation, then, to be a popular man?” said the puzzled Menie; “or is he afraid to risk his fame, like you?”
The lofty head elevated itself slightly. “No. Johnnie Lithgow is not a man for fame,” said Randall, with some pride. “Johnnie does his literary work like any other day’s work; and, indeed, why should he not?”
Menie looked up with a blank look, surprised, and not comprehending. Even the stronger emotions of life, the passions and the anguishes, had never yet taken hold of Menie; still less had the subtle refining, the artificial stoicism of mere mind and intellect, living and feeding on itself; and Menie’s eye followed his slight unconscious gestures with wistful wonderment as Randall went on.
“After all, what does it signify—what does anything of this kind signify? One time or another appreciation comes; and if appreciation never should come, what then? So much as is good will remain. I do not care a straw for applause myself. I rate it at its own value; and that is nothing.”
It began to grow somewhat dark, and Menie drew her shawl closer. “I think it is time to go home,” she said softly; and as she spoke, a vision of the kindly home she had left—of the brave protecting hills, the broad fair country, the sky and atmosphere, all too humble for this self-abstraction, which answered in clouds and tears, in glorious laughter and sunshine, to every daily change—rose up before her; some tears, uncalled for and against her will, stole into Menie’s eyes. With a little awe, in her innocence, she took Randall’s arm again. He must be right, she supposed; and something very grand and superior was in Randall’s indifference—yet somehow the night air crept into
