Shangalla

“ There can be little doubt but their desires are equal to their strength and constitution; but a Shangalla at 22 is more wrinkled and 560 deformed, apparently by old age, than is a European woman of 60. ”

“ Although the Shangalla live in separate tribes, yet they are in the habit of joining together, and of forming alliances offensive and defensive, but principally to assist each other in repelling the barbarous attacks which are made upon them by the Abyssinians and Arabs.
Mothers, who stand most in need of protection, naturally look for it to their own offspring; and it is a habit among these women, as among the Galla tribes, to entreat their husbands to maintain a plurality of wives, that, by the number of children in the family, the means of safety may be proportionally increased. ”

“ After the first civilities were over, I asked the governor of Waalia all the questions that were needful about the state of the roads and the country, and whether the Shangalla ever made an attempt upon Tcherkin? They said, All was peace; that the people came and went to the market without being interrupted. They laughed at the question about the Shangalla. Ayto Confu, they said, sometimes went down and destroyed many of that people, and brought others away as slaves ”

“ A very few days of the intense heat then dries the ground so perfectly, that it gapes 551 in chasms; the grass, struck at the roots by the rays, supports itself no more, but droops and becomes parched. To clear this away, the Shangalla set fire to it, which runs with incredible violence the whole breadth of Africa, passing under the trees, and following the dry grass among the branches with such velocity as not to hurt the trees, but to occasion every leaf to fall. ”

“ He now passed in the same peaceable manner through the country of Zeegam, intending to attack the Shangalla of Geesa and Wumbarea.
These two tribes are little known. Like the other Shangalla they are Pagans, but worship the Nile and a certain tree, and have a language peculiar to themselves. They are woolly-headed, and of the deepest black; very tall and strong, straighter and better-made about the legs and joints than the other blacks; their foreheads narrow, their cheek-bones high, their noses flat, with wide mouths, and very small eyes. ”

“ On the east, is a very plentiful spring, which furnishes the house with excellent water. Yet, after all, this house, though inaccessible, is not defensible, and affords very little safety to its master; for the Shangalla, with flax, or any thing combustible, tied to the point of their arrows, would easily set it on fire if they once approached it; and the Abyssinians with guns could as easily destroy it, as, on such occasions, they wrap their balls in cotton wads. ”

“ The Galla, being their neighbours on the other side of the Nile to the south, and the Shangalla in the 432 low country immediately to the west, these natural fortresses are frequently of the greatest use during the incursions of both.
They alone, of all the nations of Abyssinia, have found it their interest so far to cultivate their neighbours the Shangalla, that there are places set apart in which both nations can trade with each other in safety; where the Agows sell copper, iron, beads, skins, or hides, and receive an immense profit in gold ”

“ All that range of mountains running east and west, inclosing Derkin and Atbara on the south, and which begins the mountainous country of Abyssinia, is inhabited by the negro woolly-headed Cushite, or Shangalla, living as formerly in caves, who, from having been the most cultivated and instructed people in the world, have, by a strange reverse of fortune, relapsed into brutal ignorance, and are hunted by their neighbours like wild beasts in those forests, where they used to reign in the utmost luxury, liberty, and splendour. ”

“ He privately gave orders also to Kasmati Claudius, Kasmati Dimmo Christos of Tigré, and to Adera and Quaquera Za Menfus Kedus, to inform themselves where the water lay below, and whether there was enough for his army in Betcoom, for so they call the territory of the eastern branch of Shangalla adjoining to Siré and Tigré. By this manœuvre the enemy was deceived, as the most intelligent thought he was to attack Lasta, and the others, that knew the secret of the water, were sure his march was against the Shangalla. ”

“ On the north, a black, woolly-headed nation, called the Shangalla, already often mentioned, bounds Abyssinia, and serves like a string to the bow made by these nations of Galla. Who they are we know perfectly, being the Cushite Troglodytes of Sofala, Saba, Axum and Meroë; shut up, as I have already mentioned, in those caves, the first habitations of their more polished ancestors. Neither do these circumcise, though they immediately bordered upon Egypt, while the Cushite, adjoining to the peninsula of Africa certainly did. ”

“ The human body, exhausted by its heat, becomes weaker; and it is because the Shangalla are less powerful than the Abyssinians, and for no other reason, that the former are murdered and persecuted by the latter. The African slave-trade rests precisely on the same foundation. ”

“ In order to hunt these people, the Abyssinians, in overpowering numbers, and armed with every sort of weapon they can collect, enter the forest, and then, like hounds, they regularly draw the covers which contain their game. The men of the Shangalla being extremely active, intelligent, and accustomed to the intricacies of their native woods, could easily evade their pursuers ”

“ The country now cleared, the hunting begins, and, with the hunting, the danger of the Shangalla. All the governors bordering upon the country, from the Baharnagash to the Nile on the west, are obliged to pay a certain number of slaves. Ras el Feel (my government) was alone excepted, for a reason which, had I staid much longer in the country, would probably have been found more advantageous to Abyssinia than all the slaves they procure by the barbarous and prodigal effusion of the blood of these unhappy savages; for, when a settlement of these is surprised, the men are all slaughtered ”

“ Ras el Feel divides this nation of woolly-headed blacks into two, the one west below Kuara, and bordering on Fazuclo (part of the kingdom of Sennaar) as also on the country of Agows. These are the Shangalla that traffic in gold, which they find in the earth, where torrents have fallen from the mountains; for there is no such thing as mines in any part of their country nor any way of collecting gold but this; nor is there any gold found in Abyssinia, however confidently this has been advanced ”

“ At twenty minutes past ten, still going through the thickest woods, and ground all opened by the heat of the sun, we found, in a grassy marsh, a pretty abundant spring of foul water. This is the resort of the hunters of the elephant, as also of their rivals and enemies the Shangalla; and here much human blood has been shed by people whose occupation and intention, when they went from home, were that of slaying the wild beasts only. The Baasa or Dobena Shangalla, possess the country which lies about four days journey N. E. from this.
At a quarter past eleven we came to the river Terkwa ”

“ Whether this is wholly to be laid to the charge of the herbs, is more than I will take upon me to decide, never having been at these retirements of Waldubba.
Violent fevers perpetually reign there. The inhabitants are all of the colour of a corpse; and their neighbours, the Shangalla, by constant inroads, destroy many of them, though lately they have been stopped, as they say, by the prayers of the monks. ”

“ We left the king, Oustas, after detecting a conspiracy, ready to fall upon some settlement of Shangalla. This he executed with great success, and surrounded a large part of the nation called Baasa, encamped under the trees suspecting no danger. He put the grown people to the sword, and took a prodigious number of children of both sexes captive. He was intending also to push his conquest farther among these savages, when he was called to Gondar by the death of his prime minister and confident, Ras Fasa Christos. ”

“ Whenever an expedition is undertaken by a nation of Shangalla, either against their enemies, the Arabs on the north, or those who are equally their enemies, the Abyssinians on the south, suppose the nation or tribe to be the Baasa, each family attacks 556 and defends by itself, and theirs is the spoil or plunder who take it.
The mothers, sensible of the disadvantage of a small family, therefore seek to multiply and increase it by the only means in their power; and it is by their importunity that the husband suffers himself to be overcome. ”

“ The remains of these miserable people, finding resistance vain, had hid themselves in inaccessible caves in the mountains, and the thickest parts of the woods, where they lay perfectly concealed in the day-time, and only stole out when thirst obliged them at night. The king, who knew this, and that they had no other water but what they brought from the Mareb, formed a strong line of troops along the banks of that river, till the greatest part of the Shangalla of Tzaada Amba died with thirst, or were taken or slain by the army. ”

“ The features of his face might well be called hideous; he paid his part of the revenue in buffaloes hides, of which the best shields were [317] made; and with elephants' teeth, and rhinoceros's horns, used for the handles of the crooked knives, which the Abyssinians carry at their girdles. All the inhabitants of Sancaho are hunters of elephants. It is their principal food. Erbab Gimbaro came with Yasine, and brought more than a hundred of the Shangalla to the king's army at Serbraxos, where the Moors alledged he did not any way distinguish himself. ”

“ In those parts of the country where the large animals do not abound, the Shangalla subsists on buffaloes, deer, boars, lions, and even serpents: in places where there is little wood, whole tribes of them eat the crocodile, fish, locusts, lizards, and ostriches ”

“ Many nations of perfect blacks inhabit this low country, all Pagans, and mortal enemies to the Abyssinian government. Hunting these miserable wretches is the next expedition undertaken by a new king. The season of this is just before the rains, while the poor savage is yet lodged under the trees preparing his food for the approaching winter, before he retires into his caves in the mountain, where he passes that inclement season in constant confinement, but as constant security; for these nations are all Troglodytes, and by the Abyssinians are called Shangalla. ”

“ The Dobenah, the most powerful of all the Shangalla, who have a species of supremacy or command over all the rest of the nations, live altogether upon the elephant or rhinoceros. In other countries, where there is less water, fewer trees, and more grass, the Shangalla feed chiefly upon more promiscuous kinds of food, as buffaloes, deer, boars, lions, and serpents. ”

“ During the summer, the Shangalla tribes subsist on the animals which they catch; but, in order to provide for the rainy season, they prepare their food in a very singular manner. Venison and other flesh is cut into strips or thongs about as broad as a man's thumb. These are dried in the sun until they resemble tough leather; even locusts are dried and packed in baskets for the winter's consumption. ”

“ But, not to derogate from the efficaciousness of their prayers, the natural cause why the Shangalla molest them no more, is the small-pox, which has greatly reduced their strength and number, and extinguished, to a man, whole tribes of them. ”

“ Ras el Feel formerly paid 400 ounces of gold, which is 4000 crowns; Sancaho paid 100. But trade having decreased, since the expedition of Yasous II. to Sennaar, without [327] the king's demand being lessened, many people have left it, and are gone to Tcherkin.
I have several times, in the course of this work, taken notice of a black nation called Shangalla, who surround all the N. N. W. and N. E. of Abyssinia, by a belt scarcely sixty miles broad. This is called by the Abyssinians, Kolla, or the Hot Country, which is likewise one of their names for hell. ”

“ The country of the Agows extends from Berfa on the south to the point of due west, in form of an amphitheatre, formed all round by mountains, of which that of Banja lies south south-west about nine miles off. The country of the Shangalla, beyond the Agows, lies west north-west. From this point all the territory of Goutto is full of villages, in which the fathers, sons, and grandsons live together; each degree, indeed, in a separate house, but near or touching each other, as in Maitsha, so that every village consists of one family. ”

“ The Shanvilla population—the whole of which, I may say, was on the surrounding hills—rent the air with their cheers, amidst which the red sleeves were seen clearing the bank like so many young deer. Not a mistake was made; not a man jumped low or short; not a toe was left upon it, as the prophet had said—nor a heel, as the wit had added. It was an enlivening sight to see the red sleeves rising by turns about eight feet into the air, and landing steadily on the level sward beyond the bank.
The cheers from Shanvilla were redoubled, and even some of the Rathcash men joined. ”

“ I told Sangala I should force my way up. Sangala and all his people shouted with all their might that there should be war; Sangala, as he got up to say so, reared and tumbled down, he was so drunk.
So I left Sangala. By that time it rained so hard that no one followed us. It is wonderful how a crowd is dispersed by a shower of rain.
A great palaver was looming up; the excitement had spread over the country. In the meantime I had succeeded in going to Ranpano's village, situated up the river, five or six miles above Elindé. Ranpano gave me as much land as I wanted. ”