The Forest of Mamrat.
Excursions abroad continued as usual to occupy the royal leisure; and even when rats and horned owls formed the ignominious quarry, the king’s Gyptzis were invariably summoned. But the dark forests which clothe the foot of Mamrat proved the favourite scene of these rambles, and thither the steps of the monarch were usually directed. Large colonies of the guréza, which inhabit the noblest trees, offered an irresistible attraction; and although, from their retired habits no less than from their appearance, these inoffensive apes are regarded in the light of monks, their holy character did not exempt them from frequent and severe punishment. A shower of iron and stone balls tumbled one after the other from his perch on the topmost branches of some venerable moss-grown woira, where, notwithstanding many cunning artifices, the white cowl and the long snowy cloak upon the otherwise sable body, betrayed the place of concealment; and numbers being soon prostrate upon the ground, the survivors, amazed at the murderous intrusion, were to be seen swinging from bough to bough like a slack-rope dancer, and leaping from tree to tree as they sought more secure quarters in the, to man, inaccessible sides of the hail-capped mountain.
Occupying manifold caves and subterranean crannies in this the most elevated pinnacle within the range of vision, the idolised riches of Sáhela Selássie are covered with massive iron plates, barred, and secured by large heaps of stone. A strong guard of matchlock-men occupies the only practicable ascent to the treasury; and the keys of its well-crammed coffers, which are never opened unless for the purpose of being still further stuffed, are strictly confided to Ayto Habti, the master Cyclops of the realm. At the extremity of a forest vista, the huge wooded cone presents a grand and imposing object, avenues of tall trees screening its dark defiles, whilst the fleecy vapour that steals across the hoary summit, discloses glimpses of the many smiling hamlets which crest the Abyssinian Alps.
A Mohammadan legend asserts, that in time of yore, “the Mother of Grace” towered even to the skies, and so remained until the first invasion of Graan. Ameer Noor, his brother, the ruler of Hurrur in its golden days, having formed his camp upon a rising ground above Alio Amba, despatched his chieftains in all directions to slay, burn, and plunder. Upon their return, laden with rich booty, obtained without having encountered a single Amhára, the disappointed Ameer exclaimed, in his religious zeal, “’tis the mountain Mamrat that hides the dastardly infidels. May Allah, the only one God, who rules over the universe, grant that it be overthrown, and my foes revealed!” Scarcely had the pious prayer escaped his lips, than the pile reeled to and fro like a drunken man, and sank to its present level.
“The country of the Ada?el,” adds the same veracious authority, “through which the Ameer led the followers of the true Prophet, was in those days a trackless desert, totally destitute of springs; but on his stamping his foot upon the thirsty soil at the termination of each day’s march, there gushed forth a fountain of living water, which has continued to flow until the present time.” During the struggle that followed the arrival of the Moslem invaders, the Christians are said to have been in danger of perishing from lack of provisions, until the inhabitants of Argóbba, who are styled Shooggur, from the name of their ancestor, supplied the army, by rolling over the mountain side skins filled with grain. In a battle fought shortly after the arrival of this seasonable supply, Ali Muggan, the governor of Zeyla, was slain on the terrace betwixt Mamrat and Alio Amba, and his body left to the wild beasts; whereupon Noor, his brother, cursing the race who, professing the faith of Islám, had been the agents of so dire a calamity, doomed their necks to be chafed for ever by the galling yoke of vassalage to unbelievers.
Far hid in the rugged bosom of the “Mother of Grace,” is a spacious cell, often visited by the king. During one half of the fourteenth century, it formed the abode of an anchorite, renowned far and wide for the austerity of his life, who invariably slept upon a bed of sharp thorns, and whose food was restricted to roots and wild honey. Hatzé Amda Zion was then engaged in his disastrous war with Adel; and the ascetic, seizing his white staff, abandoned his rigorous solitude for the first time, and fired by religious zeal, rushed into the presence of the Emperor, who was encamped on the banks of the Háwash. Displaying the holy cross to the dispirited soldiery, he exhorted them to be of good heart, and not to let the standard of Christ droop before the profane ensign of the infidels; for that it was written in the book of the Revelation of Saint John, that Islamism was that year to be crushed and trodden under foot throughout the world. At his bidding, three merchants of Hurrur, who, under the guise of suttlers, performed the office of spies, were hung without trial, and their heads being transmitted to the King of Adel, proved the forerunners of a bloody defeat, which he shortly afterwards sustained.
To the latest occupant of the cave of Mamrat is attached the legend embodied in the two ensuing chapters. It is fully illustrative of the grovelling superstition that enthrals the Amhára, of whom none ever allude to the dread sorcerer Thavánan, without an invocation to the Deity. He was an exiled noble of Northern Abyssinia, high in the favour of Asfa Woosen, fifth monarch of Shoa, who took forcible possession of his sister, and after degrading the courtier for opposing this despotic measure, sentenced him to the loss of an eye, which was put out with a hot iron. Resolved to have his revenge, the outcast became a worshipper of the eighty-eight invisible spirits, termed Sároch, believed to be the emissaries for evil of Wárobal Máma, the King of the Genies, whose court is held at the bottom of Lake Alobár, in Mans, whence his drum is heard pealing over the water whenever war, famine, or pestilence are about to visit the land.
Having purchased supernatural powers at the price of his hope of salvation, Thavánan tormented the king day and night—spirited away his seraglio, and, having thus recovered his sister, deprived her oppressor of sight by means of magic spells. Taking the name of Abba Zowald, he then became a stern ascetic; and his bones now lie interred in the cell beneath a pile of rough stones, which, during a long period of mortification, served him for a couch, whilst roots and wild fruits formed his only fare. Angels are said to have ministered unto him; his voice was the voice of an oracle; and none recognising the sorcerer in a holy Christian anchorite, who had despised the world and its vanities during a period of fifty years, he lived universally regarded in Abyssinia as a second Peter.