The British Captives in Abyssinia

Front matter

.* TY THE BRITISH CAPTIVES IN ABYSSINIA. b BY CHAELES T. BEKE, Ph.D., F.S.A. FELLOW AND MEDALLIST OF THE EOYAL GEOGRAPHICAL 60CIE AUTHOR OF ' OR1GINES BTBLICÆ,' ' THE SOUECES OF THE NILE,' ETC. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER. 1867. TAYLOR AND FRANCIS, PRINTERS, RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET. PKEFACE. When I sat down to prepare for the press a second edition of the pamphlet which I published nearly two years ago, I contemplated a tract of perhaps twice or thrice the size of the former edition. As the work grew under my hand, I soon perceived that it would make a fair-sized volume : by and by I found that it might be enough for two volumes. Under this change of circumstances, it became necessary to decide whether I should delay the pub lication of any portion of the work until I had com pleted the whole, or whether I ought not rather at once to issue the first part of it, which is really an enlargement of the former edition, and leave the remainder, which relates more especially to myself and the journey that my wife and I have just under taken, to form not merely a second volume but a separate work.

Feeling that the public must be far more inter ested in the fate of the hapless British Captives in Abyssinia than in our personal adventures, I have deemed the former course to be the preferable one. A further inducement for bringing this portion of my labours before the public without delay, is the con sideration that the subject of the captivity of our countrymen, which has already attracted the attena2

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. tion of the Legislature during the last three sessions of Parliament, is sure to be again brought forward as soon as Parliament assembles, when it will likewise be necessary to discuss the Abyssinian Question with reference to all the circumstances which have led to a state of things so discreditable to the British name. But, though coming to the conclusion that it was better to defer my personal narrative for a separate work, I have found it necessary, in order to render the present volume complete in itself, to refer to several matters connected with myself and my late journey, which would have appeared more suitably in connexion with that narrative, had it formed a portion of the single work originally contemplated. I had also prepared some remarks on another sub ject, which, being of a purely personal character, were in like manner intended to accompany that personal narrative ; but, for reasons which will be apparent, I have decided on publishing them here.

My recent journey has in fact not merely been displeasing to friends connected with the late Adminis tration, but it has also given dissatisfaction to others more closely associated with myself personally. I am blamed for taking up a cause in which I am alleged to have no concern, for acting as a political partisan, and for being a dreamer, — and, what in a worldly sense is worse than all, an unprofitable dreamer. To the last of these charges alone do I plead guilty. In anything connected with Abyssinia, let it be what it may, I cannot be said to have no concern. Further, that I have not been actuated by any party spirit is established by the fact that

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. V ever since I returned from Abyssinia in 1843 till the publication of my pamphlet, ' The French and English in the Red Sea,' in 1862 — during the far greater por tion of which long interval the party now in opposition was in power — I proffered advice and assistance in the most friendly spirit, both to the Foreign Office and to the Board of Trade, though (as I have regret ted to see) without any good effect. It was not till matters had gone so far that I felt I ought no longer to allow what I had said to remain hidden in the ar chives of public offices, that I published that pamphlet* and even then what I made known was quite as much for the information of Her Majesty's Government as for that of the public. I may say the same as regards the first edition of the present work. As to my being a dreamer, whilst not denying the charge, I must say in extenuation that I have like wise been a worker, and a hard worker • and I question whether it has fallen to the lot of many persons who have dreamed so widely and apparently so wildly, to have seen, to such an extent as I have, their dreams " come true."

Having said thus much, I am bound to say more, and I trust I shall be excused for availing myself of this opportunity to show the truth of what I have just asserted. My first dream, then, was one of my childhood. It was that I should some day live at the place to which my forefathers gave their name seven centuries ago. Three-and-thirty years have elapsed (a whole generation of man) since the time when, in anticipa tion of my coming to live at Bekesbourne, I changed

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. VI the spelling of my family name from Beek to Beke*. But before this my early dream was realized, I had * The name is Flemish — Van der Beke ; and its original form, or rather forms in England were De Beke, Del Beke, and De la Beke, or, written as pronounced in Latin, De Beche, Del Beehe, and De la Beche. In the course of time it came to be spelled Beake and Beak in East Kent, and Beeke and Beek in West Kent. The Rev. Christopher Beeke, father of Dr. Henry Beeke, Dean of Bristol, and my grandfather Charles Beek, were distant cousins, and both left the county, the former in 1736 for Devonshire, the latter in 1760 for London. They are thus mentioned for the purpose of placing on record two parallel anecdotes respecting my grandfather and Dean Beeke, which are too good to be lost. Charles Beek lived in Mile-end New-town, Stepney, and was a Justice of the Peace, a colleague and neighbour of his being Justice Wilmot of Bethnal Green.

At that time, as there were no stipendiary Magistrates, the resident Justices of the Peace in and about London acted as those in the country do now ; and my grandfather being an active and leading person within the Tower Hamlets, obtained in consequence the name of " King Beek." In the Gordon riots of 1780, when, as is known, the mob de stroyed the houses of many of the nobility, magistrates, and other notables, a section of the rioters at the east end of the town were on their way to my grandfather's house, when a tenant of his, who had mixed in the crowd as a looker-on rather than as an actor, called out — " Don't let's go to King Beek's. He's a jolly good fellow. Let's go to Justice Wilmot's " — joining to his name a few choice but not very complimentary epithets. As in the case of another section of the same rioters at the Inner Temple gate, a chance word sufficed to turn the mob.

To Justice Wil mot's they went, sure enough, and burned his house down! Before they had time to think again of my grandfather, a party of horseguards arrived to protect him. The other anecdote respecting Dean Beeke is almost identical. In the Bristol riots of 1831, the mob were about to destroy the Deanery, when some one suggested that they should not injure or molest the good old Dean, on which they went and destroyed the Bishop's palace instead !

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. VII to wait seven-and-twenty years longer* for it was only in 1860 that I succeeded in coming to reside in the home of my ancestors. Whether I shall lay my bones where theirs were laid, is in the hands of the Disposer of all events, who has so graciously per mitted me to worship Him where once they wor shiped. That I should have changed the spelling of my name so long ago as 1833, was because I was at that time engaged in preparing for the press my work ' Origines Biblicæ ■ or Researches in Primeval His tory ' (a Book of Dreams — or " crotchets," as they have been styled by a high authority, who in so doing forgot himself) ; and I felt that when I came to occupy a niche in the Temple of Fame, as I " dreamed " I should, I must not do so under an alias. Without desiring to enter upon any general consideration of that work, its scope, or its contents, I must still be permitted to allude to a few of the " dreams" contained in it.

The first was that the land at the head of the Persian Gulf has advanced at so rapid a rate, as ma terially to affect the comparative geography of Baby lonia and the neighbouring regions. Of course this was pooh-poohed at the time : for had not scholars written erudite volumes on the assumption of there having been no change ? and had not the learned Iieeren even expressed the opinion that in the time of Nearchus the northern coast of the gulf ex tended further south than it does at the present day ? Nevertheless, seventeen years afterwards, the Presi-

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. dent of the Royal Geographical Society, (the late Admiral Smyth,) when adverting in his anniversary address to a dissertation of Sir Henry Rawlinson on the Biblical Cities of Assyria and on the geography of the Lower Tigris, in which it is stated that the Delta of the Tigris and the Euphrates " is found to have advanced since the commencement of the Christian era, at the extraordinary degree of a mile in thirty years — a rate of increase probably about twice that of the growth of the Sunderbunds or any other known delta" — added " This agrees, in fact, with the statements which Dr. Beke, one of your Fellows, published in the ' Philosophical Magazine ' as far back as February 1834; and in his ' Origines Biblicæ ' in the same year"*. The next dream of ' Origines Biblicæ ' which has been realized is as to the site of the patriarchal Harran.

This town is described in the Scriptures as being situate in Aram Naharaim — " Syria of the Two Rivers •" which country has been placed by commen tators between Euphrates and Tigris, the two rivers of Asshur or Assyria ; whereas it appeared to me to be between the two rivers of Aram or Syria, Abana and Pharpar. As there were no signs of a place with such a name in the locality indicated, my dream or " crotchet " was ridiculed or passed over without no tice. But, after many years, a place of the name was found to exist precisely where in 1834 I said it must * ' Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc' vol. xxi. p. lxxx. I should ex plain that the article in the 'Philosophical Magazine' was the second chapter of ' Origines Biblicæ,' published in advance as was known at the time to Sir Charles Lyell.

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. IX exist; and towards the end of 1861, more than twenty-seven years afterwards, I performed a pilgrimage to Harran, accompanied by my wife, who has written an account of our journey. Next is the position of Mount Sinai, my dream with respect to which is not yet realized, and hardly will be by myself, though the traditional mountain is already rent and shaken to its base, and cannot stand much longer. The true Mountain of the Law has to be sought for in the Desert of Arabia, east of the Ghor or Valley of the Jordan ; and the indications in Scrip ture of its general locality are definite and absolute. In that desert " Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian ; " and when " he led the flock to the west side of the desert," he " came to the Mountain of God, to Horeb"*.

And at a later period of the Scripture History, the prophet Elijah, after eating and drinking in the desert of Beersheba, " went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb, the Mount of God," and thence, at the command of the still small voice, he "returned on his way to the desert of Damascus "f. Some traveller, younger, richer, more enterprising, and more favoured than myself, will, I feel persuaded, come forward ere long to search for this sacred spot, in the region thus indicated, taking, as I have done, the Bible as his sole guide, and carefully eschewing all traditional and (so called) authoritative identifications. The non-identity of Egypt with the Mitzraim of * Exod. iii. 1. The Authorized Version has " the back side of the desert." I 1 Kings, xix. 8, 15. X

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. the Exodus — another of my dreams— is the most paradoxical of all my " crotchets." But the results of modern discoveries and investigations are all tend ing in that direction. And when we see such changes as in this present year, 1866, when Prussia and Italy are anything but the same countries they were only a few years back, it will no longer be astonishing that Misr, under the rule of the Turkish Viceroys of Egypt, should not correspond with the Land of Mitzraim, of which the Hebrew Joseph was made governor by Pharaoh. Another of my dreams is faintly indicated in ' Origines Biblicæ.' Not very long ago, when I heard as it were the voice of a trumpet talking with me, I tried to rouse myself to work it out ; but I am not at present fit for the task, and it must still remain as a vision of the night.

The " dream " which has had the greatest influence on my actions — it having led to my travels in Abys sinia, with all their results direct and collateral, and in the end to the production of the present volume — is that contained in pages 158 and 159 of ' Origines Biblicæ,' where, when explaining the Dispersion of Mankind in accordance with the principles enunci ated in that work, and speaking in particular of the descendants of Ham, I say : — " The other sons of Cush, in their progress southward, appropriated to themselves the eastern side, and in the course of time the whole, of the southern part of the peninsula of Arabia. From hence, as population increased, colonies of those Cushites, whose settle ments lay towards the western side of the peninsula,

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. XI crossed over into Ethiopia, and settled there, be coming the aboriginal inhabitants of that country, and being in fact the stock from which, in the progress of time, has sprung the greater portion of the negro nations by whom the vast continent of Africa is peopled." Abyssinia being thus indicated as the natural road of the human race into the interior of Africa, it naturally followed, as indeed history teaches, that this road should be that by which were introduced into that continent its three predominant religions, the Mosaic, the Christian, and the Mohammedan ; and hence I was led to the inference — it is, I trust, something more than a dream — that by the same road Africa will be regenerated by means of Eu ropean commerce as the precursor of Christian civilization. It further became manifest to me why during so many ages the vast continent of Africa has remained as it were a sealed book, and why the efforts of civi lized nations to establish relations with the interior of that continent have had so little success.

The arid and inhospitable character of the continent of Africa, its want of navigable rivers, and the barbarism of its inhabitants have been alleged as causes for this strange anomaly. But, active as all those causes may have been and still continue to be, recent discoveries have shown that they are far from being true to the extent generally attributed to them; for it is now demonstrated that Africa possesses fer tile and genial regions, large rivers and lakes, and an immense population, which, if not civilized, is yet to a

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. XII considerable extent endowed with kindly manners, humane dispositions, and industrious habits. The fundamental cause of the erroneous notions pre valent respecting Africa is, that Europeans have always approached that continent in a wrong direction. To wards the north, the districts skirting the Mediter ranean Sea are cut off from the other portions of the continent by the rainless sands of the great Desert ; towards the west, the climate truly exercises those baneful influences on European constitutions which have stamped their mark on the rest of the continent; towards the south, the form of the peninsula, which there runs almost to a point, prevents ready access to the vast internal regions further to the north, On all these sides, however, have we during centuries per sisted in our endeavours to penetrate inwards, while the east coast has been unattempted and remained al most totally unknown.

And yet it is in this direction that the interior of intertropical Africa is approachable with the greatest facility. It was under the influence of the opinions thus ex pressed, and with a view to their realization, in part at least, through my own exertions, that I undertook, in the year 1840, a journey to the kingdom of Shoa; whence, in the following year, I proceeded across the river Abai into Godjam, Damot, and Agaumider, pe netrating westward over seven degrees of longitude and one-fifth of the way across the continent of Africa in the direction of the Gulf of Benin — an achievement which might have been thought more of, had it been performed at the present day instead of a quarter of a century ago ; and I returned home by a new road di-

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. XIII rectly across Abyssinia, from the extreme south-west to its furthest limit in the north-east. " Nor could his eye not ken The empire of Negus to his utmost port, Ercoco"*. But the exploration and mapping of countries for the use of subsequent travellers formed the least im portant result of my geographical labours in Abys sinia. My observations enabled me to form a theory of the true physical structure of that country, and of Eastern Africa generally, which is becoming accepted as the true theory. It is, that the principal mountain system of Africa extends from north to south, along the eastern side of the continent, adjacent to the Bed Sea and the Indian Ocean, resembling, in its direction and rough parallelism to the coast, the Andes of South America and the Western Ghauts of India.

A corollary from this theory was the determination of the position and direction of the snowy "Mountains of the Moon," in which the geographer Claudius Ptolemy placed the sources of the Nile. These mountains were universally supposed to traverse Africa pa rallel to the equator, being so represented in all the maps ; whereas they are in reality merely a portion of the meridional range, of which the Abyssinian tableland forms the northern extremity. As regards the much-vexed subject of the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile, I have the satisfaction of knowing that whatever credit is due to me in this respect is now freely accorded to me by all whose * Arkiko, opposite Massowah.

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. opinions are deserving of consideration as competent and impartial judges. I might allude to many other results of my journey to Abyssinia, but will confine myself to pla cing here on record the following remarks, extracted from a paper on " The Nile and its Tributaries," which was communicated by me to the Royal Geo graphical Society in 1846, and published in the seven teenth volume of the Society's 'Journal' (pp. 82, 83) : — " This survey of the physical character of the pla teau of Eastern Africa cannot be concluded with out special attention being directed to a most im portant practical result which it affords. It is, that the eastern coast of that continent presents facilities for the exploration of the interior very superior to those possessed by the western coast. For, when the narrow belt of low land along the shores of the Indian Ocean — which, from its general dryness, arising from the absence of large rivers, is far from unhealthy at most seasons of the year — is once passed, and the eastern edge of the elevated tableland is attained, a climate is met with, which is not merely congenial to Eu ropean constitutions, but is absolutely more healthy than that of most countries.

I speak from the experience of upwards of tioo years passed on the high land under cir cumstances anything but favourable. Here — that is to say, on the edge of the elevated plateau, and not in the low desert country along the sea-coast — settlers might take up their permanent residence, without apprehensions as to the effects of the climate at any period of the year ; while travellers might wait in safety, and even with advantage to their health, till

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. XV suitable opportunities should present themselves for penetrating westwards into the interior ; and, in the event of their having to retrace their steps, they would only return upon a healthy and delightful country, where they might remain till the proper season should arrive for their journey down to the coast. On lhe other hand, the climate of the western coast, even far inland, is notoriously such, that few can long with stand its baneful influences ; while a traveller is ne cessitated to press forwards, whatever may be the time of the year, whatever the condition of the coun try, whatev3r even his state of health. And should he, from sickness or any other unforeseen circum stance, be compelled to abandon his journey, he must do so with the painful knowledge that the further he retrogrades the more unhealthy are the districts which he has to traverse, and the less likelihood there is of his ever reaching the coast, more fatal than all the rest."

It will be observed that my assertion that the climate of Abyssinia is absolutely more healthy than that of most countries, was based on my own expe rience of upwards of two years passed there under cir cumstances anything but favourable. But what are these circumstances compared with those under which the Captives have passed three miserable years of their lives, and yet apparently with so httle injury to their bodily health ? In any other country in the world, not blessed with such a climate, they must long ago have succumbed to the privations and hardships to which they have been subjected. It is requisite that I should dwell upon this point,

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. because of the mistaken notions entertained by the British Government, not less than by the public, respecting the climate and physical character of Abys sinia, which is in fact a temperate, well-watered, and most fertile country, inhabited by an agricultural and at the same time warlike people, and possessing capa bilities not surpassed by those of any region on the face of the earth. The notions entertained by our Government respecting the approaches to Abyssinia in the event of a war are, if possible, even more erroneous than those concerning the climate and physical character of that country. In page 206 of the present Work I have quoted the assertion of the late Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, deliberately made in the House of Lords less than a twelvemonth ago, that "to attempt to send an army across that deadly plain which separates Abys sinia from the sea, and to penetrate into the interior of the country through mountain-passes and difficulties unknown, without any basis of operations or means of obtaining supplies, would have been a vain and idle endeavour."

In page 178 I have shown what that " deadly plain " is " which separates Abys sinia from the sea;" and I will now add that, when on the 29th of last Aprd my wife and I stood on the brink of the valley of the Hadas, within a mile of Halai, at an elevation of 8500 feet above the ocean — the tableland of Abyssinia there begin ning and extending for hundreds of miles to the south and south-west — we could perceive the sea at Arkiko, opposite to Massowah, and that island itself

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. XVII beyond, and we heard the report of the guns of the Egyptian frigate ' Ismailiah,' sounding (it is to be feared) the death-knell of Christian Abyssinia*; whilst as regards a basis of operations, it exists in the sea off Adulis, whence the Sovereign of Ethiopia, the ally of the Emperor Justinian, transported 70,000 men into Arabia for the conquest of Yemen f ; whither Captain Robert A. Parr, of H.M.S. ' Lyra,' was so good as to convey my wife and myself; and where, as that efficient officer would be able to report, a fleet of line-of-battle ships might lie in safety, at more than half the distance nearer to Halai than Arkiko. As to the alleged " mountain-passes and difficulties unknown," it might really be imagined that no Euro peans had been in Abyssinia since the time of Bruce and Salt.

And yet, within the last quarter of a century, there are few " unknown " countries that have been visited and traversed in all directions by so large a number of educated Europeans, many of whom have published their journals or digested narratives of their travels. That an army would be " without any means of obtaining supplies " in Abyssinia comes strangely from the Foreign Secretary, seeing that on March 28th, 1848, I addressed to his Lordship's predecessor in office, Viscount Palmerston, a letter, in which I suggested the practicability of victualling a British army in the Red Sea by means of supplies drawn from Abyssinia. It has been said that the best way to publish a matter and yet keep it secret, is to get it printed in a Blue-Book. It would really seem that * See page 241. *f* See page 177. b

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. XVIII the way to keep information from the knowledge of the Head of a Government Department is to com municate it to himself officially. Yet, after all, our Government and our Government Offices are not entirely to blame. It is the British public, who, not understanding the subject and being too much occupied with matters nearer home to study it, do not interest themselves in it as they ought ; and our officials, perceiving that the public are not alive to the importance of the subject, are not sorry for any excuse for not troubling themselves with what does not concern those in whose service they are. Still this is no justification for the conduct of the Foreign Office and the India Office (for this latter Department likewise must come in for its share of blame) as regards the way in which this unhappy Abyssinian Question appears to have been dealt with from beginning to end.

My duty however is, not to blame, but to enlighten the British nation on this dark and difficult subject. When once the public, and especially the public press, is brought to understand it as it is requisite it should be understood, there can be no fear of its not being sifted to the bottom, and of justice being meted out to all with an equal and at the same time an unflinching hand. Bekesbourne, December 4th, 1866. Page CONTENTS.

Chapter I

British Captives — Pacts misrepresented and concealed — Abyssinia — its Sovereigns — Geographical and Political Divisions- Turkish Possessions — Mr. Salt's Mission — Sabagadis — Ubye — Protestant Missionaries in Tigre — their Expulsion — Roman Ca tholic Mission — English Religious and Political Missions to Shoa — their Failure 1 CHAPTER H. Coptic Abuna — Protestant and Roman Catholic Rivalry — French and English in the Red Sea — Fate of Lord Palmerston's Letter — Mr. Coffin's Mission — British Consulate — Mr. Bell and Consul Plowden — Treaty between England and Abyssinia — its Impolicy — Consul Plowden's Report — Frontier Tribes — Raids of Turco-Egyptians into Bogos — Consul Plowden's Interference — Approval of British Government — Continued Aggressions of Egypt— Slave Trade 15

Chapter III

Kassai of Kwara — his Rise to Power — Conquest of Amhara, Godjam, and Tigre — Crowned as Theodore, Emperor of Ethiopia — His Character — Great Reforms — Ambitious Projects — Reli gious Intrigues — Banishment of Roman Catholics — The Theodore of Prophecy — Roman Catholic Pretender at Rome — Theodore set up by the Coptic Abuna — his Belief in his Divine Mission — Subsequent Change of Character and Conduct 30 c CONTENTS. XX Page

Chapter IV

Theodore's Reception of Consul Plowden— He objects to a Consulate— Consul Plowden's Report— Lord Clarendon's Ap proval of Proceedings— Proposed Embassy— Subsequent Nego tiations — Consul Plowden's Conduct condemned and vindicated — Agau Negusye's Rebellion in Tigre— His Recognition by France — Cession to France of Adulis and Dissee — Captain de Russel's Mission — Consul Plowden and Mr. Bell Mlled — Theo dore's Vengeance — Defeat and Execution of Negusye — French Attempts on the Coast of Abyssinia — Zeila — Obokh 47

Chapter V

Consul Cameron — His Reception by Theodore — Earl Russell's Letter — Negotiations for an Embassy and Treaty — Abyssinian Convent and Church at Jerusalem — Theodore's Letter to the Queen of England — Samuel, the Emperor's Steward — Proposal for a Mission from India ■ 65