the barbarous punishments which had previously prevailed, and had striven to enforce the laws against the slave trade, of which, according to Mr. Rassam, he was not the author, as they had always existed in Abyssinia.

It would have been well for this country if our relations with Theodore and Abyssinia had ended here. Our Consul had been murdered, the King had refused to ratify the treaty made by Mr. Plowden with Ras Ali; the trade which was said to exist even as in the days of Solomon, and was to bring gold and ivory to our shores, had proved a delusion, and our power in India was not the more secure on account of the influence we were supposed to have gained in Ethiopia. But unfortunately there was a Consul to be provided for. Mr. Cameron, who had been removed from Poti in Asiatic Russia, was sent to Massowah, with a mission to Theodore, which, however, was specially limited to the delivery of certain presents and the presentation of a letter from Lord Russell in reply to that of the Queen announcing the slaughter of the followers of Mr. Plowden's murderer. Mr. Cameron was strictly enjoined, after having performed this duty, to return to the coast, to reside at Massowah, to avoid all interference with the internal politics of Abyssinia, and to occupy himself with the development of the trade of the country, keeping her Majesty's Government informed of any political events of

It was necessary for Mr. Plowden to justify the anticipations which he had held out to his friends and patrons in England, as to the advantage of establishing direct political and commercial relations with Abyssinia. Consequently the Foreign Office received from him those able but much exaggerated reports which have since been laid before Parliament. We are now able to judge how far those reports were justified, and how far the promises held out by their writer have been fulfilled. One curious fact has transpired, which until long after the death of Mr. Plowden remained unknown. Theodore had shown his jealous suspicion and mistrust of Europeans almost as soon as he commenced to reign, and Mr. Plowden was made a prisoner, forbidden to leave the country, and, although not actually in chains, was confined for some time in the hill fort of Magdala. This was, of course, carefully kept from the Foreign Office, which was led to believe by his re-importance which might take place in it. ports that his mission had been eminently successful, that he was a special favourite with the King, and that his influence and that of England were supreme in Abyssinia.

If some industrious and painstaking man would only sit down and devote his time to the investigation of the origin of wars, and would show us how many lives and how much money had been sacrificed by the misconduct, the ambition, the vanity or the ignorance of our own agents, he would render a public service of much value, and might frighten the Foreign Office into the utmost caution in the choice of those whom they send to represent this country in foreign lands, and especially amongst barbarous or semi-civilized peoples.

After passing some time in confinement or under restraint, Mr. Plowden prevailed upon the King to allow him to depart. Whilst on his way to the coast he was attacked by a rebel chief and fell mortally wounded. Theodore, whatever he may have thought of the Consul living, avenged his death after the fashion of his country. He killed the chief who had committed the outrage, and having captured above fifteen hundred of his followers slew them in cold blood. Then in a letter to the Queen he boasted of his exploit, and declared that for her sake he had committed this horrible butchery.

The sequel is now too well known to require more than a passing notice. Instead of obeying his instructions, Mr. Cameron re-opened negotiations with Theodore and endeavoured to prevail upon him to ratify the treaty entered into with Ras Ali, offered to induce the British Government to receive an embassy from him, and took charge of a letter to the Queen, promising to bring an answer to it. Instead of returning to his post at Massowah, as he ought to have done, he went to the Egyptian frontiers, endeavoured to settle some disputes between the border tribes, sent Theodore's letter by an untrustworthy Abyssinian messenger to Aden to be forwarded to England, and then returned to Abyssinia. Theodore, suspecting that Mr. Cameron's visit to his enemies, the Egyptians, had a hostile object, and irritated at the Consul's return without bringing the promised answer to his letter, threw him into chains. This was the origin of the Abyssinian difficulty.'

As soon as the rumour reached England of the imprisonment of Mr. Cameron, the Foreign Office, in communication with the India Office, took such measures as were considered to be best calculated to effect his delivery. It was deemed advisable that no time should be lost in sending some person of a certain rank and authority to Theodore, bearing a letter from the Queen

asking for the release of her Consul. It who were employed on the excavation. was necessary to choose an envoy who was Mr. Hormudz Rassam most fully justified properly fitted for such a mission, who the confidence which, for some years, Mr. held a position which would give him Layard placed in him. His knowledge of weight with the Emperor, and who could reach Abyssinia without delay. Mr. Rassam, the Political Assistant Resident at Aden was suggested to the Foreign Office as the person who best united the required qualifications, and the India Office, whose officer he was, directed him by telegraph to hold himself in readiness to convey a letter from the Queen to the King of Abyssinia.

Chaldæan and Arabic, his facility in acquiring the Kurdish and Turkish languages, and his rapid progress in English, rendered him invaluable to Mr. Layard in dealing with the various races and tribes of Nestorians, Arabs, Kurds, and Turks with whom he was brought into contact. By his singular tact, judgment, and temper, he soon acquired the most extraordinary influence, not only over those engaged in the works, over the wild Bedouins and Kurds and their sheiks and chiefs who roamed over the surrounding plains. The name of Hormudz,' by which he was generally called, was known throughout the desert. The wandering Arabs would come to him to settle their disputes and to arbitrate between them. So great was the confidence which they felt in his justice and discrimination, that even the most delicate family questions, such as domestic quarrels, and divorces and reconciliations between husband and wife, were submitted to his decision, and Kurdish and Arab ladies looked to him as their protector and friend. Mr. Layard has thus borne testimony to the services which Mr. Rassam rendered to the expedition to Assyria:

· To his unwearied exertions, and his faithful

The history and character of the gentleman, who was thus chosen for this difficult and dangerous mission, have been greatly misunderstood and misrepresented. He had been described as an Armenian, a Levantine, a Turk, and an Asiatic epithets considered by the ignorant to be terms of reproach, and by those labouring under the miserable and unworthy prejudices which are the foundation in India of the hatred between the native and European races, as incapacitating a man to whom either of them may be applied from employment in the public service, whatever his abilities or his conduct may be. Mr. Rassam is a member of a Christian family, holding as good a station as a Christian family can hold in a Mohammedan provincial city. His forefathers had been established for some generations at Mosul, on the Tigris, opposite to the ruins of Nineveh. They and punctual discharge of all the duties imposed professed the Roman Catholic faith, and upon him, to his inexhaustible good humour, belonged to that branch of the Eastern combined with necessary firmness, to his comChurch in Mesopotamia called Caldani, or plete knowledge of the Arab character, and the Chaldæan. At an early age he was dis-attachment which even the wildest of those with tinguished by a remarkable independence of judgment and spirit of inquiry. Dissatisfied with the faith in which he had been born, he left the Roman Catholic Church to join those who appeared to him the most free from its errors- the Nestorians, an ancient sect who have not been altogether inappropriately termed the Protestants of Asia. His elder brother, Mr. Christian When Mr. Layard came to England from Rassam, had quitted Mosul when he was his first expedition, Mr. Rassam accomstill young, and had been brought up in panied him, and returned with him to NinEurope as a Protestant. He had been eveh in 1849. After Mr. Layard had chosen to accompany the Euphrates Expe- finally quitted Mesopotamia, Mr. Rassam dition under Col. Chesney, and as a reward was requested by the Trustees of the Britfor his services was appointed British Vice-ish Museum to direct the excavations. It Consul at Mosul in 1839. When Mr. was through his exertions and intelligent Layard arrived in that city in 1845 to prosecute his researches amongst the ruins of Nineveh, he was struck with the ability and character of Mr. Hormudz Rassam, who was then a boy, and invited the young Chaldæan to live with him as his friend and guest and to assist him in his intercourse with the Arab and other native workmen

whom we were brought in contact regarded him, the Trustees of the British Museum owe not only most of the success of those researches, but the economy with which I was enabled to carry them on. Without him it would have been impossible to accomplish half of what has been done with the means placed at my disposal.' — (` Nineveh and Babylon,' p. 201.)

superintendence that the beautiful sculptures representing the Lion-hunt, now in the basement Assyrian hall in the British Museum, and many other remarkable monuments, were discovered.

After the excavations were brought to a close Mr. Rassam returned to England, his adopted country. Soon afterwards his re

markable qualities and acquirements recom- with an imposing mission, been sent to mended him to the notice of the Directors Abyssinia, he would have been considered of the East India Company, and he was as a greater prize by the King; and the appointed to the post of official interpreter indignities and insults which would have at Aden. He was not long in acquiring the been heaped upon its members- mostly same influence over the wild tribes living high-spirited soldiers, ignorant of the lanaround that settlement that he had exercised guage and usages of the barbarous people over the Bedouins of Mesopotamia. He amongst whom they were thrown-would, was able to effect a complete change in the in all probability, have led to the most fatal relations between them and the English consequences. garrison. Previous to his arrival they Mr. Rassam, on receiving the Queen's were in a chronic state of war. No Eu- letter, went at once to Massowah. There ropean ventured to leave the walls, and our his trials and troubles began. In that hottroops were in frequent danger of being cut bed of fever and cholera, in a town of off even from the wells which at times were ruins, deprived of European society except absolutely necessary for the supply of water such as was afforded by the two gentlemen, to the place. Mr. Rassam opened commu- Dr. Blanc and Lieutenant Prideaux, who nications with the Arab chiefs, and succeeded were later attached to his mission, with the in establishing a direct intercourse with thermometer frequently at 100 degrees at them. Not only was peace made and main- midnight, and many degrees above it during tained by his influence, but he was able to the day, he had to wait for more than a conduct Major-General Coghlan, then Poli-year without being able to proceed to tical Resident or Governor of Aden, on a visit to the tribes ands heiks who had been most hostile to the English, and through a country which had previously been closed against Europeans.

The services which Mr. Rassam was thus rendering were speedily recognized. He rose to be Assistant Political Resident, a position equivalent to that of lieutenantgovernor, was left more than once in charge of the settlement, and acted as principal magistrate and judge in all native cases. He was, moreover, employed on several important diplomatic and political missions, amongst them one for the settlement of the differences between the rival Sultans of Muscat and Zanzibar, the duties of which he discharged to the entire satisfaction of the Indian Government, receiving from them the most cordial approval of and thanks for his conduct. His constant communication as a magistrate with the inhabitants, not only of the surrounding part of Arabia, but of the African coast in the Red Sea, had made him very widely known and had greatly extended his influence.

From the character, antecedents, and official position of Mr. Rassam, no better person could have been chosen to proceed on a mission to King Theodore. It was, indeed, suggested at the time that a person of still higher rank, accompanied by a numerous staff and the bearer of valuable presents, should have been selected, and General Coghlan, a distinguished officer, who had been Governor of Aden, was named as a suitable envoy; but the result has fully proved that the Government were right in their choice. No one will now be inclined to doubt that had General Coghlan,

Abyssinia. His letters to Theodore, announcing his mission and requesting a safeconduct to enter the country, remained unanswered. He could obtain no reliable information from the interior. The few Abyssinians who ventured down to the coast were afraid to open their lips, and when asked a question concerning their dreaded ruler and his captives, shook with terror, such was their fear of spies who were supposed to be watching every movement and listening to every word of the envoy. To add to the difficulties of his position, every messenger that reached him from, Aden brought articles and letters from the English and Indian newspapers denouncing him for his incapacity and cowardice in not proceeding at once to Abyssinia to release the prisoners; whilst at the same time he was receiving the most stringent instructions from the Foreign Office not to take any step which, by putting him in the power of the King, might add to the complication already existing, and the most solemn warnings from the captives themselves and from the Europeans about the King not to venture, if he had any regard for his own and their lives, into the Abyssinian territory without a royal invitation and safe-conduct. When subsequently asked why he had kept Mr. Rassam so long waiting at Massowah without answering his letters or taking any notice of him, Theodore replied that it was to try the envoy, and to ascertain whether he was as hasty in temper and as ill-mannered, as other Englishmen and Franks who had visited his country. And he certainly did hit upon a trial which we will venture to say few men would have borne with equal temper and patience.

At length, on the 12th of August, 1865, |ing the Abyssinian and Egyptian frontiers, a letter came from the King, inviting the one previously little known to Europeans, envoy to his court and pointing out the road as mountainous, exceedingly difficult of acwhich he was to take; but it was neither cess, barren, and uninteresting, except in a sealed nor signed. However, those ac- few isolated spots and deep valleys where quainted with the habits of the capricious springs or water-courses nourish an oasis of monarch had no doubts as to its authenticity. trees and sweet flowering shrubs in the Mr. Rassam was ready to proceed at once, midst of a wilderness. He found the fronbut a fresh difficulty now presented itself. tier town of Cásala in a deplorable condiLord Russell, urged by a part of the press tion owing to a recent mutiny of the native and by those who were not unnaturally im- Soudan troops belonging to the Viceroy of patient at the delay in liberating their rela- Egypt, which had been revenged and puntives and friends, had determined to make ished by a wholesale massacre of the mutianother effort to obtain their release by neers. Their mangled bodies, half desending Mr. Palgrave, the well-known Ara- voured by hyænas, were still scattered bian traveller, in a semi-official character about the place, tainting the air and breedto King Theodore. Mr. Rassam was con- ing disease. The wretched inhabitants had sequently directed to return to Aden with been plundered and maltreated both by the Queen's letter, and there to await the those who made the mutiny and by those result of Mr. Palgrave's mission. He re- who put it down. Cholera and fever had ceived these fresh instructions at the same completed their misery and misfortunes. time that he received the King's letter. He saw at once the great risk of further complications by the appearance of two missions in the field, and determined to proceed to Alexandria, in order to communicate with the Foreign Office and to meet Mr. Palgrave on his way through Egypt. He had, moreover, been informed by the bearers of the King's letter that the captives had been released, a statement which afterwards proved to be false, and which the King, for some purpose of his own, may have ordered the messengers to make. At any rate, he subsequently expressed his entire approval of the deception which had been practised upon Mr. Rassam.

Passing through the curious frontier districts of Tâka, of which he gives an interesting description, Mr. Rassam arrived at Matamma, or, as the Arabs call the place. Sûk-ul-Gallabât, the capital of a small province under a semi-independent chief, owing allegiance to neither Egyptians nor Abyssinians, but pretending friendship and alliance with each, according to circumstances. Its ruler, a Mohammedan, is described as a gentleman who, if he were not in the habit of drowning his senses by large indulgence in prohibited drinks, which he does every night, could not close his eyes in sleep for fear of the cold steel being suddenly thrust into his vitals.' This same On receiving Mr. Rassam's despatches happy condition of insecurity, if not ineLord Russell very wisely decided that as briety, prevails amongst his subjects and that gentleman had been in communication followers, who appear to live in a continual with the King, and his name appeared in dread of attack, plunder, and massacre from the Queen's letter, he was the proper person their neighbours, Mohammedans, Christo proceed to Theodore's court; conse- tians, and Pagans. In this barbarous and quently, Mr. Palgrave was stopped in Egypt. unhealthy region, inhabited by a singular There can be no doubt that, had Mr. Ras-negro race, known as the Takroory, of sam been superseded by Mr. Palgrave, the whose history, manners, and habits he gives suspicions of the King would have been aroused, and that he would have fancied that some trick or some indignity had been practised upon him. As the King had himself pointed out the route which he wished Mr. Rassam to take, it was further thought prudent to conform to his wishes, and not to give him any excuse whatever for quarrelling with the envoy. Accordingly, Mr. Rassam returned to Massowah, and, after making preparations for his journey and obtaining with great difficulty the necessary beasts of burden, started for Theodore's court by way of Cásala and Matámma.

Mr. Rassam describes the country skirt

a graphic account, Mr. Rassam had to remain until he could receive answers to the letters which he had forwarded to King Theodore, and directions as to his future proceedings from that jealous and capricious monarch. At length, on the 26th of December, messengers arrived bearing two complimentary letters from the King, one like the previous communication, without seal or signature, the other in due form, and invested with both. They contained explanations as to the omission on previous occasions of the proper formalities. Mr. Rassam was further apprised that the King had ordered several officers of rank and a

large escort to meet him on the Abyssinian | anxious Mr. Rassam was to pay for all that frontier, and to conduct him into the royal his party consumed, he felt himself compresence.

pelled, in order not to give the slightest cause of displeasure to the King, to accept them as marks of the royal favour. Mes sengers constantly arrived from Theodore himself to inquire after the progress of the mission and the health of its chief. In the midst of this general satisfaction at the ar rival of the envoy, and of the hospitality and distinction with which he was received, there was only one ominous sign. The con

by an earnest prayer that Mr. Rassam might leave the country in safety. It was not till later that he learnt its full significance. He was not then so well acquainted as were his kind well-wishers with the treacherous character of his royal host.

Mr. Rassam describes the scenery of the country through which he passed as frequently of great beauty, diversified by distant views of lofty mountains and broad expanse of lake. Sometimes the party rode through brakes of wild roses and jessamine, which filled the air with their perfume; at other times through shady groves formed by magnificent trees.

On the 28th of December the mission left Matámma prepared to enter Abyssinia, and to face the formidable Theodore. With the exception of the usual difficulties experienced in such countries from the want of means of transport, Mr. Rassam and his companions had no reason to complain of their reception, and of the arrangements made by the King for their progress. They soon had occasion to perceive the dread gratulations of chiefs and priests ever ended which the very name of Theodore inspired amongst his subjects. Its mention was sufficient to secure anything that might be required by those who had charge of the mission, and no one ventured to dispute or disobey an order which came from one of his officers. But some of poor Mr. Rassam's trials and troubles commenced very shortly after he had entered the Abyssinian territory. They did not arise from the Abyssinians, but rather from the extreme imprudence and want of proper feeling of the captives and of the Europeans themselves, and they were afterwards increased by the want of judgment and irrational proceedings of their friends and others in England. He describes how letters were forwarded to him from the prisoners and missionaries through Abyssinian messengers, which, had they been shown to the King, would in all probability have led to the most fatal consequences to the writers, if not to the mission itself. Fortunately, by an adroit manœuver, Mr. Rassam was able to prevent them passing through the hands of the King's officers, and the Abyssinians to whom they were entrusted showed singular fidelity and trustworthiness, virtues which could scarcely have been expected from these poor ignorant creatures, but for which, according to Mr. Rassam's testimony, the race is remarkable.

Everywhere Mr. Rassam was received with demonstrations of welcome and respect. The priests came from their churches and the monks from their convents to meet him, singing psalms and hymns, and bearing the sacred banners and utensils. The local chiefs and chieftainesses appeared on his road, with their followers, to do him honour, and to escort him. Provisions, and the supplies the country could afford, were of fered to him in such abundance that there was more than enough for the large number of stragglers and hangers-on who, as is the custom on such occasions in the East, had attached themselves to his caravan. Cows, fowls, bread, vegetables, and mead were brought by the peasantry, and however

On the 26th of Jauuary, 1866, the mission came within sight of the royal camp, in the midst of which rose the white pavilion of Theodore. It was situated on an eminence at a place called Ashfa, in the district of Damot. Mr. Rassam describes it as a motley group of mean huts inhabited by a noisy rabble of soldiery. On the 28th, when within two miles of the royal presence, he found a tent pitched for his reception. He was there met by Ras Ingada, the Prime Minister, by all the principal officers of State, and by a guard of honour. One Aito Samuel, who played a conspicuous part in the history of the Abyssinian captives, and who, according to Mr. Rassam, proved himself to be a man of much honesty and trustworthiness, was especially sent to him by the King to serve as an interpreter between them. This personage, who had been a Mohammedan, and was a native of Senafé, of the Shoho tribe, was well aoquainted with the Arabic language, and to a certain extent with the manners and usages of Europeans, having travelled in India, Egypt and Syria. He was alternately a special favorite of the King and in disgrace, as was usual with every one in Theodore's court.

The Prime Minister after having welcomed the mission to Abyssinia on the part of the King, presented Mr. Rassam with a mule, equipped with one of the royal saddles, and covered with an embroidered