The Highlands of EthiopiaHarris, William Cornwallis, Sir
History
The Highlands of Ethiopia
Harris, William Cornwallis, Sir
Ethiopia -- Description and travel
In every page of the criticism the sophisms and fallacies of which I
have undertaken to expose, there is some fresh proof that the reviewer
does not see his own way, and that he is perpetually at contradiction
with himself. For example, he insists on nothing more incessantly than
the all-powerful influence of Dr Krapf over the king of Shoa, to which,
he says, the Embassy owed whatever success it met with. No sooner,
however, does the missionary quit the precincts of the court, than he is
arrested and plundered, evidently, the reviewer insinuates, with the
knowledge and connivance of his fast friend Sahela Selassie. What then
becomes of his prodigious influence, since it did not suffice for his
own protection? But if Dr Krapf was powerless, so likewise, argues the
critic, was the Embassy; "for we read of no remonstrances, no
applications made to the king on behalf of the missionary, and surely
there are no political considerations to restrain communicativeness upon
a subject like this." He is perfectly mistaken. For although it may,
without compromising any one, be stated that remonstrances were made,
there are reasons, and those public ones too, which forbid me to explain
why those remonstrances were ineffectual. Had the critic, or his
Amharic philosopher, possessed one atom of sagacity, they would have
divined those reasons; but as the case is otherwise, I leave them in the
darkness which encompasses the whole coterie.
As to my having no right to use information expressly collected for me
by the Political Agent at Aden, and by Lieutenant Christopher, in
reference to the Eastern Coast, that is really a point upon which the
reviewer can hardly be reckoned a competent judge. Lieutenant Barker,
like Dr Kirk and the rest of my assistants, was under my orders, and
sent with me for the express purpose of taking share, as I might see
fit, in the duties allotted to me. The authorities quoted by the
reviewer, as having been first in the field with every particular
respecting slavery and the slave-trade in Shoa, do not bear out his
assertion. Not to go any farther, where does he find the fact, which is
rather an important one, that the king claims one out of every ten
slaves that pass through his dominions? Like most other points which
bear materially upon the subject, this is omitted in the "reports" which
are so confidently advanced, in order to throw dust in the eyes of those
who will take the Reviewer's word for whatever he has the effrontery to
assert.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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