THEODORE II. AND THE 



ingots, and seven thousand muskets, in the charge of one of his sonSo 

 The conqueror brought Oubie before the fortress, loaded with chains, 

 and informed the young prince that the life of his father depended 

 upon his submission. This unchivalrous retort had the expected 

 effect, and the place capitulated. In Amba-Hai or a neighbouring 

 citadel, the valiant Sobhigadis-Kassa, son of the prince of the same 

 name who was killed in 1831 in the fight of Mai-Islamai, and the 

 victim of signal treachery on the part of Oubie, had been confined 

 for seventeen years. He ran the risk of only making a change of 

 jailor, when his daughter, a very young and remarkably beautiful 

 princess, boldly sought out the new negus and supplicated him for 

 her father's liberty. Her filial affection, and still more her beauty, 

 made a favourable impression upon the young conqueror, who gave 

 Sobhigadis his liberty, and took the graceful suppliant for a favorite. 

 The conquest of Tigre was accomplished : the negus gave this im- 

 portant vice-royalty to Balgada-Araea, a brilliant soldier without 

 administrative capacity, and then, strong enough to dare everything, 

 he put Oubie in fetters. 



Theodore was then maturing a project dear to the patriotism of 

 every Abyssinian — that of commencing a crusade against the Turks, 

 masters of the lowlands that had formerly belonged to Abyssinia. 

 His southern troubles did not leave him time to act. In the group 

 of mountains which separate Choa from the rest of the empire, there 

 lived a Mahommedan people of foreign race, the Ouolloa, an ad- 

 vanced colony of that powerful G-alla stock, which, for three cen- 

 turies, beatmg upon the frontiers of Ethiopia like a raging ocean, 

 has already half devoured it. A confederation of independent chiefs, 

 of whom the most powerful were then Oarhet, princess of Worra, 

 and Adara-Bille, lord of Tehuladere ; the Ouollos had stirred up the 

 legitimate wrath of the Abyssinian Christians ; they were to a cer- 

 tain extent the free lances of Africa, lending to the highest bidder 

 their formidable cavalry, and adding to the horrors of civil war the 

 severity of their fanatical hatred towards the Christians. Theodore 

 the Second, who had had to do with these ferocious mercenaries, had 

 sworn forever to prevent them from drenching the Christian pro- 

 vinces with blood, and they had the impudence to provoke him at 

 the very moment of his most brilliant triumph. He learned that 

 the Ouollos, led by the princess Oarhet, had overstepped the abrupt 

 slopes of the Bachilo river, and had ravaged the Christian provinces. 



