The Sun. — 1868-05-25 (London, England)

THE EXODUS FROM MAGDALA.  rne Wollo Gallas, Theodore's unrelenting enemies, are among the fiercest warriors and most determined plunderers in the world. During our heavy bombardment of Magdala they were looking vigorously among the huts close under the walls, until a few rockets, in their immediate direction, dispersed them, and they had clambered up by the southern gate, almost as soon as the place was in flames on the last day and our men had begun to retire. They rob, murder, and mutilate every Abyssinian they can get hold of, and the British force has bad far more difficulty in protecting Theodore's army and huge host of followers than it had in conquering them. The poor wretches have been leaving Magdala for the last two days in thousands, and lining the road between this and the Dalanta plateau for many miles. I have heard them estimated at from 25,000 to 30,000, but any European estimate could be little more than a loose guess, and the Abyssinians themselves have as vague a notion of numbers as of distance. Whatever the population was, it seemed to cover with swarming multitudinous life not only the Amba, but nearly all the immediate neighbourhood, and presente3 na strung. and motley a collection as it would be easy to find out of a museum—men and women, the young and the old, the infirm and the vigorous, fathers borne on the shoulders of stalwart sons, weak women tottering under the weight of noisy, animated bundles- sometimes two or three such bundles ; the chief, conspicuous in his red-striped .sbama, striding impatiently and haughtily, albeit a little crestfallen, ahead of his overladen Shangalla slaves, negroes, big-limbed and black, to borrow Johnson's simile, as a " Cyclops from the forge ;" the lady of rank, on her sleek, gaily caparisoned mule, riding—as ladies in Rotten-row do not ride, and so closely muffled up from head to foot as to shew nothing more to the passing eye than a wellshaped, but yellowish torso of nose and by no means expressionless black eye, her handmaids making a body-guard round her on humbler animals and in coarser clothes, but, as a compensation, free from the drawbacks of rank, and thus enjoying the double feminine pleasure of seeing and being seen ; here and there a friendless cripple, unable to drag his palsied limbs further down the steep hill, and piteously imploring every passer-by for water or the support of a strong arm ; and—most startling, though not saddest sight of all —the corpse of some one fallen faint from hunger or thirst by the wayside, or a rude litter carrying high above the dense throng the body of some dead or wounded soldier, a ghastly token of the recent days of blood. It was certainly a most marvellous exodus, and would have been inexpressibly painful if one had thought the people were leaving for ever real homes in which they had lived from childhood, and for which they cared. But such sufferers were in a small minority. A few inhabitants may have been loth to leave Magdala ; some from age or infirmity were physically unable to leave it with comfort, or even at all. A few of these clung to their huts up to the last moment, and had to be hunted from hiding-place to hiding-place. Just before the gate was blown up— the last act of destruction—a loathsome cripple, covered with sores, was discovered near it by a corporal of the 33rd, whose• name, unfortunately, I have not learnt, and carried by him to a place of safety. The man will, it is to be hoped, get some other reward than that of a good conscience. There are many in the force who would only too gladly have joined the storming party and risked their lives in the narrow path, but who would have shrunk from this safe and simple act of heroism. It is, however, but one, nerhaps striking, instance out of many.