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henry Salt

Who was Henry Salt?
Many Addis Ababa residents remember him as the artist responsible for the fine 19th century engravings (several of them subsequently reprinted by the Ethiopian Tourist Commission) which decorate the walls of not a few of the city’s houses – or in the illustrated book Ethiopia Engraved which I produced with my friend Leila Ingrams.
But Who, you may still ask, was Henry Salt really?
Henry Salt, to whom we are much indebted for these revealing glimpses of old-time Ethiopia, was born in 1780 in Litchfield in the English county of Stafford – precisely the town where Dr Samuel Johnston, author of the Ethiopian novel Rasselas, had been born seventy years or so earlier.
Young Henry was the son of Thomas Salt, a military surgeon, and was the youngest of eight children – they had large families in Britain in those days. Making his way to London in 1799 Henry joined the Royal Academy Antique School, where he trained as an artist – and began his career as an artist copier. His entire life, however, soon changed, suddenly and irrevocably. This was because not long after this he visited Fuselli’s art gallery in London’s Pall Mall, where on the day in question there was only one other visitor: the renowned British traveller, George Annesley, Viscount Valentia. The resultant meeting between the Lord and the Artist changed the latter’s life entirely, for Valentia almost immediately afterwards sailed to the East – having appointed the good Salt as his Secretary and Draftsman.
Henry Salt’s First Visit to Ethiopia
Valentia and Salt sailed from London in June 1802, and, after spending almost three years in and around India, entered the Red Sea in 1805. They duly arrived at Mocha, on the Arabian coast, where Valentia decided on dispatching an expedition to Abyssinia, as they chose to call the country. His Lordship felt that he was “of too much importance” to risk his life on what was then an unknown journey, whereas he considered young Salt as “comparatively of no consequence” – so that it was suitable to risk his life as envoy to the (in British eyes) virtually unknown land of “Abyssinia”.
Salt’s proposed visit to Ethiopia took place during what historians of the country term the Era of the Masafent, or Judges – a Biblical reference to a time of disunity when there was no central authority in the land. Salt accordingly sailed to the Red Sea port of Massawa, whence he proceeded inland to Digsa, where he was received by the Bahrnegash, or Ethiopian ruler of the Sea Province. He then travelled inland to Antalo, where he was befriended by the renowned Ras Wolde Sellase, governor of Tegray, whom he found seated with his chiefs on a couch with costly pillows. After an exchange of friendly formalities the traveller asked, and was given, permission to visit the ancient city of Aksum, as well as the then relatively new town of Adwa which was by that time the commercial capital of northern Ethiopia. It was in the course of this visit that Lord Valentia’s draftsman sketched the great standing obelisk of Aksum – a diagrammatic representation of which the Scotsman James Bruce had earlier published in 1790.
Salt was invited by Wolde Selassie to a great state banquet - which he describes in detail, and also produced a painting of the Virgin and Child to adorn the local church at Antalo. However, with Valentia urgently awaiting him, Salt was soon obliged to return to the coast. He left behind him his servant Nathaniel Pearce, who married an Ethiopian woman by name of Tringo – she was called after the popular Ethiopian citrus fruit of that name. Pearce thus became one of the first foreign residents in early 19th century Ethiopia. He was not the only one, for we have record in Adwa of at least one Armenian and a Greek.
Salt, duly joined up with Valentia, and proceeded with the latter to Cairo, where they met the redoubtable Egyptian ruler Mohomed Ali Pasha. This was politically an important move – for Egypt, since Napoleon’s expedition to that country, had been potentially a French sphere on influence. By befriending Ras Wolde Selassie of Tegray and Mohomed Ali of Egypt, Henry Salt’s employer was seeking to replace French by British power.
Salt’s reminiscences, and engravings based on his travels, were duly published in Valentia’s important three-volume work Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt, which was published in London in 1809. The artist also worked up more of his drawings which were published in the same year as Twenty-four Views of St Helena, the Cape, India, Ceylon, Abyssinia, and Egypt.
Salt’s Second Visit To Ethiopia
Salt’s activities, and those of his employer Lord Valentia, greatly pleased the British Foreign Office. It accordingly dispatched Salt on a second visit to Ethiopia, this time as an official British envoy, bearing a letter from King George III. Salt also received a commission from a private British organisation, the Society for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, with instructions to “obtain usefull [sic] and curious information relative to the interior of Africa”.
Sailing from Britain in March 1809, Salt, now an Envoy, made his way once more to Ras Wolde Selassie’s capital, where the chief received him royally, and declared that he had always had a premonition that he would see the traveller again before he died. Salt was also taken to the church at nearby Cheleqot, where the gifts earlier presented by the British were “advantageously arranged” – and Pearce played a hand organ, the music of which was reportedly much admired. King George’s letter had been intended for the Emperor – but getting to the capital, Gondar, being difficult to reach Salt delivered the epistle to Ras Wolde Sellasie instead.
When the time again came for the British to leave Ethiopia the Ras, according to the traveller, “stood watching us, with tears in his eyes running down his face” – until his visitors were out of sight. Be that as it may the British Mission was not as successful as it might have been – for when Wolde Sellasie proposed sending an official Envoy to Britain Salt failed to take up the offer. Official relations between the two countries were thus postponed for a generation – and the Envoy, apparently losing interest in Ethiopia, was appointed British Consul-General in Egypt.
Salt nevertheless gave an informative lecture to the Society for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, and wrote a notable travelogue of this Ethiopian travels. Entitled Account of a Voyage to Abyssinia, and Travels into the Interior of that Country, in the Years 1809 and 1810, it appeared in 1814. It remains to this day a valuable account of early 19th century Ethiopia – as well as a good read.