CHAPTER XXIV.

Visited by Ibrahim.-Map of the Hawash.-Its effect upon tableland of Abyssinia.-Future juncture with the Abi.—Its early tributaries.-Effects of denudation. - Zui lake.-Popular tradition. Abyssinian geographical work.-Galla tribes.

August 16th.-Ibrahim, the retired slave-merchant, who had not called since I had made the improvements in my house, came in to-day. He was rather astonished at the transformation I had effected, gave the table a good shake, sat down in my chair, and tabored with his fingers against the parchment window. "Ahkeem e moot," said he at last, “may the doctor die! if it is not good; you are a tabeeb, and the house of your Queen is not furnished so well." The old gentleman had brought his work with him, a piece of blue sood, which he was embroidering with green and red silk in a large cross-bar pattern, and which he told me was intended for a holiday guftah for his wife. Here I must observe, that although the Islam women in Shoa usually wear clothes of some common material dyed red, upon festival days they display very rich headdresses of foreign silk, or embroidered cotton cloth, such as Ibrahim was now working.

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GEOGRAPHICAL LESSON.

Walderheros placed the low Abyssinian chair for his accommodation, and then, as was generally the case when Ibrahim came to see me, a long conversation commenced respecting the town of Hurrah, of which he was a native, although he had not been to that city for the last eight or nine years. As usual, we had a map sketched upon the floor before us, which, however, on this occasion was not a very complicated one, merely the southern portion of the Hawash, where it encircles Shoa, and which formed the conclusion of the course of that river, the northern portion of which, as far as the ford of Mulkakuyu, I had already received information of from my Dankalli friends, Ohmed Medina and Ohmedu.

The principal features of the geography of the country included in the sketch map, were the three principal streams entering the Hawash from the scarp of the Abyssinian table-land, all of which flowed nearly to the south; but the most remarkable and interesting one was the great indentation in the outline of the high country, which in this situation seemed to be approaching to a separation into two parts by the denudation of the sources of the Hawash on the east, and a corresponding degradation on the west, occasioned by the action of the waters of the Assabi, or Abiah, the red Nile falling from the elevated plains of its earlier tributaries to join the Bahr ul Abiad at Kartoom, where its height above the level of the sea does not, I believe, exceed three thousand feet.

THE SOURCES OF THE HAWASH.

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Surrounding the head of the Hawash, separated only by the narrow valleys of denudation around its sources, are three elevated countries, all forming part of the table-land of Abyssinia, and between which, in the course of ages, this river has intruded itself by slow degrees, and is still progressing annually farther to the west. These three countries are Zingero to the south, Enarea to the west, and Shoa to the north, whilst the corresponding portions of the scarp are Gurague, Maitcha, and the ancient province of Fatagar, the more westerly portion of which is now possessed by the Soddo Gallas.

This now excavated portion of Abyssinia must have been at a former period one continuous table land, and the countries of Zingero and of Shoa then could only have been separated by streams that flowed to the north into the Abi, or to the south into the Gibbee, the ancient Assabi. The same convulsion which has determined the peculiar course of the Abi, or Bruce's Nile, seems to have influenced the direction of the encroachment of the Hawash into the limits of the plateau of Abyssinia; and also the position of the debouchè of the Red Nile from its summit to the plains below. An examination of the map will show a curious correspondence between the situation of the sources of the Hawash, of the southern curve of the Abi, and of the break in the table land where that river joins the Red Nile near Fazuglo. A great geological fault seems to extend

across Abyssinia in the direction of these several points, one effect of which (that of the great disintegration of the material of the rocks along its course) appears to me to have favoured the denudation observed on the eastern and western borders of this country. To this fracture I also attribute the sudden curve of the Abi to the west, after flowing nearly due south from lake Dembea; the physical barrier to its farther continuance in that direction not being a ridge of hills, or what is generally termed an anticlinal axis, but the presence of the opposite wall of the disjointed rock, which characterizes the extension of the fault across the table land. This is neither unfounded assertion nor rash conclusion, but the deliberate opinion I have formed by a careful examination of the mighty operations of nature that appear to have acted upon the surface geography of Abyssinia from the most remote ages.

Let my reader return with me for a moment to the country of Adal, an extensive plain, scarcely one thousand feet high above the level of the sea. Its river, the Hawash, peculiarly its own, distinct in the non-existence of opposite corresponding watersheds to identify it as having formed part of the original surface level of the surrounding countries: an intruder, in fact, between the opposite slopes of the river Tacazza to the north and of the river Whaabbee to the south; the countries of which were once continuous, but some convulsion

APPEARANCES IN ADAL.

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connected probably with that which has occasioned the fault across the table land of Abyssinia, has in this position, severed the country completely; and in the gaping chasm, filled up to a certain level with the debris, has formed the bed of the Hawash, which gradually progressing on every side, its wide circumference of sources encroaches every year upon the elevated lands which surround it.

A traveller in Adal cannot help noticing the singular character of the situation of the river Hawash, for he crosses over its bounding ridge to the east, and has partial opportunities of observing the bluff scarp-like terminations of the Angotcha, the Abyssinian, and the Hurrahgee table lands, all of which are being rapidly denuded by the numerous little tributaries which flow to swell the Hawash. But this extending operation is most strikingly illustrated in a line with the fault which has extended from the sea-coast to Fazuglo, in the west of Abyssinia. Here, to the south of Shoa, the Hawash has already approached within one day's journey from the deep valley of the Abi, and removes annually great portions of the surrounding table land, which had previously determined the rain drops to flow into that river, but subsequent to which removal, all falling water must for the future, aid in swelling the insidious river of the low-land of Adal. The valleys of numerous small streams, the sides of which, denuded