still smiling faces, and a friendly welcome, in a strange country, from whatever cause, does the traveller's heart good, and encourages him to proceed on his undertaking.

We halted for nearly two hours at Aliu Amba, not being able to get away before, as a sheep had been killed, and our servants were determined to take advantage of the hospitality of the townspeople. When their hunger was satisfied, they brought us our mules, for which we had been asking some time in vain, as Mr. Scott and I were anxious to breakfast, if we could, at Ankobar with Dr. Roth, and Mr. Bernatz the artist to the Embassy. A large concourse of the principal people of the town accompanied us across the marketplace to the edge of their little table hill, from whence they watched us until shut out from view by the sinuosity of the narrow road, which occupied the summit of a ledge separating the slopes of two small rivulets, running in opposite directions around the hill of Aliu Amba, to join each other in the valley in front.

We now rode between two delightful natural hedge rows of a low thorny bush with dark green leaves, and bearing clusters of a black sweet berry; over which trailed in most luxuriant profusion a very sweet scented jasmine; and pushing its way through this mass of vegetation, high above all, flowered the common hedge rose of England. Its well-remembered delicately blushing hue, so unex

52

CHARACTER OF THE ROAD

pectedly greeting me here, elicited a feeling that, with but a little more ardent sensitiveness in my nature, would have thrown me on my knees before it, as Linnæus is said to have knelt to the flowering furze, on first witnessing its brilliant blossoms in England.

The road now became most shockingly stony, strewed with detached fragments of the cliffs around, as we approached the bluff termination of the table land above us. A recent earthquake had brought down considerable quantities, and no attempt had been made to remove the blocks, travellers very patiently seeking out a new path around them. In two or three places, where the detour was too great, some desperate spirits had forced their mules or donkeys to breast up the miniature precipices a few feet in height. At one of these situations I dismounted, preferring to walk through the delightfully hanging gardens on either side of me, and along an embowered lane, where a dense shade, and numberless little streams that traversed sometimes considerable distances, contributed to the agreeable coolness of an elevation between 6,000 and 7,000 feet above the level of the sea. Here, as everywhere else, where ́ trees abounded, birds of all characters and colours gave liveliness to the scene. One similar in size and plumage to our sparrow, constructed pensile nests, dropping as it were from the extreme boughs that nodded with these novel appendages. The dove,

slattern as she is, here also built her nest, a ragged stage of sticks; whilst in the thick bush beneath, the prying traveller could detect the round black speaking eye of some other little expectant mother of the feathered race, as, with head thrown aside, she confidingly and instinctively expects that the goodness of man's nature will not allow him to disturb her sacred functions; a pleasing testimony it is to me, nature's own evidence of the primitive excellence of man, when he and all around were pronounced by the Creator to be good.

Very soon tiring, however, in my weak state and on such a road, I got on to my mule again, which, if she could have spoken, would certainly have echoed the sentiment of the Portuguese traveller, Bermudez, who, in the 16th century, describing the very same road, represents it as giving him an idea of those in hell, from its steepness and roughness. Our poor animals, in fact, were frequently obliged to come to a stand-still to recover their breath; but they soon set their faces to the steep rocks, and managed, in some way or other, to surmount many very queer-looking places, without shedding us into some uncomfortably deep watercut precipices that, as we got nearer to the end of our journey, began to be exchanged for the verdant hedges of the previous portion. The whole way we were constantly encountering herds of donkeys, heavily laden with grain, which was being brought

down from the high land to be exchanged in Efat for cotton and salt. The men who accompanied them were, to my surprise, much darker coloured than the people of the lower country, tall, well made, and armed with spear and shield. With loud cries they encouraged the patient animals before them, to quicken their slow and cautious pace down the stony descent. The friendly salutation as we passed was never forgotten, nor did the laughing fast-talking girls who accompanied them spare their smiles, which was quite a merciful dispensation, that made our difficult and fatiguing ascent, much pleasanter than would have been a macadamized road through a desert.

We at length reached a narrow tortuous ridge of at least a mile in length, across which, a walk of but a few yards presented to the view on either side, a deep and extensive valley. That on the left hand is by far the narrower and more precipitous, being bounded by the steep, almost perpendicular face of the opposite ridge of Tchakkah, at the distance of about four miles; whilst that on the right, is of a character exactly the reverse, a widely extending amphitheatrical formed valley spreading from below the feet, far towards the east.

From the summit of an inclined plane, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, the eye travels for sixty miles over hundreds of little hills, embosomed in the widely diverging arc that defines the bay-like valley, in which is contained the whole

of the numberless streams that, joining the small river Dinkee near to Farree, flow into Lee Adu. This lake formed a bright feature of the scene, embosomed in the dark green belt of forest that marks the course of the Hawash; beyond which the sandy plains of Adal, blending with a colourless sky, constituted an horizon in which sight was lost.

At

Between the two strongly contrasted yet equally beautiful scenes I could have oscillated the whole day, had not I been reminded by Mr. Scott that breakfast would be waiting for us at Ankobar. this touching appeal I urged on my mule, who now rested herself by a gallop along the very level summit of the ridge that, like a natural suspension bridge, is extended from the hill of Ankobar in the west to that of Lomee on the south, and forms the boundary between these bearings of the upper portion of the Dinkee valley.

In two or three places I noticed that the otherwise narrow ridge spread out into little flats of about fifty yards across. As we passed the first of these, a small heap of stones, surmounted by a rude wooden cross, indicated to the passer-by that a church was hidden in the grove of kolqual and wild fig-trees that occupied the limited expansion. Each of Mr. Scott's servants most reverentially dismounted to kiss the topmost stone, on which the cross stood. A little beyond, the road again contracted, and from the back of my mule, by merely