fires, round which they were squatting in merry groups, their dark skins, scarlet and white kuaries, and glittering spears, producing a very picturesque effect in the red glow of the firelight, which played fitfully on the rough trunks of the surrounding palm trees. A band of musicians, who, as a special honour, had been deputed by the Nebrid to accompany us, were beating drums and blowing wild notes on their long wooden trumpets, so we drew our folding-chairs outside the tent to listen, saying, with Shakespeare,—

"Here will we sit, and let the sound of music

Creep on our ears. Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony."

And truly, though perhaps inharmonious in themselves, the wild notes of the drums and trumpets did not accord badly with the scene around us. The editor of Bruce's Travels tells us that the Abyssinian trumpet often called nesser cano, or the note of the eagle; hence, in "Lalla Rookh," the lines,—

"The mellow breathings of some horn or flute,
That far off broken by the eagle note

Of the Abyssinian trumpet, swell and float!"

Nor are the notes of these great horns, which are very like the Swiss mountain horns in shape, deficient in a certain warlike character, well suited to stir the breasts of a semi-barbarous people.

This day was my birthday, but all we could muster in the way of a birthday feast was a gumbo of muddy tella and a couple of hard-boiled eggs. How different

from former birthdays! . . . . As the night advanced, the wind rose and whistled round the tent in a way that foreboded a hurricane before morning; and by half-past eight we were glad to seek the shelter of our blankets, for people keep unfashionably early hours in Ethiopia, where even the king goes to bed at sunset, and holds his levees at five o'clock in the morning.

CHAPTER XVII.

A RIDE THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS.-ARRIVAL AT THE

KING'S CAMP.

THE remainder of our journey from Adowa to the king's camp, near Gondar, will be best described by a few extracts from my journal written at the time, to which I have merely added an occasional paragraph where necessary to complete the text.

April 14th.-Up before it was light; started at 6.20 A.M., and rode straight across the plain nearly due south, till we reached the foot of Beth Mariam, one of the series of isolated hills we saw in the distance yesterday. Followed the hills, passing Mai Shevini, and the heads of two other streams that flow down into the valley of the Takazze.

At 10 A.M. crossed to the other side of the hills, passing near the head of a river, and emerging on an extensive plain, watered by several streams, all running into the basin of the Takazze. To the right and left, isolated mountains rising above the plain; in front a magnificent panorama of the Semyen range, and overhead a cloudless sky. Saw in a wooded water-course numbers of dog-faced baboons, and a couple of large bucks of a red colour, which I tried to shoot, but both barrels

of my fowling-piece missed fire. This gun has played me the same trick several times before, and it is evident the springs of the locks are too weak-a dangerous defect in a country where the game-bag may comprise anything, from a leveret to a lion. C. saw some more Abba Goumbas like those we encountered near Axum, and half an hour before noon we approached a village called Adega Shekha, and halting under a large fig-tree, despatched Wassie to procure some fowls. I think Wassie was born to get into rows, for we had hardly lighted a fire before he came running down to us in great disorder, pursued by the yells of the natives, who had fallen on him and beaten him. Luckily he had stuck to his fowls, which were soon skinned, broken up, and placed on an earthen dish full of butter and red pepper-the Abyssinian way of making a curry, and a very good and expeditious way too, only it requires a hardened palate to venture on a second mouthful, as at least one-half of the dish consists of capsicums. While we were breakfasting, our servants picked up our guns, and quietly slipped off on a marauding and pillaging expedition of their own to avenge Wassie. Fortunately we discovered their absence, and looked round in time to catch them in flagrante delicto, tripping nimbly off towards the village, with our rifles in their hands. Of course we at once called them back, but the order had to be very sternly repeated, and it was only when we

*

A double-barrelled breech-loader, Webley's patent, by W. T. Smith, of Princes Street, London.

pointed our revolvers at them that they found ears to

hear us.

At 2.20 P.M. we continued the march, and turning to the S.E., traversed a fine loamy plain overgrown with many beautiful aromatic shrubs. Two hours' ride

brought us to the end of the table-land, and showed us a perfect labyrinth of gorges and defiles, leading down towards the Takazze. For some time we had been riding ahead of our people, and we now found that they had all disappeared. A horrible suspicion suggested itself that they might have gone by some other way, for in a country without roads there are naturally no sign-posts. However, a Deus ex machina was at hand, in the shape of a little dried-up old man riding a mule, who emerged from a neighbouring defile, and proved to be the shoum of Adankatu, a village near the Takazze, on his way to meet us. The descent now commenced, and we followed our guide through many winding valleys, where the foliage, of the same character as that of the Hamedo plains, showed that we were still some 4000 feet above the level of the sea. From time to time the shoum carried on shrill conversations with invisible mountaineers, who responded from the tops of the surrounding hills, and whenever a native chanced to pass us, the old chief always got something out of him, such as a little pot of honey, a gourd of tella, or a dozen or so of eggs, which these people seemed to carry about with them for the pleasure of the thing, and produced mysteriously from the folds of their kuaries in a way that would have done credit to a Robert Houdin. At last