characterize the hebdomadal meetings of farmers and their friends in our own agricultural towns; and the expression "market fresh," best expresses the condition of the staggering Christians, and of the singing groups of male and female Abyssinians returning home, who have been closing the labours of the day with sundry deep potations of beer.

CHAPTER XVI.

Visit from Sheik Tigh.-Strange news.-Arrival of Abdoanarch.— Situation of my house.-Wallata Gabriel.-Baking bread.Vapour bath.-Cure for hernia.

AFTER my visit to the market, I was confined to my house for two or three days by illness, but feeling a little better this morning (August 1st), I brought out a small saw I was possessed of, and began to amuse myself, in giving the last finish to the roof, by removing the projecting ends of the cane rafters, which made the low eaves look very ragged. Whilst thus employed, Sheik Tigh, who had been absent some days at a "tescar," or funeral feast of a frontier Islam Governor, called, and after congratulating me upon having come into some property at last, gave me the astounding information that Tinta had been removed from the government of the town, and a rich Hurrah merchant, who had come as an Ambassador to Sahale Selassee, from the Imaum of that city, was now the Governor.

The day that I left Miriam's house, I heard that a Hurrahgee kafilah was coming into Shoa, and

learnt then, that Aliu Amba was the town appointed for the people belonging to it, as Channo was for the Adal kafilahs. I sent Walderheros to Tinta's house to get more information, but he had already left the town and gone to Angolahlah to see the Negoos; as I supposed, to remonstrate. I did not tell Sheik Tigh I was very sorry at the news he brought me, because, as he was a Mahomedan, he seemed so to enjoy the circumstance of having a governor of his own religion, and my regret, as a Christian, I was afraid, would only elate him the more. I did the good man wrong by my unworthy suspicion, for he was certainly one of the best-hearted men I ever met. On asking him who the new governor was, and what business he had come upon to Shoa, he told me that his name was Abdoanarch, and the Wizeer of Sheik Houssein, Imaum of Hurrah, and that he had come to induce the Negoos to join in a league with all the other monarchs of Southern Abyssinia to prevent the ingress of Europeans into that country. I was not well enough to ask many questions, but felt glad, that the return of the Embassy to the coast had been decided upon, previous to the arrival of Abdoanarch from Hurrah, and that consequently he could not boast of having effected such a desideratum among the Mahomedans of Shoa. The bestowal of the government of Aliu Amba upon the Hurrah ambassador, was a proof

THE HURRAH KAFILAH.

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of very high regard; and as the language of that celebrated but little known city is a dialect of the Geez, similar to the Amharic, Abdoanarch was not considered to be altogether a foreigner. Besides, he was, as I have remarked, a Mahomedan, and as three-fourths of the inhabitants of Aliu Amba professed the same belief, his appointment caused great satisfaction.

With him, a large kafilah of his countrymen had arrived, at least, two hundred, so that they made a sensible addition to the population, which, at most, did not exceed three thousand people. Indeed, accommodations for them could not be found, and they were obliged to erect a number of straw huts, on the other side of the cemetery in the market-place. This new village consisted of about fifty houses, all of them, merely thatched roofs, resting upon the ground, with a low entrance, not three feet high, cut out in front.

Sheik Tigh sat with me nearly all day; the singularly situated and nearly unknown city of Hurrah affording an inexhaustible subject of conversation. As, however, he had never visited it, and I subsequently received more accurate information respecting this interesting place from a native, I shall not now attempt to describe it.

August 2.-My house was situated on the western face of the rock of Aliu Amba standing upon its own little terrace, which was enclosed partially by a thick-leaved hedge, and where this failed by a row of the yellow-stalks of the high Indian corn plant.

It overlooked and was overlooked by a number of other houses similarly constructed, each built upon its own garden platform, one above the other, like a series of high steps, from half way down the steep hill-side, to the summit of a bluff, cone-like eminence, in which the northern extremity, of the otherwise flat-topped hill of Aliu Amba terminated. On this exalted point, the long thatched roof of the largest house of the town was visible over a strong palisading of splintered ted, and over which two tall mimosas towered like giant sentinels. To go near here was considered a crime, and to break through the enclosure would have been a sacrilege. This of course was royal property, the " gimjon bait," where was preserved until the annual account was made by the Governor to the King, all the fines, lapses by death, and duties, that had accumulated during that time. Beneath this public storehouse was a long terrace, divided into several enclosures, in each of which stood a snug cottage; and these again looking upon one below, the top of which scarcely reached the level of the ground, the upper ones were built upon. Here dwelt a most respectable man, an Islam slave-merchant, who kept a gratuitous school for boys, whom he instructed in Arabic, that is to say, in reading and writing passages of the Koran. of the Koran. Far beneath the level of this my own house stood, and before it, and on either hand, were several others whose gardens all surrounded mine. The hill at this point, too,