The scenery improved immensely as we drew to the close of our day's march; fantastic mountains with finger points were seen in all directions; the valleys were full of quolquol trees, and as the sun set on the mountains of Barca, stretching far, far away in the direction of the Soudan, we had a panorama of beauty before us impossible to describe. That night we slept at the camp of three Italian officers, who are making a road to Keren with their native troops, where we were most hospitably entertained by Captain Persico, who is in command of this arduous undertaking.

The following morning we were accompanied by Lieutenant Vecchi and a strong escort on our way to Debra Sina, one of the mountain monasteries in this wild district, the monks of which do not bear the best of characters. Last year, during an insurrection of the dervishes, when Captain Bettini was murdered, and several native soldiers, the monks of Debra Sina harboured the insurgents in their mountain fastnesses, and the Italians had to shoot the prior, or memer, and four monks before they would reveal the spot where they had hidden the rebels and stored a large quantity of arms. We had a very heavy day's ride up and down precipitous mountains and through vast tanglements of jungle in the valleys before reaching the foot of the mountain on which the monks of Debra Sina dwell. Here a delightful stream, the Mai Ositt, waters a narrow valley, with precipitous walls of mountain on either side, and densely filled with all

kinds of tropical vegetation. The spot was so idyllic, and the ascent before us so arduous, that we elected to rest ourselves and our wearied mules, and to devote the next day to our visit to the monastery. We pitched our tents by the stream, and revelled in the luxury of a bath, whilst our native troops made huts of branches and lit roaring fires to frighten away the wild beasts-leopards, hyenas, and so forth-which swarm in these valleys. The ascars, or native troops, are excellent fellows, and were anxious to do everything for us they could; they seem never to get tired, and are as active as antelopes, and on long marches they take nothing with them but a bag of meal, with which they make little round loaves, putting a hot stone in the middle, and cooking them in the embers.

The ascent next day was a painfully stiff one, but not quite so bad as that to Bizen. We were able to ride as far as a mountain village called Sallaba, where we left our mules and scrambled for the rest of the distance almost on hands and knees to the rock-set monastery. We found the Abyssinian peasants of Sallaba very wild; the men and women have bushy hair, with long wooden pins stuck in for the purpose of scratching when necessary. These primitive people are perfect artists in cow-dung; with this material they make big jars in which to keep their grain, drinking goblets, and boards for the universal game, which the better class make of wood. I brought one of these away with me to show how universal this game is amongst the Abys

sinians, from the chief to the peasant, and it reached the British Museum unbroken. This game is called Gabattà, and the wooden boards made by the better class contain eighteen holes, nine for each person. There are three balls called Chachtma for each hole, and the game is played by a system of passing, which seemed to us very intricate, and which we could not learn; the holes they call their toukuls or huts, and they get very excited over it. It closely resembles

the game we saw played by the negroes in Mashonaland, and is generally found in one form or another in the countries where Arab influence has at one time or another been felt.

The summit of Debra Sina is just a mass of gigantic boulder rocks piled one on the other, and on the top of these dwell the monks. My wife, whose reception at Bizen had been so cold, determined on this occasion to see more, and presented

herself dressed in a fashion that was calculated to deceive the most critical monk on the subject of her sex; the disguise was even more successful than she had hoped, for, owing to certain braids which adorned her jacket, the monks evidently mistook her for a general, and paid her the attention suited to her supposed rank. She was conducted into the church, shown the pictures and treasures, and treated in a manner that no female had ever before been treated in an Abyssinian monastery.

The church at Debra Sina is a cave under a big rock, with a second and smaller cave, which acts for the Holy of Holies. In front of the church is a curious boulder where the pious pray, and have worn holes with their knees on it in so doing. Beneath this they say the picture of the Madonna was found, but I question if it ever has been moved since Nature erected it there. In exceedingly squalid cells around this rock church dwell some thirty monks; some of them are like the church, mere holes in the rocks, veritable abodes of anchorites. Around, as far as the eye can reach, are serrated ridges of rocky mountains, forming about as wild a view as could well be imagined.

Having satisfied our curiosity, we returned to Sallaba and our mules. The kindly inhabitants had prepared a feast for our men, during the consumption of which we had to wait. The principal dish placed before them was a wall of stiff porridge, made of the red teff seed, into the inside of which was poured melted butter mixed with herbs,

not unlike a rich mayonnaise. The men attacked this wall with their fingers, slipping the piece extracted into the grease until, in a very short time, there was nothing left of either.

Next day we went on our way to Keren, abandoning the idea of visiting another monastery in this district, called Tsad Amba, the approach to which is by a narrow ledge of rock, said to be exceedingly

dangerous, and as the internal arrangement of one monastery is so like another, we decided it was not worth incurring any risk to see. At midday we halted by a stream at a spot called Eleberet, where grows one of those magnificent sycamores (ficus sycamorus) so universal at all Abyssinian places of halt. Many were the delightful midday hours we spent under the wide-spreading branches of these trees during our wanderings, surrounded by tired wayfarers like ourselves. They are quite a feature of the country, and may be looked upon as hostelries