Ahmed Mohammad, the messenger who had been despatched from Tajura with an Arabic letter for Sahela Selassie, requesting assistance on the road, returned during this delay. He had passed the night in a Bedouin encampment, the proximity of which had been betrayed by the barking of dogs at each discharge of the musket when the sentinel was relieved. The courier brought advices to the Embassy, and native letters for Izhak and Mohammad Ali. Owing to the jealousy of the frontier officers of Efat, he had been subjected to many days of needless detention, during which the king had led a distant military expedition; and although compliments and assurances of welcome were not wanting, they were coupled with the unsatisfactory intelligence that the party must trust entirely to its own resources, as in the absence of His Majesty, no assistance whatever could be rendered. The rainy season having now fairly set in, it was believed that the pools on the upper road would furnish a sufficient supply of water, and the course was accordingly shaped towards it. Emerging upon the extensive plain of Merihan, bounded to the westward by the lofty peaked range of Feeoh, the route skirted the Bundoora hills, thickly clothed with grass, and varying in height from six hundred to a thousand feet. Wayess, the chief of the Woema, formerly held his head-quarters in this neighbourhood, at Hagaio-dera-dubba; but the Eesah Somauli making frequent inroads, and at last sweeping off all the cattle of the tribe, it was abandoned. The hill ranges on both sides have sent lava streams almost to the middle of the plain, but generally it is covered with a fine light-coloured soil, strewn with volcanic ashes and small fragments of obsidian--the grass, improved by the recent showers, having partially acquired a greenish tint. A singular detached hill composed of fresh-water limestone, contained a few impressions of small spiral shells, whilst the surrounding rocks exhibit the usual cellular basalt. No one could conceive that the rugged arid wastes whereon he trod, had ever in themselves been either productive or populous. Saving the labours of the termites, exhibited in endless mounds of vast dimensions, no monument of industry redeems the inhospitable landscape; yet these measureless plains, no less than the barren mountain ranges so lately traversed, did formerly, as now they might, afford hordes of hardy soldiers, that under a bold leader, such as the mighty Graan, who in the sixteenth century unfurled the banner of the impostor, and at the head of a countless army overran and nearly destroyed the Ethiopic empire, were admirably adapted to possess themselves of the more fertile plains and provinces adjoining. Whatever may have been the virtues and endowments of these olden warriors, their posterity, like the dwellings they inhabit, are sufficiently rude and degenerate.