The outline of the highlands of Abyssinia, which had been first indistinctly visible from Sultelli, now stood out in bold relief; and to the southward the view was bounded by the lofty hills of the Afrubba, Farsa, and Azboti Galla, where coffee grows wild in abundance. An intermediate extensive prospect is obtained over the thickly-wooded Moolu plain, stretching some thirty miles in the direction of Errur. This latter is the residence of the old sheikh Hajji Ali Mohammad, and the head-quarters of the Debeni, who take hereditary share in the waters of the valley with their brethren the Woema. It forms, moreover, a place of resort for every wandering vagabond in the surrounding country who possesses a sheep, a goat, or an ox, or has the ability and the inclination to assert his privilege of erecting a temporary cabin; and thus the recurrence of each season of drought, compelling the abandonment of less favoured pastures, pours in its migratory swarm to swell the more permanent muster upon the sultry plains of Errur, and to create the strife inseparable from a gathering of these lawless hordes. Volume One, Chapter XXXII. A TALE OF THE PLAINS OF ERRUR. Aylia was the comeliest of the dark-eyed daughters of the desert. Sixteen tropical summers had already ripened a form modelled in that exquisite perfection which nature is wont to bestow upon her wildest works, and the native symmetry of the sylph-like maid was yet unblemished by any of those barbarous improvements wherein her nation delight. Her sparkling eye, fringed with long silken lashes, in brilliancy eclipsed the pet gazelle that ever bounded by her side; and the graceful gambols of the sportive fawn would seem to have been inspired by the fairy footstep of its blooming mistress. Luxuriant hair fell in elf-like tresses over her ebon shoulder. Teeth of ivory whiteness were revealed by a radiant smile that ever played over her animated features; and few indeed of her virgin charms were veiled under the folds of the slender drapery that belongs to the Bedouin shepherdess. [Note 1. The following narrative, recounted by one of the Woema escort, although necessarily enlarged, is as strictly literal as the embodiment of the subject would admit; and it will convey to the English reader a better picture of life in the desert than could be painted in a less connected form.]