The baggage having at length been consigned to the shoulders of six hundred grumbling Moslem porters, assembled by the royal fiat from the adjacent villages, and who, now on the road, formed a line which extended upwards of a mile, the Embassy, on the morning of the 17th, commenced the ascent of the Abyssinian Alps. Hitherto every officious attendant functionary had exerted himself to the utmost to promote delay, confusion, and annoyance; and each now exhorted the respective members of the party to urge their jaded beasts to increased speed, and hasten onwards over a rugged path which, in the toil-worn condition of the majority, was not to be ascended without considerable difficulty. The king was waxing impatient to behold the delighting things that had been imported, an account of which, so far as the prying eyes of his servants had been able to discern, had been duly transmitted to the palace; and in order to celebrate the arrival of so great an accession of wealth. His Majesty's flutes once more poured out their melody, and his warriors again chanted their wild notes among the hills, until far out of hearing of the astonished population of Farri. It was a cool and lovely morning, and a fresh invigorating breeze played over the mountain side, on which, though less than ten degrees removed from the equator, flourished the vegetation of northern climes. The rough and stony road wound on by a steep ascent over hill and dale--now skirting the extreme verge of a precipitous cliff--now dipping into the basin of some verdant hollow, whence, after traversing the pebbly course of a murmuring brook, it suddenly emerged into a succession of shady lanes, bounded by flowering hedge-rows. The wild rose, the fern, the lantana, and the honeysuckle, smiled around a succession of highly cultivated terraces, into which the entire range was broken by banks supporting the soil; and on every eminence stood a cluster of conically-thatched houses, environed by green hedges, and partially embowered amid dark trees. As the troop passed on, the peasant abandoned his occupation in the field to gaze at the novel procession; whilst merry groups of hooded women, decked in scarlet and crimson, summoned by the renewal of martial strains, left their avocations in the hut to welcome the king's guests with a shrill _ziroleet_, which rang from every hamlet. The leather petticoat of the wandering shepherdess was no longer to be seen. Birds warbled among the leafy groves, and throughout the rich landscape reigned an air of peace and plenty that could not fail to prove highly delightful after the recent weary pilgrimage across the hot desert.