The cone occupied by Alio Amba is only one of the thousand precipitous eminences into which the entire mountain side is broken on its junction with the plain. Swollen and foaming, the intersecting torrents appeared from the pinnacle like small threads of silver, twining and gliding far below amid green bushes and verdant fields to the great outlet, whence they escape to be soon lost on the desert sand. Together with a boundless prospect over the inhospitable tract beneath, countless villages now met the eye upon the entire intervening mountain side, and wherever the slope admitted of the plough being held, there cultivation flourished. Wheat, barley, Indian com, beans, peas, cotton, and oil plant, throve luxuriantly around every hamlet--the regularly marked fields mounting in terraces to the height of three or four thousand feet, and becoming in their boundaries gradually more and more indistinct, until totally lost on the shadowy green side of Mamrat, "The Mother of Grace." This towering peak, still shrouded in clouds when all was sunshine below, is clothed with a dense forest of timber, and at an elevation of some thirteen thousand feet above the sea, affords secure shelter to the treasures of the monarch, which have been amassing since the re-establishment of the kingdom, one hundred and fifty years since. Loza forms the apex of the opposite side of the crescent, and perched on its wooded summit is a monastery forming the temporary abode of Halloo Mulakoot, heir-apparent to the throne of Shoa. But by far the most interesting feature in the stern landscape is a conical hill, conspicuous from its isolated position, and rising amid dark groves of pine-like juniper, from a lofty serrated ridge. Hereon stands the stronghold of Goncho, the residence of Wulasma Mohammad, constructed over the state dungeon keep, in which, loaded with galling fetters, the three younger brothers of a Christian king--victims to a barbarous statute--have found a living tomb since the present accession, a period of thirty years!