Shortly after daybreak, wares of every description are displayed under the canopy of heaven, and crowds of both sexes flocking to the stall of the vendor, the din of human voices is presently at its height. Honey, cotton, grain, and other articles of consumption, the produce of the estate of the Amhara farmer, are exposed for sale or barter. The Dankali merchant exhibits his gay assortment of beads, metals, coloured thread, and glass ware. The wild Galla squats beside the produce of his flocks, and the Moslem trader from the interior displays ostrich feathers, or some other article of curiosity from the distant tribe. Bales of cotton cloth, and bags of coffee from Caffa and Enarea, are strewed in every direction. Horses and mules in numbers are shown off among the crowd to increase the turmoil; nor is even the wandering Hebrew wanting to complete the scene of traffic, haggling, and barter, which continues, without intermission, until a late hour in the afternoon, when the village relapses again into its wonted six days of quiet and repose. Swathed and folded in dirty cotton cloth, behold in the cultivator of the soil the original of the Egyptian mummy. Greasy and offensive in person and in habits, he moves cringingly to pay his tax to the governor of the fair, who sits in conscious dignity upon a stone; and prostrating himself with shoulders bared among the mud, the serf hands forth the measure of grain from the leathern scrip, or scoops out the prescribed meed of butter from the jar--the vassal token of permission enjoyed to earn his bread by the unceasing hand of labour. No spark of intelligence illumines his dull features; not a trace of independence can be discovered in his slouching gait; and the cumbrous robe with which he is invested would indeed seem far better adapted for the quiet resting-place in the tomb, than for the bustling avocations of stirring life. Here swaggers a valiant gun-man of the king's matchlock guard. The jealousy of the monarch forbids the removal of the primitive weapon from the royal presence, but the white _herkoom_ feather floats in all the pride of blood over clotted tufts moist with the beloved grease; and the dark scowl and the lowering brow betoken the reckless cruelty which stains the character of the band. But the man is a poor slave, and his degraded state has entirely destroyed the few traits of humanity which might have smiled upon his nativity. The surly Adaiel brushes past in insolent indifference to examine the female slaves in the wicker hut of the rover from the south. His murderous creese ensures from the bystanders a high respect, which frequent disasters in the low country has riveted on the heart of the Amhara; and men turn in wonder to gaze upon the mortal who entertaineth not a slavish adoration for the great monarch of Shoa.