Instantly on emerging from the forest, the metropolis of Shoa, spreading far and wide over a verdant mountain, shaped like Afric's appropriate emblem, the fabled sphynx, presented a most singular if not imposing appearance. Clusters of thatched houses of all sizes and shapes, resembling bams and haystacks, with small green enclosures and splinter palings, rising one above the other in very irregular tiers, adapt themselves to all the inequalities of the rugged surface; some being perched high on the abrupt verge of a cliff, and others so involved in the bosom of a deep fissure as scarcely to reveal the red earthen pot which crowns the apex. Connected with each other by narrow lanes and hedgerows, these rude habitations, the residence of from twelve to fifteen thousand inhabitants, cover the entire mountain-side to the extreme pinnacle--a lofty spire-like cone, detaching itself by a narrow isthmus to form the sphynxs head. Hereon stands the palace of the Negoos, a most ungainly-looking edifice with staring gable ends, well fortified by spiral lines of wooden palisades. They extend from the base to the summit, and are interspersed with barred stockades, between which are profusely scattered the abodes of household slaves, with breweries, kitchens, cellars, storehouses, magazines, and granaries. Over those portions unengrossed by cultivation or by architecture, shrubs and bushes and great beds of nettles assumed the most luxuriant and lively appearance. Huge fallen masses of rock strewed the lower valleys, and others seemed ready to be launched at a moment's notice upon the clustering habitations; whilst in the distance, the bronze cross of the church of "our Lady," peeping above the dark foliage of the juniper, touched the chord of feelings but little in unison with the wild escort that surrounded us, above whose streaming locks floated bloody emblems, that breathed aught save conformity to the mild tenets of the Christian religion.