Inner walls divided the centre room from two narrow verandahs, intended for the reception of mules, horses, and household lumber. The floor was precisely as nature made it, depressed rather than raised, and little improved by the many recent inundations to which it had been subjected. Torrents of muddy water filled the trench which environed the entire structure, and occasionally bursting the banks of the dyke, oozed copiously between the palisades, to cover the soil with artificial lakes; whilst the small open area beyond, into which it disembogued-- hemmed in on all sides by rank vegetation, stinging nettles, and half-ruined but noisily inhabited hovels--was, without any exaggeration, eighteen inches deep in honest mire. Although our pilgrimage had at last terminated, the prospect, both within and without, was still far from encouraging. The mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer stood at 58 degrees, and it became necessary to adopt immediate measures towards the exclusion of the cold driving mist and the whistling wind, which the absence of a fire rendered far from agreeable. The union flag of old England, stretched across the hall, lent the aid of its ample folds to enliven the interior. Tent walls and tarpaulins composed tolerably comfortable cabins in the verandah closets. Gun-cases, placed on end, and connected by the lid of a chest, formed a temporary table, and with a puncheon as a washing-stand, and two swinging shelves overhead, completed the furniture of each apartment. Boxes and bales, as they continued to arrive, were piled around the inner walls, and soon reaching to the ceiling, the appearance of a booth at a country fair, on a rainy day, ere the wares have been exposed for sale, was gradually imparted to this highly unique residency in the capital of Shoa. Volume Two, Chapter II. RESIDENCE IN ANKOBER. But darkness now reigned within our cheerless abode. Candles that will burn for more than ten minutes together, or afford light sufficient either to read or write, are luxuries which have no existence in so primitive and benighted a land; and strips of old cotton rag dipped in unpurified bees' wax, forming, like most other good things in the empire, a royal monopoly, are doled out by the purveyor-general to the favoured few with but a niggard hand; whilst the absence of glass or other transparent substance, and the continued presence of rain, sleet, clouds, and fog thicker than the steam of a wash-house, rendered it for some time difficult to admit the scanty light of heaven during its fitful visits through the overcast atmosphere.