Greasy ragamuffins still intruding, here continued their teasing persecutions, and Mohammad Mohammad, the son, though not the heir to the throne of the Sultan, having been specially appointed by his disreputable sire to the important post of reporter and spy, unceremoniously occupied one of the chairs, to the exclusion of the lawful proprietor during the entire day. He however proved useful in so far that he was versed in the chronicle of Ambabo. The Nakhuda of one of his uncle's buggalows having contrived a quarrel with a member of the tribe Hassoba, one of the manifold subdivisions of the Danakil, the man threw the gauntlet of defiance by cutting off the prow of the boat. Meeting shortly afterwards in deadly conflict, the insulted mariner slew his antagonist on the spot, and took refuge in the hills, until, tired of long concealment, and believing the affair to be consigned to oblivion, he ventured to settle with his family at Ambabo, and thus founded the present village; but after some years of repose, he was discovered by the relatives of the slain, and, as usual in all blood feuds, ultimately assassinated. Occupying a site proverbially unhealthy, and scourged during the rains by insupportable clouds of musquitoes, the miserable hamlet is but thinly peopled, and the Sheikh being on far from amicable terms with the authorities of Tajura, it is likely soon to be abandoned in favour of some more eligible location. A red savage, falsely representing himself to be one of the household of his Christian Majesty of Shoa, arrived during the afternoon from Ankober, with letters for Aden, and having safely deposited his packet on board the "Constance," was readily induced to return whence he came, with the Embassy. Deeni ibn Hamed, a liar of the first magnitude, but the only Dankali who had voluntarily attached himself to the fortunes of the party, conceiving the arrival of this courier to afford an opening for the exercise of his talents which ought on no account to be neglected, immediately proceeded to tax his lively ingenuity in disclosing the contents of a document which he pretended had been received from Sahela Selassie by the old ruffian from whose clutches his audience had just thankfully escaped; and the mass of gratuitous falsehoods that he contrived to string together with an unblushing front, must be admitted to reflect ample credit upon his fertile invention.