Bruce found it so impossible to satisfy them, that, with great artifice and difficulty, he managed to send a letter by one of the natives to Janni, the head of the custom-house at Adowa, to inform him of his detention. On the morning of the fourth day an officer from Janni arrived with a violent mandate in the name of Ras Michael, which produced an immediate effect, and on the 4th of December Bruce was again enabled to proceed. He now passed a river called Angueah, the largest he had seen in Abyssinia. This river receives its name from a beautiful tree which covers its banks. A variety of flowers, particularly yellow, white, and party-coloured jasmine, fill the plain which lies between the mountains and this stream. The air was fresh, fragrant, and agreeable. "We now first began to see," says Bruce, "the high mountains of Adowa, nothing resembling in shape those of Europe, nor, indeed, any other country. Their sides were all perpendicular rocks, high, like steeples or obelisks, and broken into a thousand different forms." However, after travelling on a very pleasant road, over easy hills, and through hedgerows of jasmine, honeysuckle, and many other kinds of flowering shrubs, they arrived on the 6th of December at Adowa, the town in which Ras Michael had used to reside. Adowa is situated at the foot of a hill, on the west side of a small plain, watered by three streams, and surrounded on all sides by mountains. It is the pass through which every one must go in travelling from Gondar to the Red Sea, and, indeed, its name signifies "pass or passage." The town consisted of about three hundred houses, each dwelling being enclosed by hedges and trees. Adowa was not formerly the capital of Tigré, but at the time of Bruce's arrival it was considered as such, because the property of Ras Michael surrounded it. His house was on the top of a small hill, and was not remarkable for its size. It was inhabited during the ras's absence by his deputy, and resembled a prison rather than a palace; for in and about it more than three hundred persons were confined in irons, the object of their imprisonment being to extort money from them. Many of these unhappy individuals had been there twenty years; they were kept in cages, and in every way treated like wild beasts.