The country is sometimes completely overrun with rats and field-mice; and, to destroy these creatures, they set fire to the straw, the only use to which they apply it. This is generally done just before the rains, and astonishing verdure immediately follows. "The province of Tigré," says Bruce, "is all mountainous; and it has been said, without any foundation in truth, that the Pyrenees, Alps, and Apennines are but molehills compared to them. I believe, however, that one of the Pyrenees, above St. John Pied de Port, is much higher than Lamalmon; and that the Mountain of St. Bernard, one of the Alps, is full as high as Taranta, or rather higher. It is not the extreme height of the mountains in Abyssinia that occasions surprise, but the number of them, and the extraordinary forms they present to the eye. Some of them are flat, thin, and square, in shape of a hearthstone or slab, that scarce would seem to have been sufficient to resist the winds. Some are like pyramids, others like obelisks or prisms; and some, the most extraordinary of all the rest, pyramids pitched upon their points, with their base uppermost, which, if it were possible, as it is not, that they could have been so formed in the beginning, would be strong objections to our received ideas of gravity." Salt quotes the above description, which he takes great trouble to show is "extravagant;" yet at page 240 he himself describes the mountains of this province as follows: "A THOUSAND different-shaped hills were presented to the view, which bore the appearance of having been dropped on an irregular plain;" and the strange formation which Bruce and Salt dwell on with so much wonder, is now fully understood to proceed from the violent action of rain, through a long series of ages, upon a surface like that described by these travellers. After having remained above a month at Adowa, Bruce, on the 10th of January, visited the remains of the famous convent of the Jesuits at Fremoga, which is on the opposite side of the plain to Adowa. This convent, which is about a mile in circumference, is substantially built of stone with mortar. The walls, about twenty-five feet in height, are flanked by towers loopholed for musketry. In short, it resembles a castle rather than a convent.