Having crossed this plain, they entered a close country covered with brushwood, wild oats, and high grass, rough with rocks, and traversed by narrow difficult passes. At one of these, called the pass of Kella, they were detained three days by the farmers of the customs, who demanded more than they thought proper to pay. During this delay a kind of fair or bazaar was opened in the caravan, to which hundreds of young women from the neighbouring villages repaired, to purchase beads and other articles of African finery; and so eager were they to get possession of these toys, that they could be restrained from stealing them only by being beaten unmercifully with whips and sticks. Of chastity these Abyssinian beauties had no conception, and abandoned themselves to the desires of strangers without so much as requiring a reward. The next day, after leaving Kella, they discovered in the distance the mountains of Adowa, which in no respect resemble those of Europe, or of any other country. “Their sides were all perpendicular, high, like steeples or obelisks, and broken into a thousand different forms.” On the 6th of December they arrived at Adowa, having travelled for three hours over a very pleasant road, between hedgerows of jessamine, honeysuckle, and many other kinds of flowering shrubs. This town, which was made the capital of Tigrè by Ras Michael, consisted of about three hundred houses, but each house being surrounded by a fence or screen of trees and shrubs, like the small picturesque homesteads which skirt the Ghauts on the coast of Malabar, the extent of ground covered was very considerable, and from a distance the whole place had the appearance of a beautiful grove. Within, however, were crime and wretchedness. The palace of the governor, which was now occupied by his deputy, stood upon the top of the hill, and resembled a huge prison. Upwards of three hundred persons were there confined in irons, some of whom had been imprisoned more than twenty years, solely, in most instances, for the purpose of extorting money from them; but when they had complied with their captor’s demands, their deliverance by no means followed. Most of them were kept in cages like wild beasts, and treated with equal inhumanity. Here he was received in the most hospitable manner by Janni, the Greek officer of the customs, to whom he had been recommended by the patriarch of Cairo. In this town there was a valuable manufacture of coarse cotton cloth, which circulated instead of silver money throughout Abyssinia. The houses were built with rough stone, cemented with mud instead of mortar—which was used only at Gondar,—and had high conical roofs, thatched with a reedy sort of grass, rather thicker than wheat straw.