The air on Lamalmon was pleasant and temperate, and their appetite, spirits, and cheerfulness, which the sultry poisonous atmosphere of the Red Sea coasts had put to flight, returned. Next morning they ascended the remainder of the mountain, which was less steep and difficult than the preceding portion, and found that the top, which seemed pointed from below, spread into a large plain, part in pasture, but more bearing grain. It is full of springs, and seems, says Bruce, “to be the great reservoir from whence arise most of the rivers that water this part of Abyssinia. A multitude of streams issue from the very summit in all directions; the springs boil out from the earth in large quantities, capable of turning a mill. They plough, sow, and reap here at all seasons; and the husbandman must blame his own indolence, and not the soil, if he has not three harvests. We saw in one place people busy cutting down wheat; immediately next to it others at the plough, and the adjoining field had green corn in the ear. A little farther it was not an inch above the ground.” On the 15th of February he arrived at Gondar, when, to his extreme vexation, he found that not only the king and Ras Michael, but almost every other person for whom he had letters, was absent with the army. Petros, the brother of Janni, his Greek friend at Adowa, to whom he had been in an especial manner recommended, had at the news of his coming been terrified by the priests, and fled to Ras Michael for instructions. A friend, however, of one of the Moors, whom Janni had interested in his favour, received him kindly, and conducted him to a house in the Moorish town, where he might, he said, remain safe from the molestations of the priests, until he should receive the protection of the government.