The following morning I started for Attegrat, a march of about eleven miles. For some distance the road kept along the top of the plateau, which was here undulating, and the road in many places was very rough. At last we came to the brink of a valley, into the bottom of which we had to descend. How anything like a laden animal ever got down before the road was made it is next to impossible to imagine. We came along a beaten track to the top of the valley, and we could see the path again going straight along below us from the bottom; but there was no trace of any track or path down the tremendously-steep descent; and I suppose the little bullocks, which are as sure-footed as goats, and the donkeys, were allowed to pick their way down as they liked best. Fortunately, we were not reduced to this alternative, which would certainly have ended in three out of our four baggage-animals breaking their necks, even if the fourth—a sturdy little Massowah mule, with the zebra-marks upon his back and legs—had managed to get in safety to the bottom. A road has been cut along the face of the hill by the Sappers and Pioneers; and this road, although exceedingly steep in some places, is yet perfectly practicable. It is, however, only six feet wide, and in two or three places even less, and consequently a train of mules are a long time getting down; for if the load of one shifts and gets over his ears, all the rest must wait until it is readjusted-no easy matter upon a steep incline. If one fall from weakness or disease, there would be no resource but to roll him at once over the edge of the path into the valley below. Fortunately, none of these contingencies happened to us. The loads all got on to the animals’ necks, but our men and ourselves were able to keep them balanced there until we reached the foot of the hill, when all the loads had to be taken off and entirely repacked. Just at the foot of the incline was a village. During our journey across the plateau from Goun-Gonna to this point we had only passed Fokado and one other village. We saw many down in the deep valleys around whose heads we had skirted, but upon the flat level of the plateau we did not see a single habitation. There were numerous herds of cattle, but these probably come up to graze upon the thick grass during the day, and descend into the valleys for water at night. We also passed some curious piles of stones upon the plateau-land, which I omitted to mention in my description of that part of my journey. These piles were thirty or forty feet in diameter, and five or six feet high; they were of stones roughly thrown together, and had I met with them in England I should have supposed that they had been merely cleared off the fields; but here there were no signs of cultivation, and the stones were too thickly strewn everywhere to render it probable that any Abyssinian cultivator would have undertaken the labour of clearing piles of stones of this size