This unexpected influx of grain, &c., may be said to be the turning-point which secures the success of our expedition. Had we found no grain here we must have lost all the transport-animals, as these have already been on very short commons for some days. The supplies for the men too were running extremely short, and if Magdala holds out for a week our position would have been most unpleasant; now we are safe. We have abundant grain for the animals for another week, and we are told that supplies will continue to come in in any quantities. Very large quantities of bread too have been purchased, and both officers and men have laid in a stock of fowls, eggs, &c. All anxiety is at an end. We have fairly overcome now all the difficulties of the country, and of supplies. Theodore and his men are, in comparison, contemptible foes. Staveley’s brigade came up yesterday, and are encamped at a spot about two miles beyond us. Now that supplies are coming in in abundance, and a day is no longer of vital consequence, we shall, I believe, wait for another day or two to allow the wing of the 45th, the second wing of the Beloochees, and the 3d Dragoon Guards, to come up. Yesterday almost every officer in camp went to the edge of the ravine to have a look at Magdala. It is a ride of a little over two miles, and the ravine goes down in an almost unbroken precipice of 500 or 600 feet from the upper edge. The view is one of the finest, if not the very finest, we have had in Abyssinia. It is grand in the extreme. At our feet was the perpendicular precipice, then a short shoulder, and then another sharp fall down to the Bachelo, which is 3900 feet below us. This side of the ravine is very similar, but steeper, to that of the Djedda. Upon the other side, however, the character is altogether different. In place of a corresponding ascent, as at the Djedda, the ground rises in a succession of billows one behind another, higher and higher, to the foot of some very lofty mountains, which form the background forty miles away. Such an extraordinary sea of hills I never saw. It was most magnificent, and stretched away east and west as far as the eye could reach. Above all this Magdala rose like a great ship out of the surrounding billows. There was no mistaking it, with its precipitous sides, its frowning aspect, and the cluster of tents clearly discernible upon its summit. As the crow flies it was about eight miles distant.