Ferret accepted the commission to survey Tigre and Samien by careful triangulation. This task was accomplished in 1842, and resulted in the correct mapping of the affluents of the Atbara. Meantime the British Protestant missionaries had penetrated into Amhara, while Tigre and Samien came under French Roman Catholic influence. In fact, the history of Uganda was given here on a larger scale. Simultaneously the southern province of Ethiopia, Shoa, under the enlightened ruler Selasié had attracted the attention of Europeans. Major (afterwards Sir William) Harris was sent by the Indian government in 1841 to conclude a treaty with Shoa, as it was thought that this country might eventually extend its influence over Somaliland, and so come into direct contact with the Indian government at Aden. This British mission was naturally followed by a French one, and a French envoy applied to the Pope for the starting of a Roman Catholic mission in Shoa. The work of Monseigneur Massaja, who was despatched by Pope Pius IX., though it throws much interesting light on the structure of the Gala language, hardly comes within the sphere of Nile exploration. Meantime an adventurer named Kasa had arisen in Amhara, and had gradually made himself master of the northern and western provinces of Abyssinia. He had himself crowned King of Kings of Ethiopia under the name of Theodore, and then proceeded to annex the province of Shoa to his dominions. During the early part of Theodore’s reign the two brothers d’Abbadie were at work surveying Abyssinia and collecting invaluable information regarding the languages, literature, coins, inscriptions, and religions of that assemblage of Semitic, Hamitic, and Negro states. Antoine Thomson d’Abbadie and his brother Arnaud Michel were actually born in Dublin, their father being French and their mother Irish. They were however educated in France. Their bent for scientific exploration was early recognised, for the French Academy sent the elder of the two on a scientific mission to Brazil at the age of twenty-five. The younger d’Abbadie explored Algeria. This leading his thoughts in the direction of Abyssinia, he proposed to his brother a joint mission of exploration, which commenced in 1838 by their landing at Masawa. Besides carefully surveying the northern and central provinces of Abyssinia they did work of special novelty and interest in the south. Until the journeys of Cecchi and other Italians twenty years ago the d’Abbadies’ information concerning the countries lying to the south of Abyssinia represented all that we knew of Kaffa and Enarea,--names indeed which had been cited by the Portuguese, but names unsupported by geographical information. Antoine d’Abbadie penetrated the furthest into Kaffa. He collected an immense amount of information regarding the languages spoken in the vague south and southwest districts inhabited mainly by races of Hamitic origin. The d’Abbadies closed