Lij Kasa, who had become King of Kings of Ethiopia under the name of Theodore III., showed himself, when he had consolidated his power, very fond of the English, and encouraged English missionaries and consuls to go to his court. He seems, however, to have pursued this policy more with the idea of strengthening his prestige and improving his kingdom by the spread of mechanical appliances and the manufacture of superior arms and ammunition, than from any desire to encourage missionary work. In the early sixties he became offended at a supposed slight on the part of the British government, which left unanswered a letter addressed to it by Theodore in 1863. His subsequent proceedings in regard to the imprisonment of the consul and missionaries eventually brought about the British expedition of 1868. A force of sixteen thousand British and Indian soldiers under Sir Charles Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala) marched from Masawa up and along the eastern escarpment of the Abyssinian plateau, and captured the citadel of Magdala, which is situated within the basin of the Nile, close to the northeasternmost tributary of that river. This expedition was accompanied by Dr. W. T. Blanford, who compiled a valuable work on the geology and zoölogy of Abyssinia, which was published in 1870. For ten years after the withdrawal of the British expedition, in 1869, little advance was made in our knowledge of Abyssinian geography. Theodore was succeeded by another adventurer, also called Kasa,--a native of Tigre,--who afforded considerable help to the British. By means of our indirect support he succeeded in getting himself crowned as Yohannes (John), King of Kings of Ethiopia. Shoa alone, where Menelik (the present emperor) was slowly recovering the power of his father (who had lost the country to Theodore), was not actually conquered by the Emperor John; for just as he was starting to subdue Menelik, he himself was attacked by the Egyptian army under Munzinger, the Swiss Governor of Masawa. Munzinger was urging the Khedive’s government to occupy and annex Abyssinia, and Egypt had, as a preliminary, seized the Bogos country, the greater part of which still remains Egyptian. But in 1875 John inflicted a tremendous defeat on the Egyptian army near the river Mareb, and in 1876 a second defeat, still more disastrous to the Egyptian power. This brought about the intervention of General Gordon, who, in 1876 and 1879, made two attempts to come to a friendly understanding with Abyssinia. His journeys added a little to our knowledge of the affluents of the Blue Nile and the Atbara.