The town consists of two main thoroughfares and of the scattered “tokhuls” which form the villages throughout Abyssinia and the Eastern Soudan. It contains about eight hundred inhabitants. Formerly, I have no doubt, there was a larger population, but this place, like all other trading centres in the land, suffered severely in the days of the Dervish ascendency. The “shops,” which abut upon the main roads, are hovels in a row under a heavily thatched roof, and are separated by rough and ragged partitions of cane thatch. They are “business premises” only, and the proprietor and his family dwell elsewhere. A considerable trade is carried on by Abyssinians who come to Gallabat to sell coffee; sometimes they have a leopard’s skin or other hunter’s trophy to barter in addition. They exchange their goods chiefly for cotton, which is used in the making of _shamas_ and other garments worn in Abyssinia. Sir S. Baker mentions a commerce in bees’-wax and hides, but I saw no evidence of it in Gallabat, and I think it must have declined. The traffic in coffee proceeds regularly during the dry season, but ceases, of course, when the rains make the neighbouring Abyssinian hill-country impassable. A square, in which there are booths, is set apart for the use of the Abyssinian traders. In the middle of it are the large scales in which the coffee is weighed, and I was much interested to learn that not only the amount of the import duty payable to the Egyptian Customs, but also the sum charged as export duty by the Abyssinian Government, was here determined by the weight of the bundles. The latter tax is retained at the time in the hands of the Anglo-Egyptian officials, and is afterwards remitted by them to Menelek’s Revenue Department. I need hardly add that this is a recent arrangement, and it seems to show that British influence in the Soudan has inspired confidence at Addis Abiba.