The most frequented baths are at Wansage on the River Gumara, which flows into Lake Tsana. Dr. Stecker visited the spot in 1881, and wrote the following brief account of it,[35] which throws a light on Abyssinian social customs: “The hot spring issues from the left bank of the river and rises to a height of two or three metres from the ground. It fills a basin constructed by King Theodore with water of a temperature of 37° C. A hut has been built over the basin”—as at the spring which I saw—“and the Abyssinians who are trying the ‘cure’ here sport in the water all day long. In arrangements these baths resemble Ostend and Trouville in miniature, seeing that women and men, youths and girls, spend their time in the bath in lively promiscuity and keep up an intercourse that is not always decorous. Quarrels often arise among the ‘cure’ patients, especially when some one has used the baths longer than is permitted to him. Thus from early till late one hears the loud tones of the brawlers and the lamentations of women and children, who often come in for a beating on these occasions.” On January 5 our road lay at first beside the River Geerar, which is the main source of the Rahad. Presently it diverged from the bank, and the track, which lay over stiff hills, became worse. At some points the donkeys could not pass, and we had to lift them bodily, loads and all, over obstructions, or push them past the rocks between which their loads were jammed. Once the animal that was carrying Dupuis’ valise and Gladstone bag, half slipped into a steep ravine with water at the bottom, forty feet below. In another place I saw an unlucky little beast turn two complete somersaults while it tried to scramble down a sloping ledge of rock. To my horror I caught sight of my medical bag on the top of its burden. I rushed up, and helped to unload the donkey, which seemed none the worse for the fall, and, to my astonishment and relief, I found all my doctor’s gear intact. Even the tabloid bottles, with a precious stock of quinine and phenacetine in them, had escaped by a miracle. In crossing and recrossing the river-bed I was able to note the height to which the floods rise in the water-courses. I saw that flotsam, such as wisps of straw and bits of wood, had been lodged in branches and twigs at least twelve feet above the bed of the stream, and this, in the upper reaches among the hills, has a width of twenty-five to thirty feet on an average. We camped at the foot of the mountain-side which would give us our final climb to the lake-plateau. Johannes pointed out the route to me, and I thought that one would have as much chance of shoving a donkey up the Great Pyramid as up that sheer precipice.