On the morning of January 6, we started to climb to the plateau in which Lake Tsana lies. The ascent commenced immediately. The narrow track was extremely steep, and, as on the previous day, our path was full of loose stones and led us over great rocks that crop out of the mountain-side. The donkeys were constantly slipping and falling. Some came to a standstill, and refused to budge. We had to shove the animals by main force over boulders and up slippery ledges of rock, and at places not a few of them were raised bodily, loads and all, by means of their tails and forelegs, and lifted over obstacles. At this rate of ascending we covered two miles in three hours and a half, and still had a climb of another couple of miles ahead of us. Then the character of the track changed, and we travelled round a horseshoe-shaped chasm, following a path four feet wide, with a sheer precipice four hundred feet deep below us and another rising to the same height above our heads. It was a fine sight, and there is a lovely growth of cactus on the mountain side. Besides, we looked out upon a vast expanse of beautiful scenery, but I felt uncomfortably like the ungodly of whom the psalmist said that they were set in slippery places with a great risk of being cast down and destroyed. “Oh, how suddenly do they consume; perish and come to a fearful end!”[39] It was an inopportune moment to recall the text. We reached the plateau at last, after another stiff climb upward from the chasm. I need hardly say that the donkeys were utterly fagged out. We had left the mimosas and the bamboos below us, and Dupuis’ aneroid barometer showed that we were some six thousand feet above sea-level. Here many species of cactus, large and small, abounded. The soil on the plateau is rich, and the ground was thickly covered with lush plants in blossom. I noticed, as I passed, the familiar “red-hot poker,” the wild strawberry, moss of many hues growing luxuriantly, the maiden-hair fern, and, on the trunk of a dead tree, the Tonbridge fern. Many springs were bubbling from the rock, and their courses were marked by the tenderest and brightest tints of this wild mountain garden. I found that Dupuis, who had marched at the head of the column, had been stopped by a couple of soldiers on the edge of the plateau. The Abyssinian “regular” has no uniform, but wears a dirty shama and the rest of the national costume, and carries a rifle of an obsolete French pattern. These men were not acting under Menelek’s orders but had been sent by the deputy of the chief of the village, who was himself absent upon a visit to Ras Gouksha, one of the great feudatories of Western Abyssinia. They said that they had orders to stop the three Englishmen, and I found that Dupuis had arranged to lunch at that spot and await developments.