We did not intend to resume the march on the following morning, so none of us rose before half-past six, when “the day was aired” a little. The lowest reading of the thermometer at night had been thirty-two degrees. After breakfast, we three Englishmen and Johannes the interpreter started in the boat to visit Mitraha. It is a hilly, tree-clad little island with a population consisting of six families. The people welcomed us on our approach and guided us through a channel between rocks to a good landing-place. They seemed pleased to show us over the ground.[63] It is a perfectly pretty islet, with quaint thatched cottages among foliage and a ruinous old church, and—for historic interest—it contains the tomb of an ancient king of Abyssinia, John by name. We visited the sepulchre and saw the open coffin, which was full of an agglomeration of bones. If they belonged to the dead monarch, he must have been the boniest man that ever lived, and embarrassed, into the bargain, by possessing two right arms. However, it was an article of belief with everybody on the island, including the priest, that nature had once contrived to stow all that “anatomy” into one human body. The island is traversed in all directions by narrow tracks marked by trodden leaves, and there is a thick undergrowth of weeds, thistles, and thorns. In this tangle I saw numbers of large spiders’ webs, from three to four feet in circumference. The spiders are about the size of a shilling, with a speckled abdomen and legs of enormous length. I saw none of this species on the mainland. The islanders had poultry but no cattle. We asked them about their food. They said, “We eat durrha when we can get it.” “Don’t you eat fish?” we asked. “Surely, there are plenty of fish in the lake.” “_No_,” they answered emphatically. “After King Johannes was killed by the Dervishes[64] all the fish disappeared.” It is quite likely that these people are too idle even to cast a net,[65] for it is notorious that fish of many kinds and of large size abound in Lake Tsana; but, knowing how superstitious the Habashes are, I would not vouch for it that they did not sincerely believe what they said. Probably they have little intercourse with the mainland and invent their own news. They took a keen interest in our boat, and asked many questions about it. Their own rafts, called _tankoa_, consist merely of a bundle of papyrus reeds strung together with strips of hippopotamus hide and stiffened by a bamboo in the centre which serves as a kind of keelson. They do not use a sail, but punt or paddle with a pole. When we had finished the tour of the island Dupuis presented five dollars to the church and community and thereupon received the ceremonial blessing of the priest.[66]