These ahmulahs, as they may be called, are thin bricks of salt, which have been not inaptly compared in size and shape to a mower’s whet-stone; they vary some little in size, but few of them are less than eight inches long. Their form is rather interesting, from the fact of their being cut somewhat in the ancient form of money pieces, thinner at the two extremities than in the middle, and if of metal might not have been inaptly termed a spit. The breadth across the centre of the ahmulah is a little over two inches, whilst at the extremities it scarcely measures one inch. The height or thickness is uniform, being usually about one inch and a quarter. As may naturally be supposed, this money, consisting of a material so soft and deliquescent as common salt, becomes denuded by use, and that a great difference consequently exists between the weight of a new specimen, and one that has been in exchange for only a few months. During the rainy season, especially, in Abyssinia the waste of the ahmulahs is very great, although the inhabitants, by burying them in the wood ashes of their large hearths, or suspending them in the smoke from the roof, endeavour to preserve them, at that time, from the action of the moisture in the atmosphere. It not unfrequently happens, also, that carelessness exposes them sometimes to the chances of a quick reduction in size, by leaving the ahmulahs in situations where mules or cattle can get to them; and as all domestic animals are inmates of the same apartment with the family during the night, these opportunities of robbing their master by licking the salt-pieces, is frequently a temptation too great for their virtue. It is amusing, also, sometimes to witness in the market-place the contests between children who have been entrusted with an ahmulah, and the flocks of goat and sheep with which they are immediately beset. These circumstances are mentioned because they have considerable effect upon the value of this sort of money, ahmulahs much worn not being received as such at all, and can only be weighed against weight in the ordinary mode of barter, in which case, I presume, they lose their character as currency, and must be considered articles of exchange alone.