To-day commences a long fast for fifteen days, called “Felsat.” No meat is allowed to be eaten, and the first food taken daily must be after three o’clock in the afternoon. Walderheros grants me an indulgence, as I am very ill and weak. It seems children and sick people are not required to fast. I never saw the members of any Church less bigoted than the Christians of Shoa, but I am given to understand that more to the north much less toleration is exhibited towards Mahomedans and individuals of other faiths. I have often thought, civilized as I considered myself to be, that had I been in the place of Sahale Selassee, I should not have acted quite so fairly to my Mahomedan subjects; and when we consider that they are far inferior in numbers to the Christians, in the proportion of about three to one, a great deal more credit is due. _August 6th._--Being a very fine morning, I had my alga brought into the garden, and superintended Walderheros and Goodaloo making the pile of wood for burning it into charcoal; covering it with the stalks of the thorn apple-plant, which alone seemed to flourish around my house to the exclusion of every other kind of herb. Upon this green kind of thatch a layer of earth was placed, and all being completed, fire was applied below, and the aperture through which it was introduced immediately closed up; a vent, or chimney, through the centre alone being left open. Instead of any length of time being necessary, I found my charcoal-heap blazing away as if air entered at twenty places. Being my first attempt as a practical burner, I somehow expected this, and therefore carried off the failure as a thing intended, for Walderheros began to think his learned master a bit of a quack when he found that I was ignorant of the simple native cure for hernia; and he would now have been downright sure of it had he not supposed that all my present proceedings, regarding the charcoal-burning, was necessary to produce the excellent article required to make gunpowder as it was manufactured in my country. I therefore sat and looked at the blazing pile, revolving in my mind what could possibly have caused the failure, for I believed I had observed every particular, that I had been taught was necessary to convert wood into charcoal. Fortunately for my credit, just when I concluded that I knew nothing about it, and had best say so, and before the whole heap had been consumed, a sudden shower of rain poured down; this of course spoiled all my arrangements, and among other things, to all appearance put out the fire. Here was a case for condolence; and Walderheros, thinking I must want something to support me under the disappointment, when the rain had ceased, which was not for some hours, took a straw basket and went to examine the ruins. One effect of the rain, it seems, had been to beat down the dome of earth and moist stalks of the thorn apple, when the support of the wood inside had been lost by the combustion.