Visited by Ibrahim.--Map of the Hawash.--Its effect upon table-land of Abyssinia.--Future juncture with the Abi.-- Its early tributaries.--Effects of denudation.--Zui lake.-- Popular tradition.--Abyssinian geographical work.--Galla tribes. _August 16th._--Ibrahim, the retired slave-merchant, who had not called since I had made the improvements in my house, came in to-day. He was rather astonished at the transformation I had effected, gave the table a good shake, sat down in my chair, and _tabored_ with his fingers against the parchment window. “_Ahkeem e moot_,” said he at last, “may the doctor die! if it is not good; you are a _tabeeb_, and the house of your Queen is not furnished so well.” The old gentleman had brought his work with him, a piece of blue sood, which he was embroidering with green and red silk in a large cross-bar pattern, and which he told me was intended for a holiday guftah for his wife. Here I must observe, that although the Islam women in Shoa usually wear clothes of some common material dyed red, upon festival days they display very rich headdresses of foreign silk, or embroidered cotton cloth, such as Ibrahim was now working. Walderheros placed the low Abyssinian chair for his accommodation, and then, as was generally the case when Ibrahim came to see me, a long conversation commenced respecting the town of Hurrah, of which he was a native, although he had not been to that city for the last eight or nine years. As usual, we had a map sketched upon the floor before us, which, however, on this occasion was not a very complicated one, merely the southern portion of the Hawash, where it encircles Shoa, and which formed the conclusion of the course of that river, the northern portion of which, as far as the ford of Mulkakuyu, I had already received information of from my Dankalli friends, Ohmed Medina and Ohmedu. The principal features of the geography of the country included in the sketch map, were the three principal streams entering the Hawash from the scarp of the Abyssinian table-land, all of which flowed nearly to the south; but the most remarkable and interesting one was the great indentation in the outline of the high country, which in this situation seemed to be approaching to a separation into two parts by the denudation of the sources of the Hawash on the east, and a corresponding degradation on the west, occasioned by the action of the waters of the Assabi, or Abiah, the red Nile falling from the elevated plains of its earlier tributaries to join the Bahr ul Abiad at Kartoom, where its height above the level of the sea does not, I believe, exceed three thousand feet.