Let my reader return with me for a moment to the country of Adal, an extensive plain, scarcely one thousand feet high above the level of the sea. Its river, the Hawash, peculiarly its own, distinct in the non-existence of opposite corresponding water-sheds to identify it as having formed part of the original surface level of the surrounding countries: an intruder, in fact, between the opposite slopes of the river Tacazza to the north and of the river Whabbee to the south; the countries of which were once continuous, but some convulsion connected probably with that which has occasioned the fault across the table land of Abyssinia, has in this position, severed the country completely; and in the gaping chasm, filled up to a certain level with the debris, has formed the bed of the Hawash, which gradually progressing on every side, its wide circumference of sources encroaches every year upon the elevated lands which surround it. A traveller in Adal cannot help noticing the singular character of the situation of the river Hawash, for he crosses over its bounding ridge to the east, and has partial opportunities of observing the bluff scarp-like terminations of the Angotcha, the Abyssinian, and the Hurrahgee table lands, all of which are being rapidly denuded by the numerous little tributaries which flow to swell the Hawash. But this extending operation is most strikingly illustrated in a line with the fault which has extended from the sea-coast to Fazuglo, in the west of Abyssinia. Here, to the south of Shoa, the Hawash has already approached within one day’s journey from the deep valley of the Abi, and removes annually great portions of the surrounding table land, which had previously determined the rain drops to flow into that river, but subsequent to which removal, all falling water must for the future, aid in swelling the insidious river of the low-land of Adal. The valleys of numerous small streams, the sides of which, denuded to the required depth, have been thus gradually opened into, and as this is naturally aided by the steep fall of the scarp, denudation goes on rapidly when the first inclination towards the Hawash has been given to the stream, that had previously meandered upon a nearly level plain. In this manner I contend, that the valley of the Airahra, between the narrow ridges of Ankobar, and the edge of the table-land at Tchakkah, has been acted upon, and that the waters falling to the west of Ankobar, and which now flow into the Hawash, were formerly conducted to the Jumma, and so to the Abi, when the two elevated points mentioned were continuous, as they most certainly have been.