Very soon tiring, however, in my weak state and on such a road, I got on to my mule again, which, if she could have spoken, would certainly have echoed the sentiment of the Portuguese traveller, Bermudez, who, in the 16th century, describing the very same road, represents it as giving him an idea of those in hell, from its steepness and roughness. Our poor animals, in fact, were frequently obliged to come to a stand-still to recover their breath; but they soon set their faces to the steep rocks, and managed, in some way or other, to surmount many very queer-looking places, without shedding us into some uncomfortably deep water-cut precipices that, as we got nearer to the end of our journey, began to be exchanged for the verdant hedges of the previous portion. The whole way we were constantly encountering herds of donkeys, heavily laden with grain, which was being brought down from the high land to be exchanged in Efat for cotton and salt. The men who accompanied them were, to my surprise, much darker coloured than the people of the lower country, tall, well made, and armed with spear and shield. With loud cries they encouraged the patient animals before them, to quicken their slow and cautious pace down the stony descent. The friendly salutation as we passed was never forgotten, nor did the laughing fast-talking girls who accompanied them spare their smiles, which was quite a merciful dispensation, that made our difficult and fatiguing ascent, much pleasanter than would have been a macadamized road through a desert. We at length reached a narrow tortuous ridge of at least a mile in length, across which, a walk of but a few yards presented to the view on either side, a deep and extensive valley. That on the left hand is by far the narrower and more precipitous, being bounded by the steep, almost perpendicular face of the opposite ridge of Tchakkah, at the distance of about four miles; whilst that on the right, is of a character exactly the reverse, a widely extending amphitheatrical formed valley spreading from below the feet, far towards the east. From the summit of an inclined plane, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, the eye travels for sixty miles over hundreds of little hills, embosomed in the widely diverging arc that defines the bay-like valley, in which is contained the whole of the numberless streams that, joining the small river Dinkee near to Farree, flow into Lee Adu. This lake formed a bright feature of the scene, embosomed in the dark green belt of forest that marks the course of the Hawash; beyond which the sandy plains of Adal, blending with a colourless sky, constituted an horizon in which sight was lost.