Immediately after crossing the Airahra we commenced a most villanous ascent. I believe that, to be in daily use, and traversed by hundreds of individuals, the Tchakkah road is unequalled in the world for steepness, roughness, and everything else that can contribute to make a road difficult and unsafe. Now a brawling stream, rushing down into the Airahra, covers with a slippery slime the bald face of the rock; here loose crumbling stones treacherously detach themselves from beneath the struggling hoofs of the mule; and there an actual cataract, of at least eight feet high, has to be scrambled over, splashing through spray and the flying gravel dislodged by the ascent. Zigzag parallels, as they are termed in fortifications, are the exact description of the route we took up the almost perpendicular cliffs; and our faces were alternately turned nearly due north and south, as we succeeded in accomplishing some ten or twelve yards in the traverse, at every turn we made, peeping over into a deep abyss that yawned before us, and prevented our ride from being extended longer in that direction. Often does the merciful man here dismount from his tired mule, and sitting upon some detached portion of rock, congratulate himself, as he gazes downward, on having effected so much of his painful task; and as he looks upward receives some encouragement to proceed, when he sees the reward of perseverance, in the distant image of some preceding traveller gradually rising in relief against the sky, then suddenly disappearing over the lofty ridge where terminates his labour. It took us one hour to surmount this awful steep, which, had it been some thousand feet higher, might not, perhaps, have been unjustly compared with similar passes among the Alps; but even then the comparison would hold no longer than the ascent, for, arrived upon the summit, the stranger finds no descent but an extensive table land spread before him, and he cannot divest himself of an idea, that he has reached some new continent. A Scotch climate, and Scotch vegetation, wheat, barley, and linseed, and yet still in inter-tropical Africa; he feels as if there must be some mistake, an idea of incongruity, not unlike what I experienced upon seeing in a “united family of animals,” several rats seeking a warm retreat beneath the fur of a cat. Everything, in fact, was different to what I had expected, and the nearly black skins of the natives that we met seemed to be unnatural in a country where a chill breeze was blowing. Koom Dingi, the resting-stone, is a solitary remaining hexagonal prism of grey columnar porphyry, some few feet in height, and stands amidst the fragments of others, very conspicuously on the extreme edge of the Tchakkah. Here it is usual for the weary wayfarer after his ascent, to stop and refresh himself with the bread no Abyssinian on a long journey fails to provide himself with, and carries wrapt up in the long mekanet, or girdle, that surrounds his loins.