I found the weather so exceedingly cold, and the time at Angolahlah pass so uselessly and heavily along, that I was very glad, after a week’s stay, to be again on the road back to Ankobar. The day previous to my leaving Angolahlah, I engaged a servant, named Walderheros, tall, athletic, but of most ill-favoured countenance, so much so, that “Gool,” to which eastern vampire he was compared by the members of the Mission, became his cognomen afterwards amongst them. My mule being saddled, we started early in the morning, as I was desirous of getting as far on the road as possible before the sun had ascended so high as to render the ride unpleasantly warm. Walderheros trudged along on foot by the side of my mule, carrying my carabine behind his neck, with his two hands resting upon the projecting portions on either side. He talked incessantly, and it did not seem to matter the least, that I could not understand a word he said. To check him, I repeated, with a very grave face, the whole of “My name is Norval.” He listened patiently to the end, and it then seemed to strike him that we should amuse ourselves much better, if he were to teach me in his own language the names of surrounding objects, rather than listen to such another long rigmarole I was also about to treat him with. Thereupon commenced my first Amharic lesson, and as I was a willing pupil, and Walderheros an untiring teacher, I made great progress during the ride. In this manner we travelled at a slow pace along the undulating broad highroad that, nearly in a direct line, conducts us from Angolahlah to the edge of Tchakkah. We met some few travellers, who, as we passed, exchanged loud and long-continued salutations with Walderheros, kept up until they were out of all convenient speaking distance of each other. A moor, or extensive downs, would convey the best idea of the country around; but though no trees or bushes intercept the sight, the whole surface was well cultivated with wheat and barley, or preserved as grazing meadows for the feeding of cattle. Excepting one considerably excavated valley, two or three miles from Tchakkah, the original level of the table land is only altered in the places where it is traversed by shallow water-denuded channels, along which very frequently the road runs, and the traveller proceeds in a broad hollow way, the flat ridges on each side of him rising some ten or twenty feet above his head.