It was sometime before I became accustomed to the new circumstances by which I was surrounded. My house was merely a round shed, having a diameter of about twelve feet, the wall of dry sticks, five feet high, being surmounted by the usual conical roof of thatch. Opposite to the entrance was a slight deviation from the exact periphery of a circle, occasioned by the recess before mentioned, in which was contained my wide couch. Here the wall bulged out something like a bow window in form, and was covered by a little elongation of the roof in that situation. Nearly in the centre of the apartment was a dilapidated raised ring of clay and pebbles, some five or six inches high, and about three feet in diameter. This formed the hearth, within which two large stones, and the broken-off neck of an old jar, formed a kind of tripod, that occasionally supported a smoke-blacked earthenware “macero,” or cooking pot, in which was being boiled either some sort of grain or other for the family, or else the meat for mine and Walderheros’ supper. On one side, ranged along the wall, stood several large jars, two of which, covered by gourd shell drinking cups, contained water, whilst others, superannuated by sundry cracks, were partly filled with teff, or wheat. The former is the minute seed of a kind of grass, of which is made the bread of the temperate countries of Abyssinia, as it flourishes best in situations between the wheat and barley fields cultivated upon the high table land of Shoa, and the jowarree plantations in the very low countries on a level with the Hawash. The only piece of furniture, strictly speaking, in the house, except my bed, was a chair of the most primitive construction, its thong-woven bottom being scarcely six inches from the ground. It would have been altogether a good model for some rustic seat builder about to fit up the interior of a garden alcove. My two boxes assisted, however, in producing a showy effect, one of them being a Chinese trunk, covered with bright red leather, the other a shiny tin medicine chest, and to make them useful as well as ornamental, they were generally converted into seats on the occasion of any visitors of rank calling upon me. Besides these things, old red gowns of my landlady, and some tattered grass-made baskets and sieves used in dressing and cleaning grain, were suspended from the projecting ends of the stick wall, and made the interior of the house look rather untidy.