Around his rude outline of Abyssinia, my native informant Ibrahim placed representatives of the Shankalli, who surrounded that country, except upon its eastern side, where another black race, the Dankalli, testify by their skins, to a similar low elevation of the country they inhabit. Ibrahim thus undesignedly proved the correctness of his information, for it struck me, that no physical feature is so conclusive as to the character of a country, whether high or low land, than the complexion of its inhabitants. An exception, however, to thus entirely surrounding the high land of Abyssinia with the two nations of blacks was made to the north and south of the country of Adal, where two oppositely situated water-sheds are drained by the two rivers, the Tacazza and the Whabbee, the former flowing into the Nile, the latter into the Indian Ocean at Jubah. The character of both the countries through which these rivers flow are, in one respect, similar; their elevation being intermediate between the low plains of Adal, and the table land of Abyssinia, or about six thousand feet high above the level of the sea. The inhabitants of either water-shed also resemble each other in their colour, being a dark brown, modified by parentage and descent, for the complexion of the inhabitants of Tigre and Angotcha, approaches to the red colour of the real Abyssinian, whilst the skins of the Gallas around the sources of the Whabbee have a duskier inclination towards the original colour of their Dankalli and Shankalli parents. To the north of Dembeacha, around the lower course of the Tacazza, European travellers attest the existence of Shankalli, whilst the officers attached to the exploring armies of Mahomed Allee, found them also all along the course of Bahr ul Assareek to Fazuglo, and report them as extending an indefinite distance to the south. On the other hand, I have seen and spoken with Shankalli or negroes who had been brought into Shoa from beyond Kuffah, Enarea, and Limmoo; and Ibrahim also was most particular in stating that all around those places to the south was the black country, _Tokruah_, the Amharic name for that colour, and which is the origin of the general native designation of interior Africa, and is synonymous with _Sudan_, derived from the Arabic _Asward_, black. The inference that is to be derived from this fact, of the Shankalli being found in the immediate neighbourhood of a very light complexioned people, is, that the high table land of Abyssinia suddenly slopes, on its south and west sides, from the elevation of ten or twelve thousand feet, to a low country of less than three thousand feet high, a scarp of perhaps thirty miles only intervening between the two very differently situated countries.