Water cure.--Nearly killed by it.--Ordered to leave Shoa.-- Proceed to Angolahlah.--Courteous treatment of the officers of the Negoos.--Entertainment.--Remarks upon the character of Sahale Selassee.--The Mahomedan religion. My illness increasing, each succeeding paroxysm of fever leaving me in a more weakened condition, my servant proposed a remedy, boasted never to fail in effecting a cure. I had but a scanty stock of medicines, that I had brought with me from Aden, and these seemed to have little or no effect upon my disease; so I determined to give Walderheros a chance of distinguishing himself by conferring health upon his “gaitah” (master). To do this properly, it was deemed necessary that some water should be fetched from a spring by a man, and as this is a species of labour always performed by women, Walderheros, not to be seen at such employment, undertook to take the water-jar for that purpose the next morning before daylight. I also learnt that the cure was to be effected by a kind of shower-bath, to which I was to submit, sitting down whilst the water was poured from a height upon my head, during the attack of the rigors which preceded the hot stage of the ague fit. The next day, accordingly, the water having been properly procured, on the first symptoms of the fit coming on, I sat down in the shade of a large ankor tree, a variety of the myrrh, that grows at an elevation of seven thousand feet above the sea, but yields no gum. Here, wrapt up in an Abyssinian tobe, which upon the first fall of the water I was to drop from my shoulders, I awaited the coming shower from above, for Walderheros had climbed into the tree, whilst some assistants lifted up to him the large jar which contained the water. The remedy, however, when it did come down, immediately laid me full length upon the earth, for what with the collapse of the system attendant upon the cold stage and the cold falling water, it certainly cut short the fever, but nearly at the expense of my life, for even when I recovered from the first shock, and was taken back to my bed, I was delirious for several hours after,--a circumstance that I have often had reason to be thankful for, had not been a very usual symptom of my disease. After this experience, that white men required a very different medical treatment to the red Abyssinians (for in this manner Walderheros endeavoured to account for the failure of his hydropathic remedy), I was not asked again to submit to any more native means of cure for some time; as my recovery, however, was of the greatest importance to me, I commenced a regular course of quinine and James’s Powder, and had it not been for a most disagreeable interruption in the quiet and retired life I was leading in Aliu Amba, I might, perhaps, have been soon restored to health.