My servant soon breasted the high hill, and fortunately was just in time to find a person in authority, who, immediately he was shown my durgo order, procured a large bullock’s horn full of the sweet wine. The manufacture of tedge or honey wine is a royal monopoly, and is not publicly sold; of course there is a kind of conventional license, not exactly smuggling, by which, for double or treble its value, this beverage may be obtained. Even then the purchased article is probably the rations that have been preserved by some carefully disposed guest of the monarch, who, pouring his daily allowance of a bullock’s hornfull into a large jar, collects a stock for a day of rejoicing or for private sale. The process of brewing tedge is simple enough; cold water being poured over a few small drinking hornsfull of honey placed in a jar, is well stirred up; to this is then added a handful of sprouted barley, “biccalo,” scorched over the fire, and ground into a coarse meal, with the same quantity of the leaves of the “gaisho,” a species of Rhamneæ, not unlike the common tea plant, and an intense but transient bitter like gentian or hops. The mixture being allowed to stand for three or four days, ferments, and is generally drunk in that state, but is then rather a queer kind of muddy beverage, full of little flocculent pieces of wax. It is more agreeable, but not unlike, in appearance or character, very strong sweet-wort. To a superior kind, made for the King’s own table, besides the “biccalo” and “gaisho,” is also added a kind of berry called “kuloh,” which grows not unlike the fruit of our elderberry, and may possibly be the production of some tree belonging to that species. The jars containing this are sealed with a large cake of clay mixed with the lees of the decanted liquor. This kind of tedge is allowed to stand for several months before it is used, and is called “barilla,” from always being handed to guests in small Venetian bottles of green glass, the fracture of one of which is a grievous offence with his Shoan Majesty, and he always makes the careless party pay for it. Two hours after sunset I was well enough to sit up and partake of my tedge, which was handed to me by Walderheros, to amuse myself with whilst he proceeded to lay out our supper. A large round table of wicker-work, the diameter of which was about three feet, and about one foot in height, was reached down from a peg, where it had been suspended against the wall, and laid upon the floor before me. In the centre of this, Eichess, the lady of the house, placed a round saucer-like dish of red earthenware, full of the cayenne pottage, which had been long preparing upon the fire, and in which were boiled to a hot fricassee the disjointed limbs of a fowl. A separate heap of three or four of the thin teff crumpets, folded four-fold, was then put for each person.