The mountains of Waldubba, resembling those of Adebarea, lay north of us about four or five miles. Waldubba, which signifies _the Valley of the Hyæna_, is a territory entirely inhabited by the monks, who, for mortification’s sake, have retired to this unwholesome, hot, and dangerous country, voluntarily to spend their lives in penitence, meditation, and prayer. This, too, is the only retreat of great men in disgrace or in disgust. These first shave their hair, and put on a cowl like the monks, renouncing the world for solitude, and taking vows which they resolve to keep no longer than exigencies require; after which they return to the world again, leaving their cowl and sanctity in Waldubba. These monks are held in great veneration; are believed by many to have the gift of prophecy, and some of them to work miracles, and are very active instruments to stir up the people in time of trouble. Those that I have seen out of Waldubba in Gondar, and about Koscam, never shewed any great marks of abstinence; they ate and drank every thing without scruple, and in large quantities too. They say they live otherwise in Waldubba, and perhaps it may be so. There are women, also, whom we should call Nuns, who, though not residing in Waldubba, go at times thither, and live in a familiarity with these saints, that has very little favour of spirituality; and many of these, who think the living in community with this holy fraternity has not in it perfection enough to satisfy their devotion, retire, one of each sex, a hermit and a nun, sequestering themselves for months, to eat herbs together in private upon the top of the mountains. These, on their return, are shewn as miracles of holiness,--lean, enervated, and exhausted. Whether this is wholly to be laid to the charge of the herbs, is more than I will take upon me to decide, never having been at these retirements of Waldubba. Violent fevers perpetually reign there. The inhabitants are all of the colour of a corpse; and their neighbours, the Shangalla, by constant inroads, destroy many of them, though lately they have been stopped, as they say, by the prayers of the monks. I suppose their partners, the nuns, had their share in it, as both of them are said to be equally superior in holiness and purity of living to what their predecessors formerly were. But, not to derogate from the efficaciousness of their prayers, the _natural cause_ why the Shangalla molest them no more, is the small-pox, which has greatly reduced their strength and number, and extinguished, to a man, whole tribes of them. The water is both scarce and bad at Debra Toon, there being but one spring, or fountain, and it was exceedingly ill-tasted. We did not intend to make this a station; but, having sent a servant to Hauza to buy a mule in room of that which the hyæna had eaten, we were afraid to leave our man, who was not yet come forward, lest he should fall in with the Shum of Addergey, who might stop the mule for our arrears of customs.