At half past eight o’clock, we encamped at a place called Tubbo, where the mountains are very steep, and broken, very abruptly, into cliffs and precipices. Tubbo was by much the most agreeable station we had seen; the trees were thick, full of leaves, and gave us abundance of very dark shade. There was a number of many different kinds so closely planted that they seemed to be intended for natural arbours. Every tree was full of birds, variegated with an infinity of colours, but destitute of song; others, of a more homely and more European appearance, diverted us with a variety of wild notes, in a stile of music still distinct and peculiar to Africa; as different in the composition from our linnet and goldfinch, as our English language is to that of Abyssinia: Yet, from very attentive and frequent observation, I found that the sky-lark at Masuah sang the same notes as in England. It was observable, that the greatest part of the beautiful painted birds were of the jay, or magpie kind: nature seemed, by the fineness of their dress, to have marked them for children of noise and impertinence, but never to have intended them for pleasure or meditation. The reason of the Hazorta making, as it were, a fixed station here at Tubbo, seems to be the great exuberancy of the foliage of these large trees. Their principal occupation seemed to be to cut down the branches most within their reach; and this, in a dry season, nearly stripped every tree; and, upon failure of these, they remove their flocks, whatever quantity of grass remained. The sycamores constitute a large proportion of these trees, and they are everywhere loaded with figs; but the process of caprification being unknown to these savages, these figs come to nothing, which else might be a great resource for food at times, in a country which seems almost destitute of the necessaries of life. We left Tubbo at three o’clock in the afternoon, and we wished to leave the neighbourhood of the Hazorta. At four, we encamped at Lila, where we passed the night in a narrow valley, full of trees and brushwood, by the side of a rivulet. These small, but delightful streams, which appear on the plain between Taranta and the sea, run only after October. When the summer rains in Abyssinia are ceasing, they begin again on the east side of the mountains; at other times, no running water is to be found here, but it remains stagnant in large pools, whilst its own depth, or the shade of the mountains and trees, prevent it from being exhaled by the heat of the sun till they are again replenished with fresh supplies, which are poured into them upon return of the rainy season. Hitherto we had constantly ascended from our leaving Arkeeko, but it was very gradually, indeed almost imperceptibly.