Territories of the Danákil Débeni—Suggadéra, Murrah, Dúddee, and Gobaad.

Some hours before dawn on the 12th, the káfilah was again loaded and in motion across a low belt of stony eminences which gradually descend to the Kóri Wady, a long water-course, varying in width from two to four hundred yards. Threading the moist channel of this stream, where the foot often absolutely left an impression on the sand, and passing the watering pool of Leilé, the road ascended a deep valley to the halting ground at Suggadéra, in the country of the Danákil Débeni. The entire borders were flanked by dwarf palms and drooping tamarisk, bounded by low hills with cliffs of conglomerate and sandstone, which disclosed dykes of porphyry at an acute angle. Flocks of goats, diligently browsing on the fat pods which fall at this season from the acacia, were tended by ancient Bedouin crones in greasy leathern petticoats, who plaited mats of the split date-leaf; whilst groups of men, women, and children, lining the eminences at every turn, watched the progress of the stranger party.

A pastoral race, and subsisting chiefly upon the fermented juice of the palm, and upon the milk derived from numerous flocks of sheep and goats, or from a few breeding camels, the Débeni, a division of the Danákil, are during certain months of the year engaged in the transportation of salt from the deadly Bahr Assál to the Muda?to town of Aussa, where it is bartered for grain. Architecture affords no term applicable to a structure of any kind inferior to a hut or hovel, or it might with propriety be applied to the base jumble of rough stone and shavings of the date stalk, tenanted by these nomade savages, who are divided into clans, and have no fixed habitations. Nevertheless there was something cheering in the aspect even of these frail edifices, the first human tenement which had greeted the eye since leaving the sea-coast, now ninety miles distant. Bare, desolate, and fiery, the entire intervening tract, although infested by the lurking robber and the midnight assassin, may be pronounced in all its sultry parts, utterly unfitted for the location of man.

Water of rather an improved description was obtained at Suggadéra, under basaltic rock, stained green by carbonate of copper. But not a particle of forage was to be had; and the heat, reflected from a pebbly hill beneath which the tent was erected, brought the mercury in the thermometer to 118 degrees, during the greater portion of the day; and the evil appearance of the place, surrounded by gloomy hills cast into the deepest shadow, led to the maintenance of a vigilant watch during the dark night.

Although disturbed at the early hour of 2 a.m., and denied further repose save on the bare ground, the loss of a camel, which was not recovered until late, so far retarded advance, that only four miles were achieved on the 13th. The road continued to wind with a gentle ascent along the bed of the Wady Kóri, the hills gradually diminishing in apparent height until they merged into the elevated plain of Murrah, which exhibited pebbles of pink quartz, with a few scanty tufts of sweet-scented grass, yellow and withered. Here, at the distance of two miles from a puddle of dirty rain-water, in defiance of the impotent Ras el Káfilah, the camel-drivers, who studiously avoid trees and the vicinity of a pool, resolved to halt, as being a place after their own hearts.

In the dry water-course just left, the chirruping of some solitary hermit bird, and the bursting bud of a certain dwarf shrub which clothed the borders, agreeably reminded the traveller of more favoured climes. But most completely was the illusion dispelled by the forbidding aspect of the sultry plain of Murrah. Monotonous fields strewn with black boulders, glaring in the sun, distressed the gaze wheresoever it was turned—each cindery mass seeming as though it had been showered down during a violent eruption of some neighbouring volcano; although, on nearer inspection, it proved to be the time-worn fragment of an extensive lava sheet. The bare stony plain was decorated with numerous cairns, marking deeds of treachery and blood; and at the distance of twenty miles rose a lofty range of hot table-land, behind which the Abyssinian river Háwash is lost in the great lake at Aussa.

The presence at the watering-place of a host of wild Bedouins, whose appearance was far from prepossessing, again induced the cautious elders to anticipate an attack; and the camp occupying a very unfavourable position for warlike operations, no little difficulty was experienced in making defensive dispositions. A gloomy black hill threw its impenetrable shadow immediately in front; and on the flank, a pile of half-ruined sheepfolds, constructed of blocks of lava, afforded extensive concealment. The night however passed away without any alarm, and the intense heat of the day giving place to a somewhat cooler atmosphere, admitted of sleep by turns in some comfort—parties of the Danákil escort contriving by chanting their wild war-chorus, to keep their heavy eyes longer open than usual.

An hour after midnight the loading commenced, and the steep rocky hill having been surmounted by a path strewed with loose stones, a terrace of slow ascent, presenting the same dreary appearance of rocks and lava boulders, continued during the residue of the moon’s reign. At break of day, however, the aspect of the country began rapidly to improve. Gaining the higher and more salubrious level of Gulámo, the bare sterile land, strewed with black blocks of lava which tore the feet with their jagged edges, was fast giving place to sandy plains covered with dry yellow grass—a most welcome prospect for the exhausted cattle. Heretofore, saving in t............