Debra Berhán, the Hill of Glory.

In Shoa the preliminaries of a journey are replete with noise, inconvenience, and confusion. Friends come to “see you off,” as an indispensable piece of etiquette, and the lounging townspeople, who have at no time much business of their own, flock to assist the traveller by filling the court-yard, choking the door-way, and amusing themselves by canvassing the property packed. Should rain be falling, which is too frequently the case, the rabble take shelter inside the house, subject every article within their reach to the pollution of greasy paws, leave the carpet an inch thick in mire, and, unless by dint of shoving and elbowing, debar all egress to the lawful proprietor.

It was in the midst of attentions such as these on the part of the idlers of Ankóber, on a raw, cold, foggy morning in September—the last of the Ethiopic year—that we took the road to Debra Berhán. The sun was already high when the sure-footed mules were mounted, and as the retiring mist scudded over the face of the mountains, many were the bold beauties revealed. Cascades tumbled down the stupendous range on the one hand, amid snug houses and tufted knolls, and on the other, at the foot of perpendicular crags thundered the river Airára. On its bank stands the only piece of machinery in the kingdom—a rude watermill constructed by an Albanian visitor; but the intolerant and ignorant priesthood pronouncing the revolution of the wheel to be the work of devils and genii, its use was interdicted after three days, and it has since remained silent.

Beyond the ford of the foaming torrent the road becomes extremely rough, steep, and difficult. The first traveller had been unable to breast the mountain side outright; and his zigzag route remains untouched by the hand of the pioneer. The craggy rock must be surmounted, and the narrow and slippery channel be still threaded with the same risk as when the first bold foot was planted on the serrated ridge; and the torrent of centuries, whilst indenting the furrow yet deeper, has added the impediment of slimy residuum.

The range whereof the Chaka forms a part divides the streams that flow into the Nile, from those which are tributary to the Háwash; and the ascent above Ankóber being not less than two thousand feet, the difference in temperature on the summit was fully perceptible. Half an hour was occupied in the scramble to a crumbling basaltic pillar styled “Room dingai,” “the standing stone,” which very aptly transfers its name to this most indifferent pass to the new capital of Shoa. Mamrat still towered overhead full three or four thousand feet, making its total height above the level of the sea at least thirteen thousand; yet is snow a stranger to its cloud-capped summit, and indeed to the language of all Amhára, south of the cold mountains of Simien.

It is from June to September that old Father Nilus carries plenty into “the land of marvels”—and rolling on to its mouths in solitary grandeur, without receiving a single tributary in its long course of thirteen hundred and fifty nautical miles below the junction of the Tacazzé, it may fairly be stated that Abyssinia holds in her Christian hands the inexhaustible riches of Egypt. Hatzé Tekla Ha?manót the Great, had therefore reason on his side when, in the beginning of the twelfth century, he wrote under the style of “Son of the King of the Church of Ethiop to the Pacha and the Lords Commanders of the Militia at Grand Cairo, desiring attention to the fact that in himself for the time being was vested power to render the Nile an instrument of vengeance for overt acts of hostility—the Almighty having given into his hands its fountains, its passage, and its increase, and thus entrusted him with power to make the river work good or evil.”

Among the numberless fictions recorded of this emperor, it is said that when he was about to relinquish the cares of government in order to retire to a cloister, he divided his countless wealth with his feet into two parts, the one designed as an offering to the Church, the other to be distributed in alms among the poor: and both heaps, although mountain high, were, on being weighed, found exactly equal. Lalíbela, one of his successors, is believed to have attempted the diversion to the Indian Ocean and to the Lake Zooai, of all those principal tributaries to the Nile which take their source in the highest table land. The measure was in resentment for the persecutions exercised towards the Christians in Egypt after the Saracen conquest, and the monarch was only induced to relinquish his gigantic project by the earnest remonstrance of the monks, who strongly urged the impolicy of fertilising the arid Moslem countries that intervene betwixt the mountains and the sea.

On the summit of the Chaka commences an uninterrupted terrace, stretching hundreds of miles to the southward, through the fair territories of the Galla. Glimpses of blue sky, of a brightness unseen for months, now gave happy presage of coming fine weather, and a cold bracing breeze from the eastward announced the termination of the protracted season of rain. The country had assumed the uninteresting character inseparable from elevated downs—rich swampy meadows, clothed with camomile, clover, and trefoil, and covered with oxen, horses, and sheep, being intersected by gentle undulations of moor-land, with occasional oviform hills. Bare-banked rills, streaming through the lower tracts, succeed each other in quick succe............