MOUNT SMITH—THE RIVER NIANAM. 319 
mountain range that had been running parallel to the river 
Nianam on the west since we left the Gumba, and make 
some observations. After reaching a grassy hill-top seven 
hundred and fifty feet above the Mela, I was enabled to 
get an extended view of the surrounding country. The 
river Nianam, now only forty yards wide but very swift, 
cut its way at this point through the mountain chain be- 
fore described, and lay just below and to the west of us. 
I could follow its course with my eyes for twenty miles 
as it flowed down from the lofty mountains of Kaffa. 
From my observations I found that we were sixty-seven 
geographical miles north of Rusia. 
To the east and to the north was a wet mountainous 
country, with peaks rising to the height of nine thousand 
feet. One splendid group of mountains, thirty-five miles 
to the north of us and nine thousand feet high, I have 
named after myself. At the base of this mountain group 
I could see many fires burning, made by a people called 
Mega, according to the information I received from my 
friends the Mela. I had previously been regarding the 
river Nianam as the river Omo, but now I altered my 
Opinion in regard to this. We were at the time at the 
western extremity of that great watershed around which 
we had been circling for so many months. 
It does not require a great extent of mountainous coun- 
try to produce a river the size of the Nianam as it 
passes Mela. I believe the origin of the Nianam to lie 
in those lofty plateaus, one hundred and twenty miles 
north of Lake Rudolf, and in the country laid down on the 
maps as Kaffa. I think the river Omo must flow into the 
Ganana or Jub. The Mela had never heard of the word 
Kaffa, nor of the existence of the Abyssinians, so I do not 
think that Kaffa extends very far to the south of Abyssinia, 
or that the Abyssinians inhabit the country much below 
