52 SPORT IN ABYSSINIA. 



and, unluckily, we had put our beds at that end of the 

 shanty which was most leaky. I woke up and found 

 myself enjoying a shower-bath from the roof. H. was 

 much in the same plight, and we were both glad when 

 morning broke. 



Jan. 12. — A good breakfast and some hot cocoa 

 soon warmed us up, and we started for Beatmohar, 

 the place where General Kirkham has a house. 

 This is the first table-land of Abyssinia that one 

 comes to, travelling by this route. Our luggage 

 was now carried by mules, donkeys, and bullocks, 

 driven by Shoho Arabs. It rained the whole day, so 

 the view of the hills was spoilt, which I regretted 

 very much. At the sides of the hills at the feet of 

 which the path wound, it was covered with a gigantic 

 Euphorbia, called Oualqual in Abyssinia ; it is a sort 

 of cactus, or grows like cactus, to the height of forty 

 feet or more. When its branches are wounded, a 

 milky juice oozes out, which is highly poisonous ; if 

 the least drop gets into one's eye it nearly blinds 

 one. In India, in 1870, when shooting in the Hima- 

 layas, I was amusing myself with my hunting-knife 

 by slashing at a plant, very much like this one ; a 

 drop of the juice squirted into my eye. One of the 

 hunters, a native, brought me a sort of creeper with a 

 leaf much like a vine. He screwed up the stalk of it, 

 and catching the juice in the palm of his hand, offered 



