1 74 SPOJi T IN ABYSS INI A. 



Mahomet, who is my servant, and Fisk, H.'s ser- 

 vant, get ready our things for dressing. We get 

 up and generally perform our ablutions in the open 

 air, with our little basin either propped upon the 

 stump of a tree or else on a heap of stones close to 

 the tent. We breakfast about eight, and then go out 

 shooting — that is to say, I used to do so when I 

 v/as well. Fisk serves out the servants' rations for 

 the day about ten o'clock, and a very few minutes 

 after this all hands are hard at work making their 

 bread, which is accomplished by mixing flour and 

 water and making the whole mass into a plaster-of- 

 Paris-like paste. 



Most of our servants have divided themselves into 

 messes of three or four, and the way in which they 

 bake their bread is both original and primitive. Well- 

 to-do travellers in Abyssinia generally carry an iron 

 pan, exactly the shape of one of the copper scale 

 pans that grocers weigh tea in, but the poorer 

 natives have to content themselves with a flat stone, 

 numbers of which are to be seen, propped up on 

 other stones, at all the camping-places on the road, 

 with the ashes of recent fires beneath them. While 

 they are making their paste the stone is being 

 heated over a fire, and directly it is hot enough they 

 pour on to it the liquid dough and let it bake ; 

 when it is done on one side they turn it over like a 



